#Sitting Bull Prisoner of War

[whencyclopedia]

Chief Joseph (Eastman's Biography)

Chief Joseph (Heinmot Tooyalakekt, l. 1840-1904) was the leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce Native American nation, who, in 1877, resisted forced relocation from his ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon and led his people on a 1,170-mile (1,900 km) flight toward Canada in hopes of asylum with Sitting Bull (l. c. 1837-1890).

The flight of the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph, a running battle in which he defeated US forces in every engagement, is known as the Nez Perce War, and newspaper accounts of the day, often hostile to Native American efforts to preserve their lands, were remarkably sympathetic to Chief Joseph's cause. When he and his people were a mere 40 miles (64 km) from the Canadian border, they were surprised by a US cavalry attack and forced to surrender.

Although the treaty between the Nez Pearce and the US government stipulated their relocation to a reservation in Idaho, briefly holding them in Montana Territory, they were instead quickly sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and held as prisoners of war before being shipped to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), and finally to the Colville Indian Reservation in the state of Washington.

Chief Joseph spent the rest of his life appealing to US officials for the return of the lands of the Nez Perce in the Wallowa Valley, but his requests were denied. He is said to have died of a broken heart on the reservation in Washington on 21 September 1904.

In 1968 the US Post Office issued a stamp in his honor and memorial statues of Chief Joseph have been raised in many of the western states of the USA, but the lands of the Nez Perce have never been returned to them and there has never been any official acknowledgment of the outright theft of those lands by Euro-Americans.

Flight of the Nez Perce and Key Battle Sites of 1877

United States Department of Agriculture-Forest Service (Public Domain)

Text

The following account is taken from the 1939 edition of Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1916) by the Sioux physician and author Charles A. Eastman (also known as Ohiyesa, l. 1858-1939), republished in 2016. Eastman interviewed Chief Joseph in 1897 and prepared the following, which, as he said, was authenticated by General Nelson A. Miles, one of his former adversaries. The following has been edited for space, but the full account is below in the External Links section.

The Nez Perce tribe of Indians, like other tribes too large to be united under one chief, was composed of several bands, each distinct in sovereignty. It was a loose confederacy. Joseph and his people occupied the Imnaha or Grande Ronde valley in Oregon, which was considered perhaps the finest land in that part of the country.

When the last treaty was entered into by some of the bands of the Nez Perce, Joseph's band was at Lapwai, Idaho, and had nothing to do with the agreement. The elder chief in dying had counseled his son, then not more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, never to part with their home, assuring him that he had signed no papers. These peaceful non-treaty Indians did not even know what land had been ceded until the agent read them the government order to leave. Of course, they refused. You and I would have done the same.

When the agent failed to move them, he and the would-be settlers called upon the army to force them to be good, namely, without a murmur to leave their pleasant inheritance in the hands of a crowd of greedy grafters. General O. O. Howard, the Christian soldier, was sent to do the work.

He had a long council with Joseph and his leading men, telling them they must obey the order or be driven out by force. We may be sure that he presented this hard alternative reluctantly. Joseph was a mere youth without experience in war or public affairs. He had been well brought up in obedience to parental wisdom and with his brother Ollicut had attended Missionary Spaulding's school where they had listened to the story of Christ and his religion of brotherhood. He now replied in his simple way that neither he nor his father had ever made any treaty disposing of their country, that no other band of the Nez Perces was authorized to speak for them, and it would seem a mighty injustice and unkindness to dispossess a friendly band.

General Howard told them in effect that they had no rights, no voice in the matter: they had only to obey. Although some of the lesser chiefs counseled revolt then and there, Joseph maintained his self-control, seeking to calm his people, and still groping for a peaceful settlement of their difficulties. He finally asked for thirty days' time in which to find and dispose of their stock, and this was granted.

Joseph steadfastly held his immediate followers to their promise, but the land-grabbers were impatient, and did everything in their power to bring about an immediate crisis so as to hasten the eviction of the Indians. Depredations were committed, and finally the Indians, or some of them, retaliated, which was just what their enemies had been looking for. There might be a score of white men murdered among themselves on the frontier and no outsider would ever hear about it, but if one were injured by an Indian— "Down with the bloodthirsty savages!" was the cry.

Joseph told me himself that during all of those thirty days a tremendous pressure was brought upon him by his own people to resist the government order. "The worst of it was," said he, "that everything they said was true; besides"—he paused for a moment— "it seemed very soon for me to forget my father's dying words, 'Do not give up our home!'" Knowing as I do just what this would mean to an Indian, I felt for him deeply.

Among the opposition leaders were Too-hul-hul-sote, White Bird, and Looking Glass, all of them strong men and respected by the Indians; while on the other side were men built up by emissaries of the government for their own purposes and advertised as "great friendly chiefs." As a rule, such men are unworthy, and this is so well known to the Indians that it makes them distrustful of the government's sincerity at the start. Moreover, while Indians unqualifiedly say what they mean, the whites have a hundred ways of saying what they do not mean.

…the whites were unduly impatient to clear the coveted valley, and by their insolence they aggravated to the danger point an already strained situation. The murder of an Indian was the climax and this happened in the absence of the young chief. He returned to find the leaders determined to die fighting. The nature of the country was in their favor and at least they could give the army a chase, but how long they could hold out they did not know. Even Joseph's younger brother Ollicut was won over. There was nothing for him to do but fight; and then and there began the peaceful Joseph's career as a general of unsurpassed strategy in conducting one of the most masterly retreats in history.

Chief Joseph and Family c. 1880

F. M. Sargent (Public Domain)

This is not my judgment, but the unbiased opinion of men whose knowledge and experience fit them to render it. Bear in mind that these people were not scalp hunters like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Utes, but peaceful hunters and fishermen. The first council of war was a strange business to Joseph. He had only this to say to his people:

"I have tried to save you from suffering and sorrow. Resistance means all of that. We are few. They are many. You can see all we have at a glance. They have food and ammunition in abundance. We must suffer great hardship and loss." After this speech, he quietly began his plans for the defense.

The main plan of campaign was to engineer a successful retreat into Montana and there form a junction with the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull…

It was decided that the main rear guard should meet General Howard's command in White Bird Canyon, and every detail was planned in advance, yet left flexible according to Indian custom, giving each leader freedom to act according to circumstances. Perhaps no better ambush was ever planned than the one Chief Joseph set for the shrewd and experienced General Howard. He expected to be hotly pursued, but he calculated that the pursuing force would consist of not more than two hundred and fifty soldiers. He prepared false trails to mislead them into thinking that he was about to cross or had crossed the Salmon River, which he had no thought of doing at that time. Some of the tents were pitched in plain sight, while the women and children were hidden on the inaccessible ridges, and the men concealed in the canyon ready to fire upon the soldiers with deadly effect with scarcely any danger to themselves. They could even roll rocks upon them.

In a very few minutes the troops had learned a lesson. The soldiers showed some fight, but a large body of frontiersmen who accompanied them were soon in disorder. The warriors chased them nearly ten miles, securing rifles and much ammunition, and killing and wounding many.

The Nez Perces next crossed the river, made a detour, and recrossed it at another point, then took their way eastward. All this was by way of delaying pursuit…

Chief Joseph US Postage Stamp

National Postal Museum (CC BY-NC-ND)

Meanwhile General Howard had sent a dispatch to Colonel Gibbons, with orders to head Joseph off, which he undertook to do at the Montana end of the Lolo Trail. The wily commander had no knowledge of this move, but he was not to be surprised. He was too brainy for his pursuers, whom he constantly outwitted, and only gave battle when he was ready. There at the Big Hole Pass he met Colonel Gibbons' fresh troops and pressed them close.

He sent a party under his brother Ollicut to harass Gibbons' rear and rout the pack mules, thus throwing him on the defensive and causing him to send for help, while Joseph continued his masterly retreat toward the Yellowstone Park, then a wilderness. However, this was but little advantage to him, since he must necessarily leave a broad trail, and the army was augmenting its columns day by day with celebrated scouts, both white and Indian. The two commands came together, and although General Howard says their horses were by this time worn out, and by inference the men as well, they persisted on the trail of a party encumbered by women and children, the old, sick, and wounded.

It was decided to send a detachment of cavalry under Bacon, to Tash Pass, the gateway of the National Park, which Joseph would have to pass, with orders to detain him there until the rest could come up with them. Here is what General Howard says of the affair. "Bacon got into position soon enough, but he did not have the heart to fight the Indians on account of their number." Meanwhile another incident had occurred. Right under the eyes of the chosen scouts and vigilant sentinels, Joseph's warriors fired upon the army camp at night and ran off their mules. He went straight on toward the park, where Lieutenant Bacon let him get by and pass through the narrow gateway without firing a shot…

However, this succession of defeats did not discourage General Howard, who kept on with as many of his men as were able to carry a gun, meanwhile sending dispatches to all the frontier posts with orders to intercept Joseph if possible. Sturgis tried to stop him as the Indians entered the Park, but they did not meet until he was about to come out, when there was another fight, with Joseph again victorious. General Howard came upon the battlefield soon afterward and saw that the Indians were off again, and from here he sent fresh messages to General Miles, asking for reinforcements.

Joseph had now turned northeastward toward the Upper Missouri. He told me that when he got into that part of the country he knew he was very near the Canadian line and could not be far from Sitting Bull, with whom he desired to form an alliance. He also believed that he had cleared all the forts. Therefore, he went more slowly and tried to give his people some rest. Some of their best men had been killed or wounded in battle, and the wounded were a great burden to him; nevertheless, they were carried and tended patiently all during this wonderful flight. Not one was ever left behind.

Statue of Young Chief Joseph

Visitor7 (CC BY-SA)

It is the general belief that Indians are cruel and revengeful, and surely these people had reason to hate the race who had driven them from their homes if any people ever had. Yet it is a fact that when Joseph met visitors and travelers in the park, some of whom were women, he allowed them to pass unharmed, and in at least one instance let them have horses.

He told me that he gave strict orders to his men not to kill any women or children. He wished to meet his adversaries according to their own standards of warfare, but he afterward learned that in spite of professions of humanity, white soldiers have not seldom been known to kill women and children indiscriminately…

The Bittersweet valley, which they had now entered, was full of game, and the Indians hunted for food, while resting their worn-out ponies. One morning they had a council to which Joseph rode over bareback, as they had camped in two divisions a little apart. His fifteen-year-old daughter went with him. They discussed sending runners to Sitting Bull to ascertain his exact whereabouts and whether it would be agreeable to him to join forces with the Nez Perces. In the midst of the council, a force of United States cavalry charged down the hill between the two camps. This once Joseph was surprised. He had seen no trace of the soldiers and had somewhat relaxed his vigilance.

He told his little daughter to stay where she was, and himself cut right through the cavalry and rode up to his own teepee, where his wife met him at the door with his rifle, crying: "Here is your gun, husband!" The warriors quickly gathered and pressed the soldiers so hard that they had to withdraw. Meanwhile one set of the people fled while Joseph's own band entrenched themselves in a very favorable position from which they could not easily be dislodged.

General Miles had received and acted on General Howard's message, and he now sent one of his officers with some Indian scouts into Joseph's camp to negotiate with the chief. Meantime Howard and Sturgis came up with the encampment, and Howard had with him two friendly Nez Perce scouts who were directed to talk to Joseph in his own language. He decided that there was nothing to do but surrender…

Even now, he was not actually conquered. He was well entrenched; his people were willing to die fighting; but the army of the United States offered peace and he agreed, as he said, out of pity for his suffering people. Some of his warriors still refused to surrender and slipped out of the camp at night and through the lines. Joseph had, as he told me, between three and four hundred fighting men in the beginning, which means over one thousand persons, and of these several hundred surrendered with him.

His own story of the conditions he made was prepared by himself with my help in 1897, when he came to Washington to present his grievances. I sat up with him nearly all of one night; and I may add here that we took the document to General Miles who was then stationed in Washington, before presenting it to the Department. The General said that every word of it was true.

In the first place, his people were to be kept at Fort Keogh, Montana, over the winter and then returned to their reservation. Instead, they were taken to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and placed between a lagoon and the Missouri River, where the sanitary conditions made havoc with them. Those who did not die were then taken to the Indian Territory, where the health situation was even worse.

Joseph appealed to the government again and again, and at last by the help of Bishops Whipple and Hare he was moved to the Colville reservation in Washington. Here the land was very poor, unlike their own fertile valley. General Miles said to the chief that he had recommended and urged that their agreement be kept, but the politicians and the people who occupied the Indians' land declared they were afraid if he returned, he would break out again and murder innocent white settlers! What irony!

The great Chief Joseph died broken-spirited and broken-hearted. He did not hate the whites, for there was nothing small about him, and when he laid down his weapons he would not fight on with his mind. But he was profoundly disappointed in the claims of a Christian civilization. I call him great because he was simple and honest.

Without education or special training, he demonstrated his ability to lead and to fight when justice demanded. He outgeneraled the best and most experienced commanders in the army of the United States, although their troops were well provisioned, well-armed, and above all unencumbered. He was great, finally, because he never boasted of his remarkable feat. I am proud of him because he was a true American.

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[peoplegettingreallymadatfurries]

What is a Minotaur?

I've been fascinated by the many different takes of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. It is possible to depict these two as star-crossed lovers, through the level of intimacy shown in Theseus' execution of Asterion. It can also be a moment where we reflect on the features that make one different, but understanding the relationships of the world around us. As an artist, often you take a long time flowing into the precise details that are meant to be included in a final work. While it would be irresponsible as a literary critic of these artistic pieces to insist the artist's intent, there is a definite form of intention that goes into sculpture. Of Theseus and Asterion, I notice that there is a hidden story with many pieces, that go beyond the simple translation of the classic myth to page.

My favorite being Canova's, which depicts an almost intimate scene between the slain Asterion and triumphant Theseus.

This reading benefits from the club sitting beside Theseus. Seeing this as both the phallic object with which he defeated the Asterion, as well as the way it rises high to his eye, there is a latent sexuality in this piece. Asterion's mouth lies agape, either in pain or pleasure, we will never know. However, many of us who have seen this piece on Tumblr agree that it's definitely some form of sexuality. This is a triumph of brutishness, sure, but why are these figures nude?

Oftentimes, as I have done more research for this random essay that popped into my head, I find that often both the hero and monster are nude. This is both to show the raw power of both forces, as if they come from a place that goes beyond humanity, as well as the story that led to how they came to be. Asterion, sure he's unclothed in every depiction. He's an unwanted child, left to die, or at the very least fend for himself against 14 Athenian prisoners of war every 7 or 9 years. Theseus being unclothed is something that I need to actually look up and won't, being that this is not up for peer review in a prestigious journal.

Some depictions show him strangling Asterion to death (Pindar), others say Theseus stabbed Asterion in the throat. Either way of execution provides an overpowering of the smaller, young Theseus. Either he uses a phallic object to murder what he sees as a monster, or perhaps gets to know him better while he struggles under the weight of his hands on the bull's throat. Using a sword to penetrate is one of the gayest exchanges one can use to symbolize a sexual intercourse. (See some readings of Romeo and Tybalt). Laying hands on this monster (especially if nude as often depicted), he likely faced him, giving him some semblance of touch between himself and another human.

