oh wynema!

I recently finished a book entitled, Wynema by S. Alice Callahan, originally published in 1891 (for my English 426 class). In summary it is about two women, a settler and an indigenous woman, named Wynema. Characteristic of many novels written at the time, it is a love story (or several) set amongst a backdrop of dispossession, allotment and genocide. I liked the book, but what I really want to share are some very specific excerpts by a Lakota warrior named, Wildfire prior to what is not too subtle a reference to the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29th, 1890. I founded these passages the most moving and motivating of the whole book:

We were once a large and powerful nation, ruling over a vast portion of this country of yours. By the white man's cruelty and treachery we have been driven farther and farther away, until we now occupy this Government reservation, in a climate so cold and exposed to hardships that our numbers have diminished until we are but a handful - a mere speck of what we were. In the old days we were free; we hunted and fished as we pleased, while our (women) tilled the soil. Now we are driven to a small spot, chosen by the pale-faces, where we are watched over and controlled by agents who can starve us to death at their will. Think you, I can hear of peace when I see my noble companions slain because they refuse to obey the commands of the military men? When our (women) and children are shot down like dogs before our eyes? May the Great Father hear me when I say, let this arm wither, let these eyes grow dim, let this savage heart still its beating, when I stand still and make peace with a Government whose only policy is to exterminate my race.

If we cannot be free, let us die. What is life to a caged bird, threatened with death on all sides? The cat springs to catch it and hangs to the cage looking with greedy eyes at the victim. Strange, free birds gather round its prison and peck its eyes, taunting it with its captivity until it beats its wings against the cage and longs for freedom, yea, even the freedom of death. So it is with us. The white man has caged us, here, for his greedy brothers to devour.

You speak of my wife and children. Ah, well you may. It is for them I resist, for them I shall battle, and for them I shall die, if need be - that my sons may not grow up the oppressed wards of a mighty nation - the paltry beggars to whom a pitiful sum of one cent is doled out, when the whole vast country is theirs by right of inheritance...And again; is it right for the nation who have been trampled upon, whose land, whose property, whose liberty, whose everything but life, have been taken away, to meekly submit and still bow their heads for the yoke? Why the very ox has more spirit than that!