Kill and scalp all, nits make lice.

A lot of people who are I think at least a little bit ignorant of history wonder why Native american groups take issue with sports mascots. In the town where I grew up, South Deerfield this was a big issue when I was in seventh grade at Frontier. A Native American group had taken issue with the name and gotten the school to change it and there was a referendum on what the new name should be. I always thought it should be changed to the 'Frontier Rednecks' because of my experience at the school. But there were several choices and the student body ended up choosing 'red hawks' which remains the name to this day. But still alot of people wondered what all the fuss was about. I mean besides reducing a population of millions to a population of 400,000 at the turn of the century. Perhaps its the long history of broken treaties and broken promises, of forced marches and massacres. And the language of this period is unmistakable in terms of the intentions of those who coveted Indian lands. Words like 'extermination' and 'extinction' are used frequently when reading about the history of Native American's in the west. And the abuse continues to this day with Native Americans on reservations typically living below the poverty line. Colonel John Chivington of the U.S. army before the massacre at Sand Creek in which 105 Indians women and children were killed and 28 men 'kill and scalp all, nits make lice.' After the Sand Creek Massacre George and Charlie Bent who were sons of a white trader and a Cheyenne woman, were so disgusted by the events they witnessed there that they chose to take up with the Cheyennes instead and forsake their father. And who could blame them, after seeing the soldiers mutilating the bodies of the Indian's as one Soldier put it 'in going over the battleground the next day I did not see the body of man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many horrible instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner-men, women, and children's privates cut out & I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick.' Makes your stomach turn reading the kinds of things people are capable of. And I still see people around town waving the 'redskins' banner like they are some kind of patriots. Fucking rednecks.