Upon further research of these type of sculpture, I found François Sicard's bronze statue on Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park in Sydney, Australia. Though there is a brutality between the two, here, where Theseus in his Western European features manhandles an Othered subject, there also exists an intimacy. Grabbing the Asterion by the horn, kneeling on his thigh, offers a sense of touch that Asterion likely never would have been able to experience prior. Though one can imply a suggestive nature to Asterion's pose, it's important to also see that Asterion's head is turned to look back at the man who is touching him, and moments from giving him his greatest mercy.

Asterion never asked to be born what he was. Many newer interpretations of the myth, mainly those depicted by @hellenhighwater and @avocadolaw, depict a person underneath his features, stuck inside a prison for which he is unjustly placed. Highwater's piece, A Crack in the Labyrinth, in particular, reaches for a pathos that I find unrivaled in any solitary piece of Minotaur work.

Though Asterion has unrivaled strength -- enough to kill 14 Athenians every 7 or 9 years depending on your retelling of the myth -- enough to break down the walls of his prison, he also remains an emotional subject, born of a curse of his mother's relationship with Zeus, and his father's vanity. He was shut out for being born a monster, but he is still a child, who did not deserve this imprisonment.

@avocadolaw's interpretation of Highwater's piece demonstrates another angle to this myth that continues to drive empathy into the heart of the story. Asterion is Ariadne's older brother. It is Ariadne who supplies Theseus with the clew that he can use to escape the impossible labyrinth, doing this out of an act of love for the Athenian, and not the Cretan. By depicting Asterion in a moment of solitude and depression, the audience sees a beast in its weakness -- in its solitary confinement. Using the same skyphos, also depicts a relationship between these siblings that the myth itself neglects to mention.

These solitary depictions move away from a sense of queerness as this essay threatened. However, their intimate tenderness for a misunderstood creature curates an understanding of queer solitude. Asterion's difference from anyone he may have known doesn't sexualize him. It humanizes him.

I have seen intentional gay pieces of art between Theseus and Minotaur, both using art as a form to share intimacy, as well as queerness. Of all of these, though, I am drawn toward the monstrous depiction of identity in @h00f's piece T4TM

Title and depiction here, implies a specifically trans reading into the subject of The Minotaur. The image alt text of the post refrains from using pronouns for the Minotaur (see the alt text for the included image). The trans reading of this piece bares entirely features that may be interpreted through a bifurcated understanding of gender, or it can blur the line between the two well enough to absolve itself of any gender. In refusing to use pronouns for the Minotaur at all, the artist also refuses to define this depiction into a secret third option. In all of this lack of gender, there is still a form of intimacy between the two subjects, especially given the assumed shared history of Minotaur myth.

Overall, I just love the way Minotaur are depicted as a misunderstood beast and given a form of intimacy that formerly had been left out in the understanding of the myth. If you managed to read all of this essay, I'm proud of you for putting up with this. My mind wandered while I was researching an essay for the furbait blog. I wanted to jump on this impulse while I could. When you see the other essay, I hope you find it to be just as worth it as I did, spending the last 4 hours drafting this up.

[thoughtportal]

smithsonianmag.com

How Recovering the History of a Little-Known Lakota Massacre Could Heal Generational Pain

Tim Madigan

46–59 minutes

To reach the place known as Mni Tho Wakpala, the Blue Water, you drive west from the Nebraska hamlet of Lewellen, turning from Highway 26 onto a gravel road and turning again through a gate that leads to fenced pastureland. The ancient cottonwood, now known by the Lakota Sioux as the Witness Tree, still towers above the grasslands. Blue Water Creek cuts a crooked path through a broad valley, its waters still pristine.

Then, just after sunrise on September 3, 1855, 600 U.S. Army soldiers commanded by Brigadier General William S. Harney surrounded and ambushed the village, the first time in the Indian wars of the Northern Plains that the military attacked a camp full of families. Today the attack is often known, to the extent it is known at all, as the Blue Water Massacre, but for more than a century it was remembered in a few conventional histories as a particularly ruthless U.S. military victory—the Army’s first major salvo in a 35-year campaign against the Lakota, lords of the Northern Plains, the people of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, which ended finally with their subjugation at Wounded Knee in 1890. That episode, where as many as 300 Lakota were slaughtered, is widely known. 

The same cannot be said about Blue Water. 

The bloody chain of events had begun a year earlier, in mid-August 1854, when a lame-footed cow belonging to a Mormon settler wandered into the camp of the Brulé, also known as the Sicangu, one of seven bands that make up the Lakota nation. There, along the North Platte River in what is now Wyoming, the animal was felled by the arrow of a warrior named High Forehead, who may have been hungry.

The Brulé Lakota chief, Conquering Bear, hurried to nearby Fort Laramie and offered the Mormon a horse from his own herd as restitution. The matter might have ended there were it not for the ill-fated ambition of Lieutenant John Grattan, a 24-year-old Army officer a year out of West Point. Grattan was determined to personally arrest High Forehead and make his reputation in the process. On August 19, Grattan, with a drunken interpreter and a detachment of 29 soldiers, began a ten-mile march to the Lakota camp. Frontiersmen and other civilians they met along the way pleaded with the lieutenant to reconsider, as a small city of more than 4,000 Lakota had grown up by the North Platte. “I don’t care how many there are,” Grattan told them. “With 30 men I can whip all the Indians this side of the Missouri.” 

When Grattan and his men marched into the village, Conquering Bear tried to reason with him, but the young officer made clear he would not leave without his prisoner. “For all I tell you, you will not hear me,” Conquering Bear finally said. “Today you will meet something that will be very hard.” 

Surrounded by hundreds of Lakota warriors, a panicked U.S. Army soldier fired the first shot. Grattan and all but one of his men were swiftly killed. (The last soldier eventually succumbed to his injuries.) Grattan’s body was riddled by 24 arrows. Conquering Bear, one of three Lakota who were wounded, died from his injuries several days later.

News of the killings became an object of national outrage, though in the months to come congressional and Army reports placed the blame for what happened squarely on Grattan. That November, three Brulé Lakota warriors, later identified as Spotted Tail, Red Leaf and Long Chin, close relatives of the slain chief, attacked a mail coach traveling near Fort Laramie, killing three men, wounding a fourth, and reportedly making off with thousands of dollars in gold, an act of revenge per Lakota custom.

By then, President Franklin Pierce and his secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, had already endorsed a retributive expedition of their own against the Lakota. To lead it, Davis turned to Harney, an old friend who had experience fighting Native Americans in Florida and Wisconsin. In a White House meeting, Pierce gave Harney, a barrel-chested man with a long white beard, simple orders. “Whip the Indians for us,” the president said. 

In August 1855, Harney and his men, equipped with new, long-range Sharps rifles, set out from a frontier fort. “By God I am for battle,” Harney told a fur trapper as he departed. “No peace!” By September 2, the troops were camped along the North Platte near a place called Ash Hollow, a popular stopping point for westward-traveling emigrants on the Oregon Trail. Harney learned that Chief Little Thunder, who had succeeded Conquering Bear after his death, was camped about six miles north by Blue Water Creek, a tributary of the North Platte.  

As soon as the Brulé glimpsed Harney’s troops the women began to strike tepees, loading lodge poles, skins and other belongings onto travois, sledges drawn by horses and dogs. Seeing the people flee north, Harney feared his cavalry had insufficient time to set the ambush. To stall, he sent a guide to request a parley with Little Thunder. The chief quickly obliged, galloping toward the soldiers with two of his most renowned warriors, Spotted Tail and Iron Shell. According to one account, Little Thunder approached Harney holding an umbrella as a makeshift white flag.

The conversation took place over a distance of 30 to 40 feet. The general shouted his outrage for the killings of Grattan and his soldiers and the murders of the three men in the mail coach robbery. “The day of retribution had come,” Harney said.

Thirty minutes later, feeling delay was no longer necessary, the general sent Little Thunder back to his people. He gave his soldiers the order to open fire, then took up a viewing position atop a nearby hill.

What happened next was documented in Army after-action reports, in the private letters and journals of American soldiers, and in interviews they gave late in their lives. There was also one recorded account from the perspective of a Lakota survivor, a woman named Cokawin who was in her 40s at the time and gave her testimony many years later to another Lakota woman named Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun. “The smoke of the battle blinded her,” Bettelyoun wrote in her own memoir, With My Own Eyes. “As she looked all around, she could see the soldiers galloping after groups of old men, women and children who were running for their lives. Some were running across the valley only to be met by soldiers and shot right down.”

As Cokawin tried to flee, a soldier shot her in the stomach. “The bullet ripped her open for about six inches, a glancing shot. … Her bowels protruded from the wound as she fell.” To hide, Cokawin covered herself in tumbleweed and tore off a piece of her sleeve to use as a bandage. “There she lay all day listening to guns roar and to the hoofbeats of the horses, the shouting and yelling of the soldiers who came so near at times that she thought she would be discovered. Once in a while she could hear a Sioux war cry. At these times, Cokawin said she felt like singing and giving the trill.”

Perhaps the most complete account of the massacre comes from the journal of a U.S. Army officer named Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren. The 25-year-old West Point graduate was a noncombatant, attached to Harney’s expedition as a mapmaker and topographer. Apparently appalled by the brutality he witnessed, he devoted several diary pages to describing the day’s horrors, particularly what he saw at bluff-side caves where many Lakota had sought safety. Soldiers, giving chase, fired indiscriminately into the caves, a barrage that went on until the cries of a child were heard from inside.

Warren wrote:

Wounded women and children crying and moaning, horribly mangled by the bullets … Two Indian men were killed in the hole … Seven women were killed … and three children, two of them in their mothers’ arms. One young woman was wounded in the left shoulder … Another handsome young squaw was badly wounded just above her left knee and the same ball wounded her baby in the right knee … I had a litter made and put her and her child upon it. I found another girl of about 12 years lying with her head down in a ravine and apparently dead. Observing her breath, I had a man take her in his arms. She was shot through both feet. I found a little boy shot through the calves of his legs and through his hams … He had enough strength left to hold me round the neck.

Warren described his attempts to minister to the wounded and his distress at the sounds of a Lakota mother wailing for her dead baby. “The feeling of sympathy for the wounded women and children and deep regret for their being so, I found universal,” Warren wrote. “It could not be helped.” 

The story of a dying grandmother and one little boy—the son of the chief—became something of a legend among the Brulé. In 2005, exactly 150 years later, that story was recounted near the site of the massacre by the boy’s great-granddaughter, a Lakota elder and activist named Rosalie Little Thunder. “His grandmother’s blood dripped on him, but he stayed still when he heard all the hoofbeats, gunshots, cries, shouts,” she said to a group of relatives and others who had gathered for a commemoration. “He finally emerged after some silence. The Army spotted him and gave chase. He ran until he got over a little hill and found a burrow surrounded by tall grass. He hid there and stayed there until just before daylight, when it’s coldest and the dew forms. He emerged from there and started his trek—200 miles north to Sicangu country—to take word of the massacre.”

When it was over, 86 Lakota had been killed, many of them women and children. Four U.S. soldiers died. Harney confiscated tepees and buffalo meat for his expedition. The rest of the Lakota belongings were plundered or burned. Then the general marched 70 survivors, mostly women and children, some 140 miles across the grasslands to Fort Laramie. There he insisted that the perpetrators of the mail coach attack surrender. If they did not, Harney threatened to turn his captives over to the Pawnee, the Lakota’s mortal enemy.

That was why the warriors Spotted Tail, Long Chin and Red Leaf trotted on their horses into Fort Laramie a few weeks later. They were dressed in their finest regalia and sang their death songs when they surrendered, expecting to die at the end of a wasichu rope. Instead, they were taken into custody and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The next year, at the urging of the region’s Indian agent, President Pierce pardoned the Lakota warriors.

The bloody episode had divergent impacts on the Lakota. For some leaders it was a radicalizing event, evidence that the government could never be trusted—that violent resistance was the only path to meaningful tribal autonomy. One such leader was Crazy Horse, who was a teenager in the Oglala village a few miles north of the Brulé camp, and who, coming upon the massacre site, saw firsthand its terrible aftermath. “Scattered along the rocky slope were lodge rolls, parfleches, robes, cradleboards and many other village goods, all trampled and torn and burnt,” Crazy Horse’s biographer Mari Sandoz wrote in 1942, “and among these lay dark places that were blood and darker ones that were the dead of his people.” The Lakota historian Victor Douville has written that the memory never left Crazy Horse, and many say he thought of Blue Water while leading the rout of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876. 

For other Lakota leaders, such as Little Thunder and Spotted Tail, what they saw of the government’s cruelty and disproportionate firepower convinced them that their people’s best, or perhaps only, chance for survival was negotiation and eventual peace. Spotted Tail was sure the Lakota “could not win against the power of the Americans,” his biographer George E. Hyde wrote. Spotted Tail would become the chief lieutenant and eventual successor of Little Thunder, who was also wounded in the massacre but survived. Sensing the ultimate futility of resistance, the two men “prepared to lead their people down the path of peace and survival—a survival that included loss of their independence, and a forced residence on reservations,” the historian Paul N. Beck wrote in 2004. 

In March 1856, Little Thunder was forced to shake hands with Harney, who had summoned leaders of the seven Lakota bands to Fort Pierre, in South Dakota, to dictate his terms for peace—essentially, obedience and docility. In return, Harney released the prisoners he had taken at Blue Water.

A period of relative quietude between the Lakota, some of their Native allies and the U.S. government ended in November 1864, when a U.S. military force attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho camp near Sand Creek in Colorado, killing an estimated 230 people, most of them women and children. In the violent years to come, government promises to the Plains Indians were made and quickly broken. The Lakota and their allies won several military victories against the Army, most notably at the Little Bighorn, but as the years passed there was a sense of inevitability, culminating with the slaughter at Wounded Knee, which extinguished the last embers of armed Lakota resistance.

Little Thunder died in 1879, having handed over leadership of the Brulé to Spotted Tail in 1866, according to Douville. “He was shrewdly confident that his successor had the best qualification of securing his unfulfilled goal of accomplishing peace.”

I first came across the story of the Blue Water Massacre by accident, in early 2023, while researching a separate historical project about the American West. In the brutality of the violence and in the event’s bewildering obscurity, it immediately reminded me of another event, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, when hundreds of African Americans were killed by a white mob in that city’s Greenwood community. 

In 2001, I published a book about the Tulsa massacre, at a time when few people apart from survivors or their descendants knew much about it. What happened in Tulsa, I learned, was not a historical anomaly. Immersing myself in that history not only inspired in me greater compassion for people from different backgrounds, with different histories, but also gave me a more fulsome understanding of the origins of our nation’s racial and social fissures. By the time I returned to the subject of the Tulsa massacre on its 100th anniversary for a story in Smithsonian, the atrocity had become broadly known—and, perhaps not coincidentally, hopeful signs of racial reconciliation in Tulsa and elsewhere had begun to take hold. 

Native American history has its own infamous gaps, but in recent generations many difficult truths have bubbled to the surface of the nation’s cultural awareness. Dee Brown’s 1970 landmark best seller, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, revealed for a broad audience the sanitized nature of mainstream Indigenous history. (Even still, the events at Blue Water received a single sentence.) The American Indian Movement, which flourished around the same time, fought publicly and militantly for unfulfilled treaty rights and the reclamation of tribal lands. In more recent decades, scholars, writers, filmmakers, artists, activists, political leaders and others, Native and non-Native, have filled in the picture more completely. They have highlighted the relatively overlooked history of the enslavement of Native Americans, for example, or challenged simplistic narratives about American colonial expansion to focus on the ways Indigenous people helped shape this country’s borders, history and culture. 

Some of this work has broken through into popular culture. In just the past decade, David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, adapted into a movie by Martin Scorsese, publicized the true story of the Osage Nation’s extraordinary wealth after oil was found beneath tribal land—and the string of murders by white settlers intent on stealing that wealth. The Ken Burns documentary The American Buffalo traced how deliberate U.S. policy all but eradicated the once abundant animal, with disastrous effects on the Plains Indians. The theme was explored by the Ojibwe writer David Treuer in his 2019 counter-history, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present. Without the buffalo, he wrote, the Plains tribes had little choice but to move onto reservations. “The reservations might have been designed as prisons, but now they became places of refuge.” In 2021, the Chippewa novelist Louise Erdrich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Night Watchman, set on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in the 1950s, the latest of her celebrated books to draw from the realities of Native life and history. And the FX television series “Reservation Dogs” brought American viewers onto a reservation in the present day, following the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic travails of young Native Americans plotting their escape from reservation life for what they imagine is something better. 

The U.S. government, meanwhile, under the direction of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native cabinet secretary in U.S. history, has opened a federal investigation into the historical abuses of the Indian boarding school system. Haaland convened listening sessions across the country. She opened each session this way: “My ancestors endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead.”

In September 2023, in an effort to learn more about the massacre at Blue Water and its persistent impacts, I made the first of two long trips to the Rosebud Reservation, in south-central South Dakota, which has been a home for the Sicangu Oyate, as the Brulé now call themselves, since 1889. (Both the Lakota and French terms refer to “burnt thigh people,” a name apparently deriving from a terrible prairie fire long ago.) The reservation sprawls across more than 900,000 acres of grasslands, rolling hills and pine forests, and is dotted by small towns, smaller villages, and many ranches and farms. I met with Lakota residents carrying surnames like Little Thunder and Spotted Tail and with descendants of Iron Shell. They told me about their lives, introduced me to their songs, drums and prayers, and spoke about the importance of venerating their ancestors and keeping their ancient rituals and ceremonies. Not everybody was forthcoming. At one dinner, a Lakota elder named Phil Two Eagle, the executive director of Rosebud’s Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council, asked me succinctly: “Why are you here?” My answer had to do with an acquired belief that cultural healing is not possible without a full and honest accounting of the past. 

The past and its sometimes grim legacies were evident at Rosebud. About one-third of the Sicangu’s 30,000 or so enrolled members live on the reservation. Of those, more than half live below the poverty line. The life expectancy is a decade less than the national average, suicide rates dwarf national figures, and substance abuse is an epidemic. And yet, for many residents, leaving the reservation is close to unimaginable. “It’s hard for any of us to leave, because we’re just real social beings, and we’re grounded here with all of our family,” Gale Spotted Tail, Rosebud’s program director of child care services and the great-great-granddaughter of the chief, told me. “We don’t look through the eyes of being impoverished. We look more at the values you have as a person. We still have that kind of connection.” I learned that many Lakota weren’t aware of the history of the Blue Water Massacre or didn’t feel it was particularly relevant to their lives. Most are simply too preoccupied with the realities of getting by, Gale Spotted Tail told me. 

The first time I spoke with Karen Little Thunder, a great-great-granddaughter of the chief and the younger sister of Rosalie, who died in 2014, she explained that she saw in this effort a way to move beyond the interminable stasis of injustice. “They attacked in very early morning and just slaughtered us, and there was no time for anything except to survive,” she said. “Then the village was burned. Then the survivors were marched away to one of the forts and the women and children were taken and used as pawns. These traumas just kept happening and happening—and we’re still grieving. That’s the way it is, not just for Little Thunder relatives, but for our entire tribal people. We could not do anything except survive back then. Fast-forward 150 years, we’re still in survival mode.”

Karen Little Thunder, today a mother and grandmother at age 59, lives on the Rosebud Reservation in a white double-wide trailer on land that has been in her family for generations. She doesn’t remember hearing about Blue Water until her early 20s, when her father handed her a few photocopied pages from a book that described the massacre. At the time, as she struggled with alcohol addiction, the significance of what she read didn’t register. 

In 2004, after several years of sobriety, she enrolled at the tribal university, where a fellow student told her that a professor named Peter Gibbs was talking about the Little Thunder family in his lectures. One day, Karen Little Thunder ran into Gibbs in the school’s Lakota studies building. “We stood in the hallway for 10 or 15 minutes,” she recalled. The topic of his lectures had been the Blue Water Massacre. “He told me in a nutshell what he was talking about in his class. I remember going through the rest of my day, like—mind blown. I needed to do something with all this information. I took as many classes as I could in the Lakota studies department, and in doing so was able to do my own research about the massacre.” 

By chance, weeks later Karen Little Thunder received a letter from two sisters, Jean Jensen and Dianne Greenwald, who had grown up close to the Nebraska massacre site. As children they hunted for arrowheads while playing along Blue Water Creek. They had heard a battle had happened there but had only a vague sense of what that was. They finally learned about the atrocity as adults, after reading books about state and local history and talking to history buffs. Now they were writing blindly to any member of the Little Thunder family whose contact information they could find. With family members and local friends, the sisters decided to include the massacre in an event commemorating local history. In years past, the event usually focused on white pioneers on the Oregon Trail who traveled through that part of Nebraska. It was time, Jensen told me, “to tell the Lakota side of the story, to make it known.” 

Not long afterward, Karen came across a photograph on the internet—a tiny doll, taken from the massacre site. She was haunted by the image. As a child, she’d learned that, where her ancestors were concerned, moccasins were never just moccasins, buckskin pants and feather bonnets and war shirts were more than mere physical objects. “My uncle Albert White Hat used to talk about how the essence of the person becomes attached to their belongings,” she said. “They are almost like living things themselves.”

And she eventually learned that the doll was hardly the only object plundered that day. Gouverneur K. Warren, the young officer who recorded his horror at the massacre, had apparently collected dozens of Lakota belongings from the site. Karen found a semi-obscure book called Little Chief’s Gatherings, written by a historian of the frontier named James A. Hanson, which had been published in 1996. (The name “Little Chief” derived from a dismissive Lakota nickname for Warren, a reference to his short stature.) Hanson described how Warren transported the Lakota belongings to the East Coast and, the next year, in 1856, quietly donated them, more than 60 items, to the Smithsonian, then a fledgling cultural institution in the nation’s capital. 

Warren never spoke or wrote publicly about his contribution to the museum. “I believe he felt remorse and embarrassment for having looted the possessions of a vanquished foe, even though his motives were entirely for the good of science,” Hanson wrote. But the items made up “one of the most significant Plains Indians collections ever made,” Hanson noted, including “dozens of pony-beaded articles of clothing—dresses, leggings, a war shirt, a headdress, baby carriers and moccasins, as well as quilled robes, trade blankets, tepee bags, pipes, a bow case, a complete set of horse gear, a knife sheath, children’s toys including the earliest known Plains Indian doll.” 

When I spoke with Hanson recently, he said he had come upon the objects by accident, as a graduate student in the early 1970s researching Sioux trade artifacts. Flipping through the card catalog in the anthropology department of the National Museum of Natural History, he recognized Warren’s name from books and western atlases he read as a boy. “Here’s a whole section of the real early stuff”—Native American artifacts—“that says, ‘Collected by G.K. Warren,’” Hanson told me. “I said, ‘My God, this is something I would love to research.’” Hanson tracked down Warren artifacts that had been scattered among hundreds of thousands of other items in storage throughout the museum. He learned that about 20 of the Warren items had once been on display, labeled as “examples of Lakota life in the 1850s.” But other than the musty references in the card catalog, there was no other written record of the collection or its provenance.

When Hanson’s book was published, it included a formal description of the massacre, a transcript of Warren’s diary and 58 photographs, many in color, of Lakota belongings. The most heartrending image was the child’s doll. Fashioned from tanned animal hide, with seeds for eyes and flowing locks made from black horsehair, it wore tiny moccasins and a blue wool cloth dress.

In 2010, Karen Little Thunder contacted the museum and was granted permission to come see the items in person. The museum’s storage facility was located in a Virginia suburb of the nation’s capital. She and her then husband, Clayton Wright Jr., passed through security and were met by a museum official named Bill Billeck. “When we started going down to where the items are actually stored, that’s where it became dark,” she remembered. “The storage cabinets were like those red toolboxes with shallow drawers. I’m wearing these little cloth gloves. We were able to go through and find and view and hold several items.” A number of the belongings appeared to be stained with blood. “It was good until we came upon what looked like a baby blanket, a wrap made out of buffalo hide. You could see a little hood for the child’s head. When I put my hand on that little baby wrap, that’s when it hit me really hard. I could see, I could feel, I could imagine a child in that wrap. I mean, it just hit me so hard. This is real. This is what happened. There was a baby in this blanket. I had to turn around and walk away. I just felt like screaming and crying and beating on somebody. It made me angry and sad at the same time.”

She composed herself and returned to the belongings. Afterward, she felt affirmed. The experience was a sign “that I’m following the right path,” she said. “It’s like when I hear a coyote or I see a beautiful eagle. Those things are answers as well.”

In 1999, Paul Soderman and his family were sorting through the belongings of a recently deceased aunt at her home on Long Island, New York, when they came across a remarkable letter. The letter was written by Soderman’s great-great-grandfather, James Harney Stover, in 1934, when he was in his 80s. In it, he told the story of visiting the White House with his family in April 1861, when he was 12 years old. President Lincoln himself entered the East Room and greeted Stover’s father by name. It turned out the two men had practiced law together in Illinois years before. “The tall president who was 6 feet 4 and a half inches, stooped down and shook hands with me,” Stover wrote. During the visit, it came up that Stover’s mother’s maiden name was Harney. In fact, Stover’s mother told Lincoln, she was the cousin of an Army general named William S. Harney. “And the president said, ‘Well, he is my general in St. Louis, and he and I were in the Black Hawk War together,’” Stover wrote. 

During the next several years, he immersed himself in Lakota culture, history and language. By chance, he met another Boulder-area resident, a prominent jazz trumpeter named Brad Upton, who shared Soderman’s commitment to atonement. Upton was haunted by the fact that his great-great-grandfather, Colonel James W. Forsyth, had commanded the troops at Wounded Knee. 

Soderman first connected with Karen Little Thunder on an internet message board, and he met her in person in 2014. A short time later, Karen told her cousin, Phil, that a relative of Harney wanted to meet him. Phil Little Thunder, a short, soft-spoken man, saw it as an opportunity to “count coup” on an enemy, the ancient Native practice of getting close enough to touch an adversary. Phil remembers thinking, “I’m going to shake his hand, and hold it real tight—and then I’m going to give him a left hook, because his ancestor did my people that way.” Then they met. “When I shook hands with him, instead of whupping him, he hugged me.”

Around that time, a Lakota elder and spiritual leader named Basil Brave Heart was leading a campaign to rename Harney Peak. As a seventh-generation descendant of Harney, Soderman publicly endorsed the effort. In August 2016, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names announced the Harney name would be removed, and the landmark would henceforth be known as Black Elk Peak, for the legendary Lakota warrior and holy man. “The initial emphasis was to get Harney Peak changed,” Soderman recalled. “When that was done, we started thinking, in collaboration with Karen and Phil, ‘What can we do now?’”

Not long afterward, the Little Thunders and their Nebraska friends gathered beneath the Witness Tree for a healing ceremony. When it was finished, Karen Little Thunder was approached by Shelie Hartman-Gibbs (no relation to Peter Gibbs), who had grown up near the Blue Water and remained active in historical commemoration there. The 150th anniversary of Nebraska’s statehood was approaching. Hartman-Gibbs and her sister had the idea of bringing part of the Warren collection back to Nebraska for a temporary exhibition. What did Karen think? “I only remember the overwhelming feeling that this was another piece of the puzzle,” Karen says.

After the women presented the plan to a large group of Little Thunder relatives, who endorsed the idea, the Smithsonian approved the loan of seven items from the Warren collection (deemed by curators as in the best condition to travel) for a three-day exhibition at the visitor center of the Ash Hollow State Historical Park. The center commemorates Ash Hollow’s significance to pioneers on the Oregon Trail, but it also sits atop a bluff overlooking Blue Water Creek and the valley where the massacre occurred. 

The belongings were flown to Denver and driven to Nebraska, arriving at Ash Hollow late on a Wednesday afternoon in July 2017. Phil Little Thunder told me that he felt a sadness and a restlessness, like a caged wolf, when he first saw the belongings, which included the doll from Hanson’s book, plus a ceremonial rattle, a decorated saddle, a bag of porcupine quills, a bow, an ammunition pouch and a powder horn. But he couldn’t help but think about the rest of the items, which remained in vaults on the East Coast. “It was like a halfway apology,” he said.

In mourning over the items, he had let out a plaintive cry. “I’ll never forget the sound,” Soderman told me. “He’s done it a few times at the Witness Tree. That’s the connection between now and then, the sound of his grief. It’s real. That’s what I try to explain to my family and others who ask, ‘Why are you digging up the past? That happened 160 years ago.’ For Phil, it might as well have happened last week. That’s how connected they are.”

Karen Little Thunder spent the night in her van at the massacre site. “And I woke up the next morning and was just so happy,” she told the Lakota Times. “I could have been dancing by myself. I felt happy. I felt laughter. I felt peaceful. That told me things were good.”

Afterward, Karen and Phil Little Thunder and another cousin, Harry Little Thunder, together with Soderman, began to discuss the possibility of getting the entire Warren collection returned to the Lakota for good. 

The timing for such an appeal felt right. Cultural institutions around the world have been reckoning, sometimes publicly, with the fact that many of their holdings were collected in ways that we now consider unethical. In the United States, federal agencies and many museums and institutions are already mandated by law to repatriate requested Native American human remains, burial artifacts and sacred objects held in their collections. The Warren collection objects don’t fall under these categories, but the Smithsonian has recently enacted a broader, Institution-wide policy called Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns. Under the policy, which went into effect in 2022, artifacts of everyday life that Native groups deem of cultural importance may qualify to be returned. In certain cases, shared stewardship agreements allow the Institution to care for the items at the request of the original owners.

I spoke recently with Kevin Gover, the Smithsonian’s Under Secretary for museums and culture and a member of the Pawnee nation of Oklahoma, who served for 14 years as director of the National Museum of the American Indian. He was forthright about how much the Institution’s perspective has evolved. “Even if we have legal title for a given artifact, if it was acquired unethically, whether by us or whoever it was that acquired it originally, then we should give it back,” he said. He cited the Smithsonian’s recent return to Nigeria of 29 “Benin Bronzes” plundered by the British during an attack in 1897. “In our parlance, that was unethically acquired. That’s why we were not just willing but anxious to return those to Nigeria. I think the same would apply here,” he said, referring to the Warren collection. “If these artifacts were from a battlefield, even worse from a massacre, clearly they were unethically acquired, not necessarily by us, but by the U.S. Army and given to us. We have an obligation to return them.”

In August, the Little Thunder group formally applied under the new policy for the return of 69 items they believe came from the massacre site. Sarah Loudin, the National Museum of Natural History’s head registrar, told me that the process for reviewing the application will take time. As the museum gathers information, it will consider questions of standing, including, for example, whether the applicants are lineal descendants of the original owners of the belongings; are official representatives of the community where the items originated or are acting on its behalf; and whether there are competing requests for the objects. 

Billeck shared Henry’s letter by email with Karen Little Thunder and Paul Soderman, writing that the letter made clear that “Warren obtained the objects at the Smithsonian and that they are from Ash Hollow or Blue Water Creek.” The Little Thunders included the letter as a part of their application to the Smithsonian. 

The formal request is one step in an ongoing process of considerable cultural and spiritual complexity. For example, in the past, some Little Thunder family members expressed reservations about reclaiming the items, arguing that other Sicangu families descended from massacre survivors should be involved. There is also a question about what the Sicangu would do with the items if they are returned. Some Lakota elders would likely advocate ritual burning, per tradition, while others favor keeping them for educational and ceremonial purposes. That raises other practical considerations, such as where the Lakota would store the items and how they would pay for any associated costs. 

In recent months, Karen Little Thunder, her cousins Phil and Harry, and Paul Soderman have been busy gathering support back home. They found an ally in Phil Two Eagle, the Sicangu treaty council executive director, who last December placed the Blue Water Massacre on the agenda for the annual conference of treaty councils from all seven Lakota bands. 

In a hotel ballroom in Rapid City, South Dakota, the Little Thunders and Soderman appeared before the conference and spoke about what happened in 1855. Afterward, the elders stood and, singing an old Lakota honor song, shook their hands. 

The next day, Phil Little Thunder read a resolution that Phil Two Eagle had helped draft. In the name of the Sicangu Oyate and the Blue Water families, it called not only for the return of the Warren collection, but also for a geophysical survey of the massacre site to identify and recover any remains of victims, and for the establishment of a memorial and interpretative center at the site. The resolution, while nonbinding, was unanimously endorsed by representatives of the seven Lakota bands. 

Gale Spotted Tail, the descendant of the Sicangu chief, has become another important supporter. “I’m in favor of it, because it will bring attention to the Blue Water,” she told me. “A lot of people don’t know about it. Healing ceremonies would come with those belongings being returned. That kind of spiritual power will help our souls. It’s an opportunity for kids here to know their identity.”

Recently, the Rosebud Sicangu’s historic preservation office, along with representatives of the Little Thunder family, have been in discussions with Nebraska state officials about storing the items, should they be returned, at the Ash Hollow visitor center. Under the proposed agreement, the visitor center would host the items in a secure and managed environment for at least two years while the Sicangu work to decide on their final disposition. During that time, according to the proposal, descendants of massacre survivors and other Sicangu tribal members would have the right to privately view the collection.

Gover, when I spoke with him, recalled attending ceremonies as director of the National Museum of the American Indian when belongings were returned to their original owners. “People would just weep,” he said. “That made it a powerful experience for us as well. It’s not even making amends. In the Native view of the universe, that is a step toward restoring balance, just putting things right to return those things to the community where they originated. There is real power in that. There are a lot of these incidents from history that still need to be put right.”

The Blue Water valley has been in private hands for generations. Today it includes a patchwork of different owners, not all of them sympathetic to the Lakota or an organized effort to remember the massacre. A Nebraska rancher named Pat Gamet, who is 56, is an exception. He owns the acreage surrounding the Witness Tree and the area where the Lakota village once stood. He says he has kept the land as it was to protect it for the Lakota people and help honor their history there. “That’s my role in all of this. It’s a very humble one.”

On that hot afternoon last year, the 168th anniversary of the massacre, about 30 people gathered under the Witness Tree with the Little Thunders. Gamet was there, and the sisters, Jean Jensen and Dianne Greenwald, and their families. In the healing circle, Soderman and his wife, Cathie, who were ceremonially adopted into the Little Thunder family a few years ago, stood side by side with Brad Upton, all of them singing ancient Lakota healing songs. The echoes from Phil Little Thunder’s drum were carried off by the wind. Karen Little Thunder spoke up. “I would just like to say thank you to everybody for being here, for being here for us, for all of us,” she said. “You’re helping us to lighten this heavy load that we carry.” 

The scene called to mind a favorite phrase of Basil Brave Heart, the Lakota spiritual leader, that has become a mantra of sorts for the people beneath the Witness Tree. 

Taku wakan skan skan, the saying went. “Something sacred is in motion.” 

[sera8273]

TW:Implied SH, Depression, and Losing one’s will to fight.

The day was, as always, shining bright. But not too bright that it would burn.

The grass, as always, felt prickly and yet soft. But not to sharp or it would poke, and not too soft that it would cause that dissociation he craved for laziness.

The chilly breeze, as always, was soft and harsh. But not to harsh that it would blow away stuff. Not blow him away like the piece of trash he was

And the Poplar tree that covered him in shade stood still and tall. Something he couldn’t even do anymore as he laid.

It wasn’t long before Calypso finally stepped out of her cottage and stared directly down at him with a frown.

Instead of chastising him however, The Godesses sat before the laying man and looked where he looked; directly at the sun.

“The weather is lovey, isn’t it.” She attempts at a conversation. Which shocks him even more, he doesn’t show it however

He gives a considerate ‘hmm’ in response before dryly stating “It always is.” Calypso gives a far away distant look at the comment. “It never changes, does it.” It’s more of a statement than a question.

But instead of her usual reply of ‘And that’s why it’s paradise!’ Bull, she grimly responded with a “Nope.” The P had a pop to it. “Nothing here ever does…no matter how much you wanna change it. It never listens.” His focus intensified as his captors demeanor changed.

Ah.

One of those days.

A minute passes before he speaks up again. “You said ‘We’re’ but you also say ‘My’… Why is that?” Suddenly questioned with her looking confused. “When I first came here, you said something about how ‘Under your spell we’re stuck in paradise.’ You added We’re but also ‘My.’” It was stupid but it’s been something that’s been bothering him since he came here all those months ago. All those three years and six months he’s been trapped here.

She gives a dry chuckle in response before closing her eyes as he himself moved into a sitting position right next to her. He didn’t like it but he is to curious to stutter a breath. “Ogygia. This island, was served to be my punishment for supporting my Father, Atlas in the First ever Titan War.” She admits truthfully, mournfully. He sucks in a breath of shock. With all of the Stories his Father and Past-Mentor told him of Gods, he has never heard of Hers. He always thought that every God and Goddess were suppose to be known.

‘Well,’ his thoughts said. ‘Not Banished Gods, at least.’ And he couldn’t find it to fight that claim. Banished Gods were banished for a reason.

They were either deemed as unworthy, traitors, or outright to corrupt to hold the power that laid before them

And yet no one dared to utter what how corrupt the God King himself has become-

“The King of God, Sky, Thunder and Lightning banished me here for eternity.” The grass gets tugged by her hands but do not pull out from the Earth. “He banished me here for being loyal to my Kin, to my Will and to my Family. Something he never had. Something he will never gain.” She spits out bitterly. Her eyes turning to a soft but vibrant pink. He winced as he heard that oh-so familiar Echo, one would think he got used to them but no. He was still Mortal. Just a man-

“So..it’s your prison.” He hesitantly said as the words were processed. “It was.” She slowly admits.

Drawn out minutes pass by as the wind settles down. The sunset approaches them as His mouth moves faster than his whole own body could.

“Than why can’t it be my prison too?” He bites back, much to her shock. He didn’t mean to be snarky, but…If this was her prison, why couldn’t it also be his?

“I’m not saying it isn’t.” His whole body froze for a mere second. “But, in soon time. You, like I did, will see it as Paradise.” She finishes which earns a dry and humorous laugh. “You’re a Goddess, I’m only a Mortal.” He stutters out.

Apparently, that was the entirely wrong thing to say as she suck in a deep breath and stood up. Look- no, glaring at him with the intensity of a, well God.

“You Mortals…” She spat out, her eyes glowing and her voice echoed, “Forget that that time moves differently than what you are used to. One year could span more than a second. An entire Century for you mortals could be an entire year. I have been trapped here for more than Centuries upon Centuries to come!” Her teeth were on full display as she smiled down. “And you will too, remember? This Island wasn’t only suppose to banish Me here now was it?” He shivered harshly at her words. All of the truth she spat at him he couldn’t fight back

Believe him.

He tried.

Over and over and over and over and over and over and

“Because while mortals are forever cursed to die, to have short lives, to have their life- everything they worked for to be stripped away from them in a matter of seconds. Gods are forever bound to suffer torment, heartbreak, and so much more without finally having that sweet embrace of death. And to have a memory so perfect that they remember every. Single. Bit. Of their suffering.” She responds numbly. They stare at each other before she retreats into her hut.

The island, for some odd and yet explainable reason.

Felt.

So.

Imperfect.

[deadpresidents]

Could you recommend any books like Black Hawk Down about military battles that are real detailed and feel like novels like Black Hawk Down did?

That's a pretty high bar that you're setting! Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down (BOOK | KINDLE) is one of the best books of that genre of the last few decades.

Obviously, there are tons of great books about military conflicts and specific battles, but I think I understand what you're looking for. Instead of the more history-focused studies, you are thinking of something vivid that feels like the author was embedded with the troops, right? Here are a few that come to mind: 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff and the Annex Security Team (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) I'm a fan of many of Mitchell Zuckoff's books. He's a great writer and his books usually end up being really exciting and impossible to put down. I wasn't all that hyped to read about what happened in Benghazi because it was such a tragedy and dark moment in the Obama Administration, but Zuckoff (with the help of the surviving team of CIA contractors and special operators who were involved in that battle) wrote an incredible book. It's obvious why they quickly made this book into a film. It's one of those books that you basically have to read in one sitting because it's such an intense experience.

Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by Doug Stanton (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Another book that was turned into a film (12 Strong), this is the story of the small teams of special operators and CIA paramilitary officers who went into Afghanistan just a few weeks after 9/11. The teams -- usually of less than a dozen men -- met up with Afghan tribal leaders who had been fighting against the Taliban for years, and started what would eventually become the War on Terror. They were in such remote, hard-to-navigate terrain that they ended up riding into battle with their Afghan warlord allies on HORSES.

First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11 by Toby Harnden (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Harnden's book is also focused on those small CIA teams that were covertly inserted into Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 and laid the groundwork for the eventual U.S. invasion, with a particular focus on the first American casualty in the War on Terror, Mike Spann, a CIA agent killed during an uprising by prisoners (including American Taliban John Walker Lindh).

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Nat Philbrick's books are always vivid and feel like novels. They also feel like they were written by someone who witnessed everything being written about, even if they happened 150 years earlier. The Last Stand is a familiar story, but written with fresh eyes and extensive research, and I think the result is a different experience of something you may feel like you already know everything about. Here's my original review of the book from 2011.

[daitranscripts]

Skyhold Quest: Sit in Judgment

Mayor Gregory Dedrick

Skyhold Masterpost Related Location: Crestwood

Josephine: Mayor Gregory Dedrick of Crestwood is present for betraying his own constituents. He confesses that ten years ago, he flooded Old Crestwood to kill refugees and villagers touched by the blight. The mayor claims it was to spare the rest of Crestwood, but we only have his word.

Dialogue options:

General: He has a chance to prove it. PC: If the mayor has anything to say in his defense, let him speak. ㅤㅤ ㅤ

General: Well, that muddles things. PC: He’s pleading guilty while claiming he’s not. Which is it? ㅤㅤ ㅤ

General: A severe crime either way. PC: What he did can’t be overlooked, no matter the motive. Dedrick: There’s no cure for the blight, but I couldn’t convince anyone to leave a sick child or husband behind.

Josephine: So you herded the infected into one place and flooded Old Crestwood? Were no innocents caught in the waters?

Dedrick: Nearly everyone in the village had the blight, I swear it! Have mercy. I couldn’t tell the survivors I’d drowned their own families to save them. I—I couldn’t.

Dialogue options:

Special (Wardens allied): Give him to the Grey Wardens. [1] +Slightly approves - Sera, Iron Bull, Blackwall, Cole -Slightly disapproves - Vivienne, Solas ㅤㅤ ㅤ

General: The best I can do is exile. [2] +Approves - Solas +Slightly approves - Cole -Slightly disapproves - Iron Bull, Sera ㅤㅤ ㅤ

General: Ferelden can lock him up. [3] +Slightly approves - Vivienne, Varric, Iron Bull -Slightly disapproves - Cole ㅤㅤ ㅤ

General: I’ll give him a clean death. [4] +Approves - Iron Bull, Sera, Cole -Disapproves - Solas

1 - Special: Give him to the Grey Wardens. PC: The blight was your undoing. Let it also be your means of redemption. I give you to our allies in the Grey Wardens, to fight darkspawn until the Calling takes you. Dedrick: I don’t deserve the honor, Your Worship. But I’ll do my best. Scene ends.

2 - General: The best I can do is exile. PC: You lied for ten years about your crime, then fled after confessing your guilt. For avoiding justice, you are exiled from Ferelden. I doubt the crown will disagree. Dedrick: I knew your coming meant the end, one way or another. Scene ends.

3 - General: Ferelden can lock him up. PC: You committed murder on Ferelden’s soil. Let them deal with your punishment. Send him to Denerim. He can live the rest of his life behind their bars. Dedrick: In prison? Maker. I should have drowned with them. Scene ends.

4 - General: I’ll give him a clean death. PC: War forces terrible choices on us, but justice demands its due. Gregory Dedrick, I sentence you to a swift death. Dedrick: The day has come at last. Maker forgive my sins. He is dragged off and executed by the PC. Scene ends.

[neechees]

Why did the Cree has so much beef with other people

Depends on the time period dvehdtv.

Tribes we were allied with: Ojibwe & Salteaux (the besties <3), Blackfoot (its complicated), Algonquin, Assiniboin, Flathead Salish (we often got our horses from them), Haudenosaunee confederacy, Arapaho, Maliseet, Mandan, Abenaki

Tribes we were enemies with: Blackfoot confederacy, Inuit, Oceti Sakowin (namely the Dakota), Dene, Danezaa, Gros Ventres, Kootenay, & Shoshone, Mi'kmaq, Haudenosaunee confederacy (it's also complicated)

Like other peoples and wars in history, the allyship depended on the time period and circumstances. Some of the reasons why we might've been enemies was for scarcity of food, territory (but it's not in the same way Europeans would fight over land exactly, because our worldviews about land are different), interpersonal slights or interactions, access to horses, allying ourselves with certain tribes (like "an enemy of my friend is also my enemy" kind of thing, so we became enemies by association), and so on. At one point in history we might've been allies with a tribe & then later enemies with them. It really depends.

When the British met with Crees in the late 17th century, we were actually allies with the Blackfoot at the time, & we were warring together against the Shoshone. Later we were kind of off-and-on with the Blackfoot, but one of the reasons we were enemies later (especially in the 1800s), was because of the growing scareceness of food and encroaching on enemy territory to try get it. Blackfoot-Cree relations largely improved when Blackfoot Chief Crowfoot adopted Poundmaker (Cree) as his son, & he's the only reason Poundmaker's hair wasn't forcefully cut while he was in prison. Poundmaker also met with Sitting Bull at some point, and because Sitting Bull later became friends with Crowfoot, Lakota-Cree relations would've likely improved as well.

