The 'Other' Indian Wars

American Indians, i.e., Native Americans, have a right to harbor ill will against the whites who came to this continent and successfully waged war against them for the ages old reason, "territory." There was never any doubt as to eventual winners because the whites had better weapons and there were more of them. Crow Chief Plenty Coups and a few others realized that fact and adjusted their tribe's strategy accordingly.

Human conflicts on planet earth over territory goes back eons to the first men using rocks and clubs. The Whites versus Indian wars in America began seriously after 1620 when the Puritans fled cruel persecution in England by establishing the Plymouth Colony in New England. The stage was set for long-term conflict, with all humans involved fleeing intolerance, and/or seeking a place to live.

What is too often overlooked in discussions of U.S. History is the fact American Indians, like all humans, were constantly at war, killing each other over those same vital issues. The Blackfeet were once living in the Great Lakes region and were driven west by superior forces of other tribes. After obtaining horses they became rulers of the high plains 300 years ago, scattering and dominating other tribes.

The Salish once dwelled east of the Rockies and in the Sun River Country and were driven to the west side by the Blackfeet. A British explorer who contacted Flatheads on the Clark's Fork River in December of 1813 was told that the Flatheads (Salish) would be eventually destroyed by the Blackfeet because of an unequal balance of power. When the Salish tried to get help from the whites, two teams of their emissaries sent to Washington were killed by the Sioux.

My bookshelves are lined with volumes of American Indian history that detail frightening accounts of tribal wars through the centuries. Those books are replete with hundreds of accounts from the Indians themselves about the suffering incurred from ongoing warfare with each other. Good examples are found in Linderman's touching biography of the last Crow chief, and Schultz books about his life among the Blackfeet, etcetera.

Got to thinking again on this aspect of history while reading about the now extinct Missouris Indians. Quoting from the research of Gary Moulton at the University of Nebraska: "For more than a hundred years the Missouris (Missourias' lived in earth covered homes along the river that bears their name, at the junction with the Grand River.

"Six years before the arrival of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Sauk and Fox Indians swept down from the northeast to defeat them. The survivors established villages south of the Platte River in what is now part of Nebraska.

"They are said to have been a large and important tribe before they were almost annihilated during the latter half of the 18th century by other tribes, particularly the Sauks and the Fox.

"Moving several times … by about 1798 they were forced to move up the Missouri River into present day Nebraska, to join the culturally related Otos. Henceforth the two tribes acted together and were treated by the United States as one." The last full-blooded Missouri is said to have died in Oklahoma in 1907. There were somewhat over 1,000 Oto-Missouri mixed blood descendants in 1991, living near Pawnee, Okla.

Sargeant Floyd with the Lewis and Clark Expedition wrote the following in his journal on June 13, 1804: "Set out at 6 oclock and came 1 and 1/2 miles past a Creek on the N. Side Calleded River Missorea Just above the Creek a Large Praria of Good Land on the N. Side At this Praria antient Missouri Indians had a village at this place 300 of them were Killed by the Saukees in former times …

Some Missouri Indians might still be around if white men had found them … before the Sauk and Fox.

There appear to be no "races of innocents' in the earth's tragic history of human conquest.

G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and a national-award winning Hungry Horse News columnist.