THAT OTHER TERRORISM ON AMERICA'S SOIL

Wampum links to a piece about that other group of people on American soil who've experience five hundred years of terrorism: Native Americans:

America is now experiencing the fear American Indians have felt for more than 500 years. Our ancestors never knew what act of violence or terror would befall them from the American invaders. But death did come. It came in the form of biological warfare when small pox tainted blankets were distributed to the unsuspecting victims.

It came to them from the muzzles of guns that did not distinguish between warriors, women, elders or children. It came to them in the ruthless name of Manifest Destiny, the American edict that proclaimed God as the purveyor of expansion westward.

At Wounded Knee in 1890, a slaughter took place that the white man often called the last great battle between Indians and the United States Army. It was not a battle. It was the last heinous action against innocent men, women and children. Their bodies were strewn across the valley known as Wounded Knee under the barrage set down by the Seventh Cavalry.

They died not knowing why. They died in fear. They died in the frozen snow of that bitterly cold December day while fleeing to find safe harbor among the Oglala Lakota. These Lakota experienced terrorism heaped upon them by a government that did not consider them to be human beings.

When human beings can be publicly acknowledged as less than human, their deaths become meaningless. By portraying all Indians as murdering savages, rapists, kidnappers and worse, the national media of the day laid the groundwork for Wounded Knee. The media laid the groundwork for the expansion west that would claim thousands of lives. Horace Greeley wrote, "Go West, Young Man, Go West."

The growing smallpox paranoia of white Americans is always colored with irony.