Some bands or subsections of Crees might not have been involved in certain conflicts as others due to culture and location or situation. Like, the Woodland Crees weren't so involved with the (Plains) Cree/Blackfoot wars or conflicts, even though they were allied with the Plains Crees & were our woodland cousins, because they weren't as nomadic. The conflicts with Inuit also pertained mostly to more Northern & Eastern suitated Crees, & the Innu. Innu being enemies with the Haudenosaunee at one point is I believe when the Plains Crees were actually allies with them (we liked getting wild rice & corn from them via the Ojibwe). & even when we were enemies, it was still pretty common to stop fighting and to invite even enemy tribes over so they could join in on ceremonies & religious events (& this wasn't exclusive to Crees, the Lakota also did this with the Pawnee)

There's also tribes that we sometimes ran into but didn't have necessarily bad or good relationships with, & we were just kind of neutral with each other, maybe sometimes traded. One example would be the Kiowa, who we ran into on occasion, but didn't interact with too much.

It's hard to summarize all here but yeah... it depends on the time period, place, tribe, band/subsections, and so on.

[scalproie]

Took a LOOONG break but at last we are at the end of the journey... with redacon prising

So they'll just leave the giant statue of megatron like that?

And heres the expected bee knighting ceremony where optimus shows that he is not only an allegory for jesus christ but also king arthur. a fusion of king arthur and jesus christ if you will

MY BABYGIRL FELL IN MEXICAN WATERS🇲🇽

Unicron waking megatron up like its a schoolday

Never do drugs kids bc you will be banned from robot-heaven and break away from the cycle of reincarnation

"So... I will live again? 😳👉👈" / "You are literally just my uber. You wont even get to drive"

Megatron getting out of the ocean in front of a full moon like a magnificent dolphin

Ah down the statue goes

"Im not sure Id wish a Prime's responsability on anyone" bee optimus is right there come on

Oh I FORGOT that optimus goes on a sidequest for like. 90% of this movie

Oh finally tfp megs has an alt form i dont hate visually

[Macintosh Plus - Floral Shoppe playing]

Awww meg's an optimist. Get zapped💜

That 10 seconds eradicon/vehicons scene was so good I replayed it like 20 times I fucking love them so so so hard you actually have no idea

Smth so incredibly funny about KO going "we are prisoners of war, we have rights!" like KO this is the war criminals franchise. And bee proving my point right after that.

Predacons are fucking raccoons

With bull sounds effects

"Phase beats flames everytime" now. I know this wasnt on purpose. This couldnt possibly be on purpose. But just like the bully's car having flames decals I cant help but feel this is a jab at roddy somehow

ULTRA MAGNUS GOT ROBBED THIS MOVIE

Hiii predaking :)

IS THAT FUCKING SIX LASERS???

IS SHOCKWAVE'S SUBLAB IN FUCKING SIX LASERS???

Utterly hilarious of starscream and shockwave starting a nuclear family in the way that it is in the literal sense toxic. And funny! Honey im home and I hate you and our kids

Smokescreen on the throne is killing me

"What do you know? Knockout actually shot straight for once." BEE STOP BEING HOMOPHOBIC TOWARD KO???

The way megatron/unicron/galvatron would look so good if it werent for the moss/algæ/rocky texture. Sure it makes him look ancient but...

They really shouldve let unicron bag at least one autobot this movie to raise up the stakes at least a LITTLE bc right now this really isnt a very intimidating display from grandpa

Oh he actually recognizes it himself

"For that, I shall require a greater instrument... of destruction" TOOLS OF FOUL PLAYYYYYY

Idk why they wrote in that the team couldnt talk with optimus bc it had like no impact on the plot? Even if optimus and wheeljack couldve reached back it still wouldve had the same outcome?

Aw look at him thinking about tricking an old god

Megs banking on predaking kicking his ass on sight is so funny

I looove shockwave's tank form and also it is a little funny how slow its implied he is in it

Family outing! Bone picking as a bonding activity and also with each other

With a surprise visit from grandpa

I WISH we got megs' pov when they met with starscream and shockwave

Also shockwave actually making unicron sound awe-inspiring with the way he said his name, meanwhile starscream is using up all the budget for his animation again

We do a little necromancy

SHOCKWAVE CAN YOU FUCKING RUN AWAY??????

SHOCKWAVE NOOOOOO

Tf:prime still has some gorgeous shots like the one with the hill and luna 1 and 2 in the background? Pretty dope

Megs sitting on his dragon like that is so funny

Smokescreen is literally the relics' keeper at this point which wouldve been cool it is was aknowlegded

They just left ratchet and ultra magnus on the roof

One last hurrah for the toxic besties in this show

LMAO SMOKESCREEN IN THE WALL. PAYBACK'S A BITCH

"I am not your boss... I AM YOUR KING!" I love predaking a whooole bunch

KO's "redemption" is sooo fucking forced like come ON starscream has done DO MUCH WORSE to you but a mere insult at THIS point is where you draw the line??? I know hes an opportunist but come onnnnnn

At least the scene afterward was a little funny

DRAGON FIGHT!!!

SHOCKWAVE

YES YES YES YES YES YES HES ALIVEEE

AND ADVISING FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Wait a minute this was the mann vs machines bassline from tf2 just now

Megs' proud little face at his "[Resistance?] ... from my own warship."

"Whom to root for? The lines have certainely blurred" Oh shut up

"And to think optimus almost passed down the matrix to me" IT SHOULDVE BEEN HOT RODDD

Awww the nemesis is down

Theyre making mr. Welker say the corniest shit

"Allow nothing to enter the well" *fails in 30 seconds*

Ah optimus is back with the milk allspark

LAST MEGOP FIGHT LETS GO

Lmao gay people

IT WAS SO SHORT COME ON

They trapped unicron like a bad genie in a lamp

The zombie predacons exploding shouldnt be that funny to me but it is. The evil is defeated i guess

MEGATRON'S "REDEMPTION" IS EVEN MORE STUPID IM LAUGHING SO HARD

"I now know the true meaning of oppression" WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUTTTTTT

Even if you spin the previous narrative around and make it so he was actually always evil and caused a civil war by pointing out and rising against the inequalities of their society JUST to get more power in the end its still like??? He DID endured oppression he was a fucking gladiator???

Legit if he just went "Im tired of fighting" bc being dead made him. Idk realize the toll the war took on him or smth it wouldve been better

This is so funny tho. Babygirl wins by doing nothing

Anyway lmao gay people

GOODBYE MEGATRON I'LL MISS YOU🩶

Bye screamer i guess

OH HES DEAD LMAOOOOOO

[Optimus] Our show is ending which means I have to die now

Scratch that he WANTS to die they are giving him so many alternatives and he just goes No I Have To :)

KO STANDING THERE LIKE. BLUD THINKS HES ON THE TEAM

Genuinely I cant believe how NOBODY was even at risk of dying this movie, thats the downside of having a small cast: you cant kill anyone. but STILL this is the finale I wouldve liked smth more... grandiose? Like the one (one and a half really) death we have is optimus going out on his own terms

Still does make me feel some kind of way tho

Bye peepaw......

Ok the end sequence is really good with optimus' last words and the theme song and the visuals

AND THAT WAS IT. IM FINALLY DONE WITH TF:PRIME

Well haterism lost! I had a good time😊

It is not beating my fav continuity anytime soon but I have less qualms recommanding it as a possible entry point to tf tho. I might even rewatch some few episodes there and there sometimes

[winterpinetrees]

Being Alive (The Gap Years 2x4)

September 19th

The Elven Capital

Ishtar's life is a miracle. She is alive, the ruler of an entire planet, happy, even. There must be a world where it stays like this forever, but she has a job to do. The war has begun, and her family must be ready for it.

Navigation Guide

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..................

There is one other Mercuralis alive who remembers living in the palace. Enli is the same height as Ishtar, but shorter than her eldest son. Neither of them have a fraction of the scars she does. Kishar saw death for the first time this week, but his mother has no excuse. The only three Mercuralis adults sit in a room that she hasn’t tried to make match the way it was before, complimenting her husband's tea and pretending their relationship isn’t mangled like a broken limb. 

When the previous coup left her and Ishtar as their family’s last survivors, Enli was left with nothing but a legendary name, an orphaned cousin, and her own trauma. Maybe she could have given Ishtar to one of their allies to raise, but their family were symbolized by an ice-age bull and just as stubborn. Genus Mercuralis would endure, even if it meant a half-grown girl playing the role of a mother. “Playing” is the precise word. Ishtar came of age as a vengeful ghost and fell desperately for the first person to seem to live in the world, instead of occupying space. Is it worse to be like her predecessor, Emer Sondaica, who had such a full life but gave it all up? Or is it worse to have been empty from the beginning? 

Enli has been a much better mother this time around. Her cousin must have needed a test run. Ishtar, for her part, is genuinely shocked to be alive at all.

“The attacks in the human realm,” Enli begins. “I believe you that the Sondaica prince wasn’t supposed to be there, but it’s not him I have a problem with. It’s his humans. There are rules to war. Those three have never heard of them”. 

“Oh yes. Those same rules that left us as the only survivors out of nineteen Mercurali? Marin’s humans shoot to kill at times, but they’re young and desperate. Students at the Conservatory try the same thing”. That’s how she’s explained it to her council, and the lords, and everyone stunned by the trail of destruction three rich kids have wrought. “They are the children of human nobility. That society is as cutthroat as ours, they just don’t do the killing themselves. This must be cathartic for them”. Taking her first prisoner -knuckles against bone, an enemy slung over her shoulder- was like the sunrise. 

Kishar folds his hands. He doesn’t have the grim gray eyes of his cousin Chandra, those are from her husband’s family, but the grief of their world weighs on him just as heavily. “It’s not only them. The scientists were better trained than we expected”. Then he turns to his mother. “They were the threat to my life, not the prince or his servants. I told you he was happy to retreat”. 

Enli turns her head. “Well, the scientists are dead now”. 

There were twelve attacks two days ago, ten of them successful, including in the salt desert city where Marin unexpectedly appeared. They don’t know exact casualties, but she suspects three hundred humans dead across the world along with eight citizens of the elven world captured as traitors.

“Not all of them, but more than the old apex was ever able to do”. 

It turns out that even the void-cursed and gifted can only be in one place at once, and yet the university Cai Sondaica materialized to protect wasn’t even the mission with the highest cost. Ninety-five soldiers died across twelve attacks. They expected some casualties in the underground labs where soldiers could not switch worlds to retreat, but one dead elf for every three dead humans? By tradition, none of them but the handful killed by renegade sparks and royals can be properly honored on a kill list. This is why she’s talking to her cousin. When she says “Ishtar, what have you done,” she hardly notices. 

Most of her high council is thrilled, but that almost feels worse. Arjuna is decidedly neutral on human affairs, and Ryn… Ryn is not talking to her. It’s not as bad as it sounds. He was at the table during the creation of the plan and his firefly seal (the symbol they chose as teens back when her first officer decided it just wasn’t right to drag the Stormson hurricane into noble crimes) is on the document. He’s out at sea. Her vambrace chimes a steady heartbeat of data. He’s alive. He’s safe. He’ll come home when he’s ready.

Enli asks if her daughter is out with Ryn. She saw the boys today, but not Suen. Ishtar keeps her expression level. She does not fidget or shift her stance. “Oh. I can call her back in, if you’d like?”

She sends her daughter a brief message. Devana Marolak thinks she's been watching too much human media, but she has a pager. The Sondaica twins may have been picking pockets in the human realm at her age, but that was centuries ago. She can't afford to take extra risks. Then, with a broad grin, the apex of the twin worlds throws open the great windows of the parlor. Waves crash against the rocks stories beneath the balcony. This face of the building is an artificial cliff with nothing else beneath them. She stands to the side and looks back at her cousins. “You should move out of the way. She’s still working on landing”.

“Impossible. Who taught her? The assassin?”

“My husband would be honored that you think he can fly”. 

A shadow flickers far above them. Something with the wingspan of an albatross plummets out of the sky more like a meteor than a bird of prey. Her heart catches in her chest. Suen rolls out of a dive and rises back to their level. She stretches out her arms, the drag on her spectral feathers slowing her down to only about a sprinting pace. She is an indigo blur between the older Mercurali. Then her clawed boots catch on the carpet, and Ishtar does not look away as her only daughter slams into the floor with a thud worthy of an aurochs. Their mugs of tea rattle on the table. 

No one moves. Suen’s wings fade as she sits up but her eyes stay magic-bright. Whatever impossibility gave Ishtar her toughness wasn’t heritable. Her daughter’s bones are as fragile as the high nobility can get. She looks it too. Ishtar thinks it’s fitting that the first Apex of the united worlds will have the body type that humans expect of elves or fairies. Or maybe her little satellite is just young. For thirty silent seconds, Sue, a decade short of puberty and fifty years away from the start of her gap years, barely even glances at her. She’s running a diagnostic, looking for fractures and sprains. 

Ishtar feels the sparring mats under her sandals. She can take a punch better than even the sparks and could snap an elf’s neck with a twist of her arms. It would be quick, like a scepter through the heart, but there wouldn’t be blood and there was so much-

“Just like in the basketball videos!”

Suen giggles and holds a hand up to her mouth. There’s a small canine tooth on the ground and Ishtar remembers that she is the mother now and she is gloriously alive. “It had been loose for a month, Ma”. 

Kishar kneels down to meet her eyes. Suen towers over most kids her age, but he’s a true Mercuralis giant. “Pretty tough”. She beams and folds her Voyager pilot’s scarf to stop the bleeding. 

“Moonlight. Cousin Enli is asking who taught you how to fly”. 

“His Grace, Hierax of Genus Tiercel,” her daughter says with perfect royal poise, then giggles again. 

Enli raises an eyebrow and mutters in an old language the children don’t know. 

“I thought you were against betrothals”.

“I am. Don’t make this weird”. 

The floor still has a bit of a phantom bounce when Sue gets back to her feet and puts the tooth into her mother’s. In Ishtar’s oldest memories, her own mother says to keep her feet on the ground. Strength comes from leverage. You swing a hammer with your legs to hit an illusionist you’ve sensed through vibrations in the earth. Suen’s been learning to tell where her father invisibly goes since before she would walk, but the human world plays by different rules. She’s seen the tactics in their films, the heroic ones, and checks them against humanity's own list of war crimes. Mercuralis strength is enough to break through the nobility, but wild humans throw money at sports where bones shatter in every game. The children of the wildblood staff pick Suen first when they play as teams because she is lightning-fast and clever and knows how to lead, but those kids are never older than thirteen. An elbow to the jaw from a trained adult could do more than knock out a loose tooth. The butt of a jammed rifle, held by a conscripted boy who would’ve been an athlete if not for their war, could kill. 

So she’ll learn to fly. Maybe Chandra will too, or maybe he’ll keep learning how to weave charms and disguises until even Ryn’s family, impenetrable as the screaming rain around the eye of a storm, will tell him everything. Fedran is a little weaker. His colors are more muddled. He was born eighteen years ago, but only looks a bit younger than his brother. In a few decades they’ll seem the same age, and then Fen will grow up and look like the older sibling for the rest of their lives. A royal family made of a spark, a slightly unstable assassin, and an apex who could stand up to the three-hundred-pound titans on a gridiron football team. And to think it was a scandal when Emer was made apex! As if a weird twin and a habit of running off to jazz clubs was anything compared to this. 

Ishtar puts the tooth into her pocket. They’ll bury it under a tree and some little thing will appreciate the calcium. Not long after, her daughter takes a running start and vaults over the railing of the balcony much faster than Ishtar could manage. Kids these days. 

