Manifest Litter
(“Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but the
discerning man controls his comments.” Proverbs 11:12)
The landscape is littered
with treaties made with
the first nation and its people. Brown and foxing,
burnt around the edges, some from lighting arrogant cigars,
and only a few used to light flaming arrow once the
chiefs and braves
finally understood their true value.
303 Santee were sentenced
to be hanged found guilty
by poisonous mouth-talk of rape and murder;
no one stayed to further state the obvious: fierce led
sliced the shoulder blades of the first chief riding to
meet a small army regiment with peaceful hands extended.
303 Santee, with
starvation rations and water full of sickness,
waited for the promises, repeated the treaties, a word meant
to say to both parties: We will treat each other this way and no other.
303 Santee, some with
ancient wounds and withered arms, were
lodged in a hot log prison, while defense was denied them,
attorneys refused them, and one man believed them
Sending
The words of each trial
and hearing, the saliva mixed with ink
as the hated first persons spoke without representation; sending
the entire proceedings to the Great Father, the Great Emancipator
Who read every word,
hired great counselors to read every word,
delaying the waiting massacre a moon and another longer than
the captors desired. 39 would hang, said Mr. Lincoln, “Ordered that
of the Indians and half-breeds sentences to be hanged by the military
commission
…you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December.”
And so the proclamation
listed 39 records of the condemned.
Quickly, upon the
twenty-sixth of December, thirty-nine of the 303
convicted Santees, were marched from the prison to the scaffold.
They sang the Sioux Death
song; original words hung close to frozen ground.
Soldiers pulled white
caps over each man’s head; dry snow settled up their shoulders.
Their nooses were placed
around their necks; now the death day had no more sound, no more breath.
The control rope was cut;
an army officer gave the command, the last man to act on their behalf
And
39 minus one (a late
reprieve for one) lifeless Santee bodies dangled lifeless in the air.
The prairies were stolen,
men were burned like potash or frozen from exposure;
the wise, the young, the brave, the fool, were seen as simple savages, Satan’s
army
By which a Christian
nation would Manifest its Destiny upon broken agreements
and false religion.
38 Santees legs and arms
hung as limp as backyard linens on the line. May the
chill still run its line from the scaffold to our own baffled hearts in the
same way
one bystander said that day,
“This must be America’s
greatest public execution.”
"The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be
exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state." Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey
