Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
Day 165 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
1875 - Announcement that gold has been found in the Black Hills
Sandburg writes: "Honest workmen, small business men, loafers and bummers, rainbow chasers, hopers and seekers, were in that round house at Cheyenne. And one who was frozen plumb to the gills, who was called the orphan of the Black Hills, sketched the scenery."
Now to the song's claim of the Comanche's scalping. The Comanches, known as the "Lords of the Plains", were regarded as perhaps the most dangerous Indians Tribes in the frontier era. The U.S. Army established Fort Worth because of the settler concerns about the threat posed by the many Indians tribes in Texas. The Comanches were the most feared of these Indians. BUT.....
The English and the French introduced scalping to Indians. The governors of the colonies instituted scalping as a way for one Indian tribe to help them eliminate another tribe, and to have colonists eliminate as many Indians as possible.
The Dutch governor of Manhattan, Willem Kieft, offered the first bounty in North America for Indian scalps in 1641, only 21 years after the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. The Massachusetts Bay Colonyfirst offered $60 per Indian scalp in 1703.
The New Hampshire legislature authorized scalping Indians in 1724, paying 100 pounds for each male scalp turned in. Women’s scalps typically brought half of what men’s scalps did, and children’s scalps brought half of women’s. But white men got paid for bringing in the scalp of a 10-year-old Indian child. As the most racist killers, Col. John Chivington, said before ordering the attack on peaceful Cheyenne on the banks of Sand Creek: “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”
It was better to kill an Indian child than to let him grow up and kill you. (from Indian Country Today—Oct 2, 2017).
Day 165 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
1875 - Announcement that gold has been found in the Black Hills
Sandburg writes: "Honest workmen, small business men, loafers and bummers, rainbow chasers, hopers and seekers, were in that round house at Cheyenne. And one who was frozen plumb to the gills, who was called the orphan of the Black Hills, sketched the scenery."
Now to the song's claim of the Comanche's scalping. The Comanches, known as the "Lords of the Plains", were regarded as perhaps the most dangerous Indians Tribes in the frontier era. The U.S. Army established Fort Worth because of the settler concerns about the threat posed by the many Indians tribes in Texas. The Comanches were the most feared of these Indians. BUT.....
The English and the French introduced scalping to Indians. The governors of the colonies instituted scalping as a way for one Indian tribe to help them eliminate another tribe, and to have colonists eliminate as many Indians as possible.
The Dutch governor of Manhattan, Willem Kieft, offered the first bounty in North America for Indian scalps in 1641, only 21 years after the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. The Massachusetts Bay Colonyfirst offered $60 per Indian scalp in 1703.
The New Hampshire legislature authorized scalping Indians in 1724, paying 100 pounds for each male scalp turned in. Women’s scalps typically brought half of what men’s scalps did, and children’s scalps brought half of women’s. But white men got paid for bringing in the scalp of a 10-year-old Indian child. As the most racist killers, Col. John Chivington, said before ordering the attack on peaceful Cheyenne on the banks of Sand Creek: “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”
It was better to kill an Indian child than to let him grow up and kill you. (from Indian Country Today—Oct 2, 2017).