Back in the Problem Room, Ishtar sees a different sort of triumph. They’ve been chasing young runaways for months, but finally they’ve made an attack of their own. Devana Marolak’s fear of wild humans with guns has been validated, and Amedi is just happy to have done well. The councillors were both in the field on two separate missions. Actually, Ishtar was in the field as well. One of the laboratories on their list of targets was right over the fault line parallel to the capital, and they needed someone with a gentle touch to collapse it without making a bigger problem. The last big quake there was about a decade after Arjuna and her had married. There was a fire. Total mess. Not wishing to burn San Fransisco again, she and Amedi made their exit with only two elves dead and the faintest whisper of a category two earthquake behind them. Across the world, Devana set off a bomb and nearly collapsed a stop of the Moscow Metro. She can’t speak Russian, but the councillor seems entertained by the story of coordinated terrorist attacks. 

Gullin Eburos spent the fateful night in his laboratory instead, testing his project against another dozen overlapping conditions and tinkering with fatality rates. She’s lent an old Mercurali word to the plague: diasu. It’s a dead language, so the meaning can be whatever they need. Really though, it means “to thresh”. As an ancient agricultural term, it meant to separate the grain from its stalk. As her new political tool, it means to remove the useful from that which is dry and brittle and best used to feed an animal or a flame. 

When her first officer asked (declared) if it was wrong to talk about wild humans like that when they’ve taken such a stand against elven eugenics, she reminded him that human religions have used the metaphor for longer. Besides, their love has nothing to do with conquering a world. Their son is a symbol, but not of that. By the time Fen is old enough to have anything to do with politics, the human world will be theirs. 

(Why does Ishtar know anything about human religions? Well, it’s important to know the traditions of a place you’re trying to conquer. Ryn also convinced her to read Moby-Dick and she didn’t want to feel like she was missing half of the context).

Anyway, noble superiority has never done her any good and Ryn could pick Devana Marolak up and throw her if he stopped wanting to play nice. Fedran is her perfect firefly and if any nobles have issues then they should address her as Your Eminence or better yet not talk at all. 

Magical power is tough to predict. At best it’s like height: certainly there is a basis in family history, but it also depends on childhood circumstances and chance. Her exceptional power and Ryn’s…well, he has humans in his family tree, don’t cancel to average. Their son is on even footing with most of the lower nobility, including warriors like Amedi Kebero. Magically, that is. Fen still has almost all of his baby teeth, and Amedi has half a dozen kills to their name. He’s a good kid. Observant. Not in the same empathetic way as his brother, but more looking for systems. A few nights before the coup, Arjuna whispered that he had the mind of an assassin. He’s also really into trains. 

So things feel pretty good in the room named for the fact that it’s where things go wrong. They’re at the bleeding edge of a new era and it’s all too easy to imagine all of that metaphorical blood belonging to their enemies. She keeps the new casualty reports on the table as they discuss everything else. Devana talks about a drought in Asia. Amedi and their seneschal present on commoner resistance where Marin is likely to travel. They talk for hours as though two nights ago they didn’t set off the first rumbles of an upheaval that will lay dormant and stutter but never stop until they’re directing the clean up of a decimated human realm. As she’s preparing to dismiss the council (almost time to sit on her throne and hear petitions), Gullin’s doglike seneschal returns with five cups of spruce beer, even though there’s only four elves at the massive table. Seneschals don’t miss details. Gullin gives his human an amused nod and the young man smiles back with fangs and chugs a glass. They all toast to better luck and easier battles. 

She looks down to her vambrace. Her partner says air pressure is dropping and there’s clouds to the west. He’s already weathering a political storm, and doesn’t need another. The dot on the screen turns back home. 

…………

Suen is like 10 in elven years. Chandra is 8 and Fen is 7.

Ishtar uses the word decimated to describe what’s in store for the human realm. I’m afraid her actual plans have a far higher fatality rate than one in ten. 

The nobility are not big on recreational substances. (looking at you, Zerada). I’m using the word “beer” like in root beer. It’s non-alcoholic and a Canadian thing.

@lokiwaffles @reggie246 @wishndreamer

[followmeinthedark]

Is that Jason Momoa ? No, that’s Ozan. The 41 year old fire moon weretiger Alpha male(he/him) is a construction worker. If you ask their friends, they’re known to be brave & tough, but beware, they’re also known to be explosive & agressive. Can you believe they’re from the past Me either.

BASIC INFO

Name: Ozan

Nickname: none

Age: 41 years old

Secondary gender: alpha

Birthday: nov 11th

Zodiac sign: Scorpio

Moon: fire moon

Occupation: construction worker

APPEARANCE

Height: 6'6

Weight: 240 lbs

Build: beefy and muscular

Hair color: dark brown

Eye Color: hazel

Tattoos: many

Piercings: in the ears

Distinguishing Features: squint eyes

Body hair: trimmed

Tiger color: Orange

Tiger size/build: big in size and build for an alpha

PERSONALITY

Alignment: chaotic good

Positive traits: energetic, tough, brave and protective

Negative traits: agressive and explosive

Pet peeves: authorytarism

Hobbies: fighting

NSFW

Kinks: daddy kink, breeding, bondage, spanking, height difference, body worship, nipple play, rough sex and passionate sex

Anti-Kinks: scat, vore, watersports, infantilism, vomit, blood and fisting

Favorite positions: missionary, sitting bull, suspended congress, doggy, bend over and mating press

Sexual preference: top

Safe word: rock

Dick size: 11½"

BIOGRAPHY

Ozan began as a warrior, in the infinite war that took place between clans of tigers and bears over the territories that today correspond to part of Turkey. After a defeat in battle, he was captured by the enemy side and taken to his city as a prisoner. In his prison he began to be used as a gladiator, fighting other tigers and bears for the entertainment of his tormentors, he hated this life and dreamed of one day regaining his freedom.

However, in the midst of this ordeal he found a light, Burcu, a young and beautiful werebear omega who had been assigned to take care of the prisoners, and in addition was a kind of comcubine of the leader of the clan that kept the tiger in captivity. Ozan and Burcu loved each other many times, and from this secret union three cubs were created, the first two presented themselves as bears and were initiated into military training from an early age, but unfortunately they did not survive. The third child introduced himself as a tiger and fearing what the clan leader could do to them, Burcu told Ozan the truth, that he was the sire of the three children.

Burcu had become pregnant again and so he, his already born child and Ozan fled as far away as possible, until they reached Willowshire and built their life together as a happy family for a few years. unfortunately came the catastrophe that sucked many people from willowshire into the temporal vortex, suddenly Ozan found himself alone and desperate to see his loved ones, despite the difficulties he keeps alive the hopes of seeing them again.

[the-firebird69]

GOES-East - Sector view: Tropical Atlantic - GeoColor - NOAA / NESDIS / STAR

We are watching you people and see what you're doing. He seriously helps everybody can peered they're going after his ships shortly. Especially the one off Africa cause while it's out there they can disable it how do you leave the planet or you're all dead. They seem to push other ships off they know how to do it they've seen it. Right now we're worried for his well being and he says you should be you need to be get people here and straighten out a whole bunch of messes. And he realizes the Earth is in a state of war but really it's controlled we don't let them access areas we have to come in here and straighten this out we have to straighten these ships out it's gross there's no air only the world is a problem wherever these idiots are. We're gonna get going on it and we will have him issue things to start a process of eliminating problems and problem people here it is going to be a monumental occas a monumental occasion for a lot of people including our son and daughter of course and you would know that by heart 'cause you are such annoying people on purpose it is torture and we are bringing you in charges and you are going to hell you don't think so because you're a damn stupid. We can make them stick and we have the problem is that you go to the prison and you're losing control of it here and you're just getting rid of your own anyways and we don't have that time to wait for those small numbers and you're going to go to prison and you will die for what you've been doing. If not get killed from my firing squad. Days that you should remember. Those days are coming up. Lincoln took a break and that's John Remillard and it's quite extensive it was years and here will be months and he'll take the presidency back and he'll get killed in the Bulls be gone and there's several murders that happen after Lincoln was shot. They're gonna happen again and he will not show up ever again. September 22nd 2024 in 1775 he was arrested on that day and it's coming up in less than two months and he was hung to death . And he disappeared after the hanging for several months it was quite awhile and back then a month counts only for a few days and it's true that he gets hung and he disappears people panic and go after his stuff . And he gets killed a few times many many times and he disappears for weeks at a time and his people pay for it. It is approaching the final event which is the death of Abraham Lincoln and the date is April 14 and he never checks back in and his brain is elsewhere. We do not expect him to be in Florida most of that time as his armies are going to be on their knees in less than a month or so ahamic Abrahamic abraham Lincoln ohh **** you're in a song the date Abraham Lincoln was shot is April 14 1865.

more shortly

Thor Freya

we take it to heart and see it he a preambl and they want to make him wealthy adn then rags and so on like trump. however he says it willl be fraud to a degree no mostly and no not affective. they beg to differ will own it have power over it and he laughs ok sure. i send hand singals and such. fine they say go your way and i shall. have power dont need fake power you will be fooled macs he says. and this is it they fight and we wanted it and sit barfing farting and john r the worst a joke. now we need out of this

megan merkle

Olympus

[whencyclopedia]

Sioux Chief Two Strike (Eastman's Biography)

Two Strike (Numpkahapa/Nomkahpa, l. c. 1831-1915) was a Lakota Sioux chief of the Brule band, who fought against the US military consistently from Red Cloud's War (1866-1868) through the Great Sioux War (1876-1877) and was present at the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. He was later an outspoken critic of US policies toward Native peoples of North America.

He fought alongside Red Cloud (l. 1822-1909), Sioux Chief Spotted Tail (l. 1823-1881), Sitting Bull (l. c. 1837-1890), Crazy Horse (l. c. 1840-1877), Roman Nose (Cheyenne Warrior) (l. c. 1830-1868) and other famous figures including the Cheyenne chiefs Morning Star (Dull Knife, l. c. 1810-1883), Little Wolf (l. c. 1820-1904), and Black Kettle (l. c. 1803-1868) but never received the same attention as his more famous contemporaries.

This may have been due, at least in part, to his shyness and a reluctance to call notice to himself. He fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Battle of the Greasy Grass, 25-26 June 1876), for example, which Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are famous for – even though no one knows, precisely, what they did during the conflict – but is rarely mentioned in accounts of that battle.

He was one of the four Sioux chiefs who led the attack on the Pawnee at the Battle of Massacre Canyon in 1873, alongside Spotted Tail, Charging Bear (l. c. 1836-1918), and Little Wound (l. c. 1835-1899), which, according to some scholars, resulted in the Pawnee's choice to relocate to "Indian Territory" (modern-day Oklahoma) and encouraged more Pawnee warriors to enlist in the US military as scouts to fight against the Sioux.

This conflict was in keeping with traditional Native American warfare whereas engagements with the US military were not. Two Strike condemned the US policy of westward expansion and the US treatment of the Plains Indians, specifically the Sioux, strenuously, especially after the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, and was imprisoned in 1891 for inciting rebellion, serving three years in federal prison for objecting to the massacre. After his release, he continued his criticism of the US government's policies until his death, of natural causes, on the Rosebud Reservation in 1915.

The Sioux physician and author Charles A. Eastman (also known as Ohiyesa, l. 1858-1939) includes Two Strike in his Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1916) alongside many of the others mentioned above. Eastman honors the shy spirit of Two Strike by focusing on stories of his youth, not on his military career. From the historical perspective, this is unfortunate, since Eastman knew Two Strike personally and so could have, perhaps, persuaded him to share his perspective of events such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn or the Wounded Knee Massacre, but, at the same time, the Eastman biography is respected as it honors the humble spirit of Two Strike, who, most likely would have refused to discuss his role in either of those or any other conflicts.

Text

The following text is taken from Eastman's Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, the 1939 edition, republished in 2016. He begins his account with a reference to Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses (Tasunka Kokipapi, l. c. 1836-1893), an Oglala Lakota Sioux chief who also fought in Red Cloud's War and was associated closely with Two Strike afterwards.

It is a pity that so many interesting names of well-known Indians have been mistranslated, so that their meaning becomes very vague if it is not wholly lost. In some cases, an opposite meaning is conveyed. For instance, there is the name, "Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses." It does not mean that the owner of the name is afraid of his own horse—far from it! Tashunkekokipapi signifies "The young men fear his horses." Whenever that man attacks, the enemy knows there will be a determined charge.

The name Tashunkewitko, or Crazy Horse, is a poetic simile. This leader was likened to an untrained or untouched horse, wild, ignorant of domestic uses, splendid in action, and unconscious of danger.

The name of Two Strike is a deed name. In a battle with the Utes this man knocked two enemies from the back of a war horse. The true rendering of the name Nomkahpa would be, "He knocked off two."

I was well acquainted with Two Strike and spent many pleasant hours with him, both at Washington, D. C., and in his home on the Rosebud reservation. What I have written is not all taken from his own mouth, because he was modest in talking about himself, but I had him vouch for the truth of the stories. He said that he was born near the Republican River about 1832. His earliest recollection was of an attack by the Shoshones upon their camp on the Little Piney. The first white men he ever met were traders who visited his people when he was very young. The incident was still vividly with him, because, he said, "They made my father crazy," . This made a deep impression upon him, he told me, so that from that day he was always afraid of the white man's "mysterious water."

Two Strike was not a large man, but he was very supple and alert in motion, as agile as an antelope. His face was mobile and intelligent. Although he had the usual somber visage of an Indian, his expression brightened up wonderfully when he talked. In some ways wily and shrewd in intellect, he was not deceitful nor mean. He had a high sense of duty and honor. Patriotism was his ideal and goal of life.

As a young man he was modest and even shy, although both his father and grandfather were well-known chiefs. I could find few noteworthy incidents in his early life, save that he was an expert rider of wild horses. At one time I was pressing him to give me some interesting incident of his boyhood. He replied to the effect that there was plenty of excitement but "not much in it." There was a delegation of Sioux chiefs visiting Washington, and we were spending an evening together in their hotel. Hollow Horn Bear spoke up and said:

"Why don't you tell him how you and a buffalo cow together held your poor father up and froze him almost to death?"

Everybody laughed, and another man remarked: "I think he had better tell the medicine man (meaning myself) how he lost the power of speech when he first tried to court a girl." Two Strike, although he was then close to eighty years of age, was visibly embarrassed by their chaff.

"Anyway, I stuck to the trail. I kept on till I got what I wanted," he muttered. And then came the story.

The old chief, his father, was very fond of the buffalo hunt; and being accomplished in horsemanship and a fine shot, although not very powerfully built, young Two Strike was already following hard in his footsteps. Like every proud father, his was giving him every incentive to perfect his skill, and one day challenged his sixteen-year-old son to the feat of "one arrow to kill" at the very next chase.

It was midwinter. A large herd of buffalo was reported by the game scout. The hunters gathered at daybreak prepared for the charge. The old chief had his tried charger equipped with a soft, pillow-like Indian saddle and a lariat. His old sinew-backed hickory bow was examined and strung, and a fine straight arrow with a steel head carefully selected for the test. He adjusted a keen butcher knife over his leather belt, which held a warm buffalo robe securely about his body. He wore neither shirt nor coat, although a piercing wind was blowing from the northwest. The youthful Two Strike had his favorite bow and his swift pony, which was perhaps dearer to him than his closest boy comrade.

Now the hunters crouched upon their horses' necks like an army in line of battle, while behind them waited the boys and old men with pack ponies to carry the meat. "Hukahey!" shouted the leader as a warning. "Yekiya wo!" (Go) and in an instant all the ponies leaped forward against the cutting wind, as if it were the start in a horse race. Every rider leaned forward, tightly wrapped in his robe, watching the flying herd for an opening in the mass of buffalo, a chance to cut out some of the fattest cows. This was the object of the race.

