Often, the captives taken by Indians would disappear forever, adopted into the tribe that took them. While an extension of their traditional modes of warfare – partially to offset high infant mortality and low birthrates – this tactic was unique to the European invaders, and made a commensurately powerful impact on their psyches. In the warfare that attended this displacement, the indigenous peoples – inaptly described as “Indians,” a name that has stuck – often took captives from the white interlopers. Wars followed, and broken treaties, and shifting alliances, and a steady retreat by the indigenous peoples toward the west, away from the newcomers with the guns and the buckled hats and the insatiable need for more land. The resulting clash has been defined by many terms, but it was first and foremost a tragedy of clashing cultures, with one culture – the visitors – being quite insistent on domination. For years beyond counting, they lived on this continent, spreading out over its vastness, forming into communities, fighting wars, marking out territories, and generally living their lives.Īt some point after 1492, they had to contend with new visitors arriving in boats, with guns and buckled hats. Once upon a time, many, many years ago, people crossed over a land bridge from Asia and populated the North American continent. The ammunition rested in that pouch under Digging Bear’s body, some fifty yards of galloping cavalry from where I lay…” Around the lodge I kept it unloaded in case them children got to tinkering. At such a time you see no like betwixt yourself and enemy, be he your brother by blood or usage. No, I would have dropped them troopers without mercy had I the wherewithal to do it: they was ravaging my home, had killed two of my women, and because of them my dearest wife and newborn boy lay in uttermost jeopardy. I had not yet fired my piece, but not because of delicacy. “The cavalry pounded in among the lodges now, the band still playing out in the open valley where they rested.

Little Big Man by Thomas Berger