The chief had a fair start; his horse was well trained and needed no urging nor guidance. Without the slightest pull on the lariat, he dashed into the thickest of the herd. The youth's pony had been prancing and rearing impatiently; he started a little behind - yet, being swift, passed many. His rider had one clear glimpse of his father ahead of him, then the snow arose in blinding clouds on the trail of the bison. The whoops of the hunters, the lowing of the cows, and the menacing glances of the bulls as they plunged along, or now and then stood at bay, were enough to unnerve a boy less well tried. He was unable to select his victim. He had been carried deeply into the midst of the herd and found himself helpless to make the one sure shot, therefore he held his one arrow in his mouth and merely strove to separate them so as to get his chance.

At last, the herd parted, and he cut out two fat cows, and was maneuvering for position when a rider appeared out of the snow cloud on their other side. This aroused him to make haste lest his rival secure both cows; he saw his chance, and in a twinkling his arrow sped clear through one of the animals so that she fell headlong.

In this instant he observed that the man who had joined him was his own father, who had met with the same difficulties as himself. When the young man had shot his only arrow, the old chief with a whoop went after the cow that was left, but as he gained her broadside, his horse stepped in a badger hole and fell, throwing him headlong. The maddened buffalo, as sometimes happens in such cases, turned upon the pony and gored him to death. His rider lay motionless, while Two Strike rushed forward to draw her attention, but she merely tossed her head at him, while persistently standing guard over the dead horse and the all-but-frozen Indian.

Alas for the game of "one arrow to kill!" The boy must think fast, for his father's robe had slipped off, and he was playing dead, lying almost naked in the bitter air upon the trampled snow. His bluff would not serve, so he flew back to pull out his solitary arrow from the body of the dead cow. Quickly wheeling again, he sent it into her side, and she fell. The one arrow to kill had become one arrow to kill two buffalo! At the council lodge that evening Two Strike was the hero.

The following story is equally characteristic of him, and in explanation it should be said that in the good old days among the Sioux, a young man is not supposed to associate with girls until he is ready to take a wife. It was a rule with our young men, especially the honorable and well-born, to gain some reputation in the hunt and in war, — the more difficult the feats achieved the better, — before even speaking to a young woman. Many a life was risked in the effort to establish a reputation along these lines. Courtship was no secret, but rather a social event, often celebrated by the proud parents with feasts and presents to the poor, and this etiquette was sometimes felt by a shy or sensitive youth as an insurmountable obstacle to the fulfilment of his desires.

Two Strike was the son and grandson of a chief, but he could not claim any credit for the deeds of his forbears. He had not only to guard their good name but achieve one for himself. This he had set out to do, and he did well. He was now of marriageable age with a war record, and admitted to the council, yet he did not seem to trouble himself at all about a wife. His was strictly a bachelor career. Meanwhile, as is apt to be the case, his parents had thought much about a possible daughter-in-law, and had even collected ponies, fine robes, and other acceptable goods to be given away in honor of the event, whenever it should take place. Now and then they would drop a sly hint, but with no perceptible effect.

They did not and could not know of the inward struggle that racked his mind at this period of his life. The shy and modest young man was dying for a wife yet could not bear even to think of speaking to a young woman! The fearless hunter of buffaloes, mountain lions, and grizzlies, the youth who had won his eagle feathers in a battle with the Utes, could not bring himself to take this tremendous step.

At last, his father appealed to him directly. "My son," he declared, "it is your duty to take unto yourself a wife, in order that the honors won by your ancestors and by yourself may be handed down in the direct line. There are several eligible young women in our band whose parents have intimated a wish to have you for their son-in-law."

Two Strike made no reply, but he was greatly disturbed. He had no wish to have the old folks select his bride, for if the truth were told, his choice was already made. He had simply lacked the courage to go a-courting!

The next morning, after making an unusually careful toilet, he took his best horse and rode to a point overlooking the path by which the girls went for water. Here the young men were wont to take their stand, and, if fortunate, intercept the girl of their heart for a brief but fateful interview. Two Strike had determined to speak straight to the point, and as soon as he saw the pretty maid, he came forward boldly and placed himself in her way. A long moment passed. She glanced up at him shyly but not without encouragement. His teeth fairly chattered with fright, and he could not say a word. She looked again, noted his strange looks, and believed him suddenly taken ill. He appeared to be suffering. At last, he feebly made signs for her to go on and leave him alone. The maiden was sympathetic, but as she did not know what else to do she obeyed his request.

The poor youth was so ashamed of his cowardice that he afterward admitted his first thought was to take his own life. He believed he had disgraced himself forever in the eyes of the only girl he had ever loved. However, he determined to conquer his weakness and win her, which he did. The story came out many years after and was told with much enjoyment by the old men.

Two Strike was better known by his own people than by the whites, for he was individually a terror in battle rather than a leader. He achieved his honorable name in a skirmish with the Utes in Colorado. The Sioux regarded these people as their bravest enemies, and the outcome of the fight was for some time uncertain. First the Sioux were forced to retreat and then their opponents, and at the latter point the horse of a certain Ute was shot under him. A friend came to his rescue and took him up behind him. Our hero overtook them in flight, raised his war club, and knocked both men off with one blow.

He was a very old man when he died, only two or three years ago, on the Rosebud reservation.

Continue reading...

[megashadowdragon]

youtube comments in the above vid

An actual accurate portrayal of history. No romanticizing of either side. Just the truth that human groups behave the same.

He's got a point. The Crow tribe hated Sitting Bull and his tribe - Lakota Sioux - for continuously raiding them and aggression towards them. They were actually devastated by the news of the fate of 7th Cavalry. When the Lakota Sioux gave up, the Crow were relieved that they could sleep soundly at night.

This is a much-needed video. The Lakota Sioux were in fact much like the Zulu and the Spartans, a people who decided to excel in war and succeeded for a time, until they met a people who exceeded their hours powers. Imperialists fell to other imperialists. The Spartans to the Macedonians, the Lakota to the Americans,, and the Zulu to the British. Those who do best, if they conquer, make brothers of their foes and stand together in peace, and together learn the way of equal Justice between men.

I'm truly amazed and proud of most of the comments here. As a child my grandfather, who was Navajo, would tell me stories of our ancestors and the wars they had fought. He never tried to tell me that the white man was wrong or anything of the sort. He simply told us the truth of human nature. We're all flawed and all cultures, Navajo included have less than reputable history. We all come from cultures that have dark marks in our history. One is not worse or better than the other.

This is one of my favorite scenes ever put to film. Colonel Miles cuts through all the bull crap both sides tell each other and themselves and describes the situation as it is, not as we'd like it to be. The line "for no less noble a cause" says it all. He knows he's not on some righteous crusade and has enough respect for his opponent not to pretend otherwise.

Nelson miles was a formidable man. He fought in nearly every major engagement with the Army of the Potomac during the civil war, from the peninsula to appomattox and rose to the rank of a major general before reverting back to his nominal rank post-war. The horrors he no doubt witnessed hardened this life long warrior. He eventually became general in chief of the entire us armed forces later in his life. This meeting between two great warriors must have been something indeed.Read more

See people cheering for Nelson Miles and he is not wrong in his assertions but for me the best part is that he is not claiming any moral high ground and is treating Sitting Bull as an equal.

"the proposition that you were a peaceable people before the appearance of the white man is the most fanciful legend of all" bro nailed it

I saw a PBS documentary on the Sioux nation. They asked an elder why they stole horses from the Whites. He said if they were not smart enough to protect them they didn't deserve them. I thought right then the same went for "their Land"

An uncomfortable historical truth: every single bit of land that belongs to anyone anywhere, once belonged to someone else.

I'm an Apache, and no other tribe caused as much terror among white settlers as mine did. My ancestors raided Spanish, Mexican and American settlers, and were known to sadistically torture prisoners including women and children. They also preyed on neighboring tribes till we were in turn defeated by the Comanche, and wound up having to make peace with the Spaniards or risk being wiped out completely. In short my people were far from peaceable, and I dislike it when white people with no knowledge of my people's history portray us as helpless victims. My people were akin to Vikings, tough and merciless raiders who lived by the proverbial sword, and died by it, too.

“Where did you get this land? From my father. Where did he get it? From his father. Where did he get it? He fought for it. I’ll fight you for it.” -Scandinavian proverb. Not an endorsement of any particular ideology, just an observation about human nature.Show less

This scene depicts an actual historical event, Colonel Nelson Miles met Sitting Bull before the Battle of Cedar Creek in October 1876.

Battle of Cedar Creek - en . wikipedia . org/wiki/Battle_of_Cedar_Creek_(1876)

Nelson Miles - en . wikipedia . org/wiki/Nelson_A._Miles

Sitting Bull - en . wikipedia . org/wiki/Sitting_Bull

Movie: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee en . wikipedia . org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee_(film)

Buddy, the Aztecs raided other natives specifically to capture and sacrifice people to their gods. That’s why those natives teamed up with the Spanish in the first place.

Natives teamed up with white people lots of times.

Also, most Native Americans were killed by random disease, not active killing of any sort.

There’s a long history of white conflicts leaving people alive. All the time. No matter who they were fighting against.

This chief - assuming he actually exists and said this - sounds like a sore loser.

Treating Native Americans as hapless little oppressed victims is actually just an updated Noble Savage narrative. 

And that’s pretty racist.

[wellthebardsdead]

Some deaths prison au for you??? ~Bambi

———

Cole: Woah woah now what’s going on?!

76: Winston’s being a dick.

Winston: Jack wants a dog.

Cole: and? Let him get a dog. Brigitte’s got a cat.

Winston: He wants a pit bull!

Cole: and??

Winston: Any dog declared a dangerous species isn’t permitted on the premises! If someone gets bitten that’ll be a mountain of paperwork I have to deal with!

Cole: winston you are a 600 pound scientifically modified gorilla. Normal gorillas can do a lot worse than just bite humans. We have an active war unit omnic strolling the facility. A former outlaw, myself, in command of our new blackwatch division. A genetically modified hamster riding in a mech. A girl who can teleport with her pet fox, two heavily radiated mutants from the Australian outback, and two ninjas with pet dragons. I think we can handle a dog, regardless of their species.

76: … *looks at winston*

Winston: *sighs* fine. *turns and wanders off* just another thing I have to share peanut butter with…

76: thank you Cassie.

Cole: don’t mention it. Why you want a pit bull anyway? You always struck me as more of a sheepdog type of guy.

76: oh they’re not for me. They’re for Gabe.

Cole: pa?

76: *shows him a video he took of Gabe*

Gabe: *sitting in his wheelchair smiling at videos of pit bulls getting the whole body wiggles from happily wagging their tails*

[tmnt-obsessed-ace]

Sunshine of The Woods: Chapter 4, Getting To Know Each Other

Mikey's life was weird.

That's practically a given at this point. He and his brothers were mutant turtles that live in the sewers.

They were created to be weapons for a war against humankind by a warrior alchemist using the DNA of famed action star Lou Jitsu.

They were…sorta mostly trained in the art of ninjutsu and all four of them sans Donnie use mystic weapons. They fight mutants, yokai, an evil cult hellbent on world domination, hell they even fought an entire suit of evil armor and sent it back to its prison dimension!

Their lives were like a story ripped straight from a comic book!

And somehow, lost in a completely different universe…dimension? Standing in front of a possible different version of his family, in front of a different version of himself!

Mikey's life just got a whole lot weirder.

"Dude…what?" The human boy asked, mouth agape. The duo of turtles plus the ginger girl looked equally as stunned.

The only one who didn't look like their brain was currently exploding was the orange clad turtle, Mikey's apparent counterpart.

Said turtle slung a warm arm over Mikey's shoulders, yanking the box turtle close to his side.

"This is the coolest thing to ever happen in a million years! I always wanted an awesome twin brother! What's your favorite pizza? It's jelly bean, jalapeno and anchovy right? Do you like to skateboard? Are you friends with Leatherhead? What about Ice Cream Kitty? What's your favorite comic book?" All the rapid fire questions started blurring together in a jumbled mess. And with the sudden ringing in Mikey's ears it was near impossible to understand.

His vision began to swim, blurring in and out of focus as more muffled voices joined in. The box turtle's legs were trembling, suddenly struggling to support his weight. His lungs began to ache, a harsh cough tearing through his throat.

And so the turtle coughed and coughed, flem in his throat refusing to come out while his lungs kept begging for some precious air. After what felt like hours, though was not even two minutes, the coughing eased up. That left Mikey a wheezing, shaking mess.

Brown eyes rapidly blinked away the last of his blurred vision as he slowly made up for the air he lost. When Mikey came to he realized that he was sitting on a swivel chair, the five strangers around him.

"Give him some space." The purple clad turtle said, gesturing for everyone else to back up a bit. "Are you alright?" Calloused hands covered in scars were examining Mikey. First one was laid across his forehead, then both cupped his cheeks before trailing down to feel his chin and neck.

"I'm good!" Leo often went through the same motions when one of them got sick and needed an exam.

Leo…Donnie…Raph…

Thinking about his older brothers made Mikey's chest hurt. Were they here in this strange world with him? Did they get seperated?

Loud, furious, clucking from outside the barn broke Mikey's train of thought. All eyes turned towards the barn doors where a brown and white hen was throwing an absolute tantrum.

"Aw a little chicken!" Mikey cooed, smiling at the hen. Everyone else in the room tensed up as the hen charged into the barn. Mikey carefully climbed off the swivel chair and sat on the barn floor. The hen came over, making the box turtle smile. "Aren't you just the cutest!"

The hen stared at him for a moment before she strutted over to Mikey's outstretched hand. He just wanted to pet her!

Unfortunately the hen pecked at his hand, hard enough to make Mikey yelp in pain. The hen began to cluck, pecking at his legs like there was no tomorrow! Each peck hurt more than the last.

"Ow! Ow ow ow ow! Stop it! Go away! Go away!" The hen turned her attention to the human boy, charging toward him like a mad bull. The boy screamed and sprinted out of the barn, the hen in pursuit.

"Why does Brenda always go after me!" The boy shouted as he ran in the yard. The purple clad turtle was clutching his sides in laughter at the comical sight.

"Bye Casey!" The orange clad turtle shouted as the boy, Casey, ran behind the farmhouse. His screams echoed around the property, causing the box turtle to gulp.

"Is he gonna be ok?" Mikey dared to ask, his legs aching from the hen's ruthless assault. Christ that hen was vicious!

"Against Brenda? Eh fifty fifty." The red clad turtle said, making a so-so gesture with his hand as the four of them walked to the farmhouse.

"Why is something so cute looking so mean!" Mikey couldn't help but whine as another coughing fit took hold.

"There is a very high chance that Brenda is actually a demon in the body of a chicken." The girl said nonchalantly, as if that statement wasn't as baffling as it was terrifying.

"Or the soul of an entitled, middle aged white woman." The purple clad turtle added in a deadpan voice. That at least got a good laugh out of Mikey.

"Like she said, Don, a demon." The red clad turtle added, giving the taller turtle a small shove.

Mikey snickered at the pure shudder that shook the girl's body. He definitely heard a few horror stories from April's retail jobs. The only reason she never ended up on an episode of criminal minds was because she had "extremely good self control." From being full on screamed at because she was even a little bit slow on the register to having to remake a drink five times because it simply wasn't good enough.

One of the good parts of being a mutant turtle, Mikey didn't have to get a retail job.

"So just to clarify, your name's Mikey. Correct?" Asked the girl.

"Yup! But who are you…" Mikey trailed off, looking at the girl supporting his weight. He never met anyone who looks like this girl.

"April! Do you not know me where you're from?" The box turtle's eyes went wide as dinner plates. A dumb smile spread across his face before he burst out into a fit of giggles.

At the confused looks on their faces, he forced himself to stop and smiled.

"Sorry it's just…you are so much different from my April!"

"Different how?" One of the four asked, it was most likely other Mikey.

"Well first of all my April is black. She's also shorter than you and wears red glasses." The group of four looked stunned for a second as the new information set in.

Then other April laughs a bit, brushing her bangs out of her face with her free hand.

"Didn't expect that but she sounds really cool."

"The coolest!" A few playful mumbles of disagreement came from the trio of turtles before Mikey looked at them. Time to put names to semi familiar but not really faces.

"You're Raph, the freckled one is also Mikey and the lanky one is Donnie?"

"I am not lanky." Said turtle mumbled with a huff.

"You got it little dude!" Other Mikey practically bounced as he walked.

"And the one you threw over the couch like a damn football is Leo, speaking of which." Other Raph roughly flicked Mikey in the forehead, earning a small yelp.

"Ow! Rude!"

"Like flinging our brother, who was the one that took care of you the most over the past week, over the couch, further aggravating his barely healed injuries wasn't rude?" The box turtle wilted a bit under Other Donnie's sarcasm.

"I'm sorry. I panicked and kinda sorta acted on instinct." Mikey hung his head, guilt filling his mind. It was an honest mistake! He didn't know where he was and freaked out!

"Your first instinct when panicking is to throw someone?" Other Raph said in disbelief.

Ok when you put it like that it does sound pretty absurd. Hell under normal circumstances he would've probably thrown something at the stranger. Whether that be one of his brothers, April, a dumpster, a school bus or even one time an entire cargo ship.

Throwing things with his Kusari-Fundo is just so much fun. He can pick up things that not even Raph cna lift and throw them like tennis balls.

"Throwing things is fun!" Other Mikey smirks like a Cheshire cat, it honestly makes a chill run down Mikey's spine. His counterpart suddenly grabs other Raph by the waist and throws the short turtle into a nearby bush.

"You're right, that is fun!"

"Mikey!" Other Raph practically screams, lunging from the bush at the freckled turtle. Other Mikey bolts off into the woods, laughing up a storm as other Raph gives chase.

Other Donnie and other April snicker, while Mikey just watches in mild confusion. As his counterpart's howls of laughter grow fainter the now trio approach the farmhouse.

The very same farmhouse Mikey ran out of, what maybe close to fifteen minutes ago. After he threw another version of Leo over the couch and bolted. Like a coward. And apparently other Leo might've actually gotten hurt when Mikey oh so rudely chucked him over the couch full force.

Shame bubbled up in Mikey's gut, you don't do something like that to your siblings. Alternate versions or not they were still family.

And he hurt Leo… a tiny whine escaped from Mikey's mouth.

"Is something wrong?" Other April asked. She stopped dead in her tracks, both hands now holding Mikey with the box turtle facing her. Mikey started coughing again, thankful for the convenient timing. He could feel both other April and other Donnie rubbing his shell in an attempt to soothe him. Truth be told it was helping some.

"Is he alright?" A familiar harsh voice asked right when the coughing fit was nearing its end. Mikey kept his eyes to the ground, after all the grass was suddenly incredibly interesting to look at.

There was a dull tap tapping sound and before the box turtle had a chance to question what it was he felt a warm hand cup his cheek, gently lifting his head up.

For the second time today, brown eyes locked with dark blue ones. The blue clad turtle smiled softly at him, only further cementing his guilt.

"Let's get him inside." Other Leo said, walking back inside the farmhouse. There it was again, the tap tapping sound. Other Donnie and other April didn't seem to react to the sound. It only took a few seconds for Mikey to realize what it was, and then immediately want to both punch himself in the head and sink into the ground.

It was a wooden crutch tapping against the floor with each step other Leo took. A crutch to support his right knee, which from what Mikey could gather, was wrapped in thick layers of fabric and gauze.

That must've been one of the injuries that he had aggravated when he chucked other Leo over the couch. It had to be an older injury! Because there was no way in hell that he hurt the blue clad turtle enough to warrant a makeshift crutch and cast.

Right?

The trio went inside, with other Donnie coaxing other Leo to sit down on the couch, right leg out straight and propped up under a pillow. Mikey was sat down next to the blue clad turtle, causing his already queasy stomach to clench and tighten with even more guilt.

It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault…

"I'm gonna hit up some leftovers for lunch, you guys want some?" Other April asked, when both of the bigger turtles nodded, Mikey felt a bit awkward. He was technically intruding on them, not to mention his little stunt earlier was not at all how introductions were supposed to go.

Luckily his stomach answered for him, a particularly loud grumble made him blush while his stomach continued to whine for food. He was so hungry…

"I'll take that as a yes, we got some leftover Japanese food if that's alright?" Mikey could only nod, perhaps to spare himself the embarrassment. With that other April disappeared into the kitchen, ginger ponytail swishing with each step.

Then there were three.

"I'm sorry about earlier. Just got a little freaked out is all." Mikey finished with an awkward laugh, utterly nervous on how exactly this alternate version of his stubborn dramatic brother would react.

Oh for crying out loud Leo is still going on about how Draxum threw him off a building, even though it's old news and Draxum is at least trying to be nicer. Well…nicer isn't exactly an accurate term. He hasn't tried to kill them and he might be coming around to humans! Baby steps!

"It's alright," Other Leo said, pulling Mikey closer. "You woke up in a place you've never been before with no clue how you got here. That's pretty nerve wracking at first. I know the feeling…" The box turtle relaxed a bit, some of the tension finally leaving his body.

"We didn't get a formal introduction! Hi I'm Mikey!" Other Donnie fondly rolled his eyes, while other Leo chuckled.

"I'm Leo, though I think it was obvious from this." Other Leo held a dark blue mask tail between his fingers.

"Yeah that's about the only reason, you're so different from my Leo!" Mikey boasted as the door was pushed open. Other Mikey and Other Raph came back in, covered in small scrapes and bruises from their apparent scuffle.

Other Mikey trudged over to the couch, flopping down into Other Leo's lap.

"Moooom!" The orange clad turtle droned in obviously dramatic fashion. Going hard on the puppy eyes too. "Raph bit me!" He held up his wrist, revealing a large bite mark. It didn't look hard enough to leave a permanent mark, or even bruise really badly. Other Raph scoffed, showing off two bite marks of his own.

"Don't act all innocent when you bit me twice! What's wrong can't take what you dish out!"

The oh so elegant and well thought out response to such an accusation? A raspberry of course!

Other Leo sighed, pushing other Mikey onto the floor, where he landed with a soft "oof"

"It is too early for you two."

"Yeah it's only noon you two boneheads are not allowed to kill each other till after lunch!" Other Donnie added, claiming one of the recliners.

"Remember when we used to stay up past midnight?"

"Remember when you dressed up as a fairy princess for halloween?" Was other Mikey's reply, causing the red clad turtle to snap his head towards his brother.

"That was one time!" With a shout other Raph tried to once again lunge at other Mikey, who climbed back onto other Leo's lap, hugging the blue clad turtle tightly. Ah yes, use a brother as a shield. Classic.

Mikey laughed at their antics, watching sith glee as other Raph tried yanking other Mikey off of other Leo, while the orange clad turtle screamed and hollered like he was being murdered. It was all an act, he was smiling the entire time.

"Yeah get him shorty! Make him scream!" Mikey taunted, it was like watching a classic moment between the disaster twins that usually ended with chaos.

Suddenly everyone turned to stare at Mikey, which made him slink into his shell. What had he said?

"Shorty?" Other Raph echoed, a confused look on his face. "I'm taller than you!"

"Well you're shorter than my Raph!" Now that statement right there caught the red clad turtle's attention. He sat on the arm rest of the recliner other Donnie claimed, waiting for an elaboration.

"How tall is your Raph?" Other Donnie asked curiously. Other April was peeking out from the kitchen, not wanting to be left out of drama.

"Six feet tall, though I think he might be taller than that now, it's been awhile since we checked." Everyone's mouths fell open.

After a few tense seconds, other Raph buried his head into his hands, groaning the entire time.

"That is so not fucking fair! Fuck! Come on!"

The other three turtles and other April started laughing, further aggravating the short red clad turtle.

"Wow shorty, jealous much?

"Shut the fuck up Dee! No one asked you for an opinion."

Other Donnie simply shrugged as the door of the farmhouse opened once again.

Casey stumbled in, his face covered in small scratches from the evil hen. He claimed the other recliner, groaning dramatically.

"How do I keep losing to a fucking chicken! That's messed up!" Mikey snickered, it seems the feud between chicken and boy was a long standing one.

"Hey armpit, where little Mikey is from Raph is six feet tall!" Casey sputtered like an old car engine before bursting out laughing, wildly kicking his legs about.

"I wonder what else is different." Mikey perked up, sitting cross legged next to other Leo.

"First of all we're all different turtle species!" At the baffled looks he received, Mikey continued. "Alligator snapping turtle, spiny softshell, red eared slider, ornate box turtle." He pointed at other Raph, other Donnie and other Leo respectively before pointing to himself when he finished.

"That's so cool!" Other Mikey gasped, rocking excitedly. Suddenly he bounded towards the kitchen, leaving Mikey a bit stunned. Okay then…

Other Donnie was staring at his short red clad brother, eyes wide and hell.

"Alligator snapping turtle…how are you alive?" He mumbled, earning a shove from other Raph.

"Don't those turtles get really big?"

"Yup, big and spiky."

"This is so not fair!"

"Raph you can sulk about being the second shortest later, right now we have more pressing issues." Other Leo said calmly, causing Mikey to get whiplash.

It wasn't the words themselves, but the way they were said. There was a calm but inherent sense of authority behind those words, because almost instantly the room quieted down, not a single groan or protest. The only sounds were other April and other Mikey in the kitchen.

Mikey felt a bit stunned, not even Raph could quiet a room down that fast. He didn't even have to raise his voice to do it! It was clear that other Leo was in charge. Which is really weird, shouldn't other Raph be in charge? He's the oldest sibling after all!

"How did you end up here in the first place?" Mikey frowned, trying to rack his brain for answers.

"Well it started when Leo lost his odāchi in a game of paintball tag, then the Footclan stole it so we went after them." The box turtle was so wrapped up in his story that he didn't notice how everyone's expressions changed from interested to horrified at the mention of the words Footclan. Nevertheless Mikey continued.

"We chased them to an abandoned warehouse and fought against those foot-faced creeps but the odāchi was plugged into some weird empty door looking thing and it started glowing! It was sucking everything! I tried to hold on but I got sucked in! Then whoosh! I ended up here…how long was I out?"

"About a week." Mikey whined, he was here a week! His family was probably so worried! Other Leo pulled him close, hand rubbing circles into the back of Mikey' shell.

"We'll get you back home little dude." Other Mikey said as he came back into the living room, a plastic red bowl of something in his hands.

"Yeah Mikey's right we'll get you back to your own world no matter what it takes." Other April chimed in as she was finishing up the food.

"So how exactly are we gonna do that?" Casey asked, slumping over the armrest of the recliner.

"The Kraang portal? That could work." Other Raph chimed in.

"Yeah but when are we going back to New York City? It could be months before we go back! It's not fair to make him wait that long!" Other Leo protested, meanwhile Mikey was getting a tad bit confused.

Go back? Why did they leave the city? And what's a Kraang?

Other Donnie stood up and began pacing, muttering something under his breath. "Well perhaps I could look through the Kraang ship in the basement, maybe there's a teleporter or something?"

"That's a start. But until we get you back home you are more than welcome to stay here with us." Mikey beamed, wrapping his arms around other Leo in a bone crushing hug.

"Hey little dude there's someone you should meet!" The bowl was put into Mikey's lap. It looked like it was filled with melted neapolitan ice cream.

"Uh…what am I looking at?"

"Aw she's sleeping!" Other Mikey cooed before reaching a hand into the bowl and…petting the ice cream.

"Have you lost your-" Mikey was cut off when the ice cream made a little 'mrrmph' noise before it began to take shape, much to the box turtle's shock. In a matter of seconds the melted looking ice cream formed a cat's body, with floppy little ice cream paws and the absolute cutest little face. The strange creature looked up at Mikey, a questioning mew being its response.

Mikey gasped, eyes shining as he stared at the most adorable little creature on the planet.

"Meet the best kitty a turtle could ask for, Ice Cream Kitty! Isn't she great?" The cat meowed at Mikey and he was sold.

"Ohmigosh you are so stinkin cute!" He hugged the incredibly cold cat to his plastron, nuzzling her and kissing her adorable little head all over. She purred and mewed in delight, only furthering Mikey's love for her.

Everyone else smiled at the adorable sight as the smell of japanese take out filled the air. Lunchtime!

Other Donnie went into the kitchen to help other April bring out the food, thank god Mikey was getting so hungry and the food smelt amazing!

As the food was being brought out, Mikey momentarily stopped showering Ice Cream Kitty with affection, causing her to bump and nuzzle her head against his chin in protest.

"You mind if I ask a few questions?" No one had any objections so Mikey continued. "What are you guys doing here in a farmhouse? Why can't you go back to the city? And what are the Kraang?" The room went deathly silent, no one dared to move.

All of a sudden the turtles and their human friends looked so exhausted, nervous dread painted their now pale faces. Even Ice Cream Kitty looked upset, her ears pressed to the back of her head while she slunk back into her bowl.

Everyone looked so much…older. Like they aged ten years in a matter of seconds. Other Mikey scooter next to other Raph, who slung an arm protectively around the youngest's shoulders. Casey went rigid, hands clenched into tight fists. Other April and other Donnie just stood there, frozen.

The weird part is, that all four of them were looking at other Leo. Some with more subtlety than others. The blue clad turtle however wasn't looking at anyone. Instead he was not so subtly glaring at his right knee, the one bandaged and propped up. Mikey could feel him shaking a little bit.

Oh what did he do?

"I…uh…sorry was that a bit of a touchy subject? I didn't mean to pry!" He tried to backtrack, he hadn't meant to cause this! He was just curious!

"We know, it's fine." Other Raph said in a surprisingly gentle tone. The exact same tone Raph would use to reassure a hurt sibling that everything would be ok. "It's a long story and I'll tell you later, ok?" Mikey nodded as the stifling silence vanished as quickly as it came.

"Let's eat! I'm starving bro!" Other Mikey yelled, practically bouncing for food. The food was all set in the large coffee table. Mikey's stomach growled like a furious animal, earning laughter from everyone in the room.

Even while most of the tension had disappeared, there was still a sense of unease amongst everyone, unresolved anxiety that was hanging around like a mist. Clearly something happened, something bad enough to drive the group from their home to the farmhouse and render other Leo unable to walk!

Judging by the group's reactions, calling it bad was an understatement. Horrific might be the better word.

Either way once the box turtle finds out what that bad thing was, Dr. Feelings will have so much work to do.

[thebigkelu]

Sitting Bull and his favorite wife. Sitting before tepee. American Indian prisoners of war, camp near Fort Randall, Dakota Territory - Bailey - 1882