Day 2: Bad White Peoples & Big Steaks! 

 

Main Page > Go South West Old Men! >

 

The Boys rose early on winters morn for another stop in Springfield1?! Yep, Springfield Missouri for a cup of coffee! With cups of java in hand, Mike drove through southern Missouri and into the Sooner state, where the Boys stopped in Tulsa and visited a very sad site for race relations, Greenwood.

 

A Black Mark on White America!

The Horrible Tulsa Greenwood Massacre of 1921

The Tulsa race riot was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist massacre that took place in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as "deputies" and armed by city government officials, attacked black residents and destroyed homes and businesses. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.

The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street."

 

The Iconic Greenwood Neighborhood

More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 black residents of Tulsa were interned in large facilities, many of them for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead. The 2001 Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 dead, 26 black and 13 white, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records. The commission reported estimates ranging from 36 up to around 300 dead.  Mike and been there before and brought Bone to check it out.

 

Greenwood Rising: The Tulsa Massacre Black Wall Street Museum

Mike and Bone checked the sordid story at the Greenwood Rising Museum, which gathered the shards of the story, showing what was lost in the eruption of racial violence—and what the Black community was able to retain. Using multi-media screens and projections, it presented the streets of Greenwood, both during its heyday, and then at its destruction. The final of the museum’s eight spaces, the “Journey to Reconciliation,” urges visitors to visualize how Greenwood, and the greater community, might heal as it moves forward.

 

Day-by-Day Storyboards of the Massacre

The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building. He was arrested and rumors that he was to be lynched were spread throughout the city, where a white man named Roy Belton had been lynched the previous year. Upon hearing reports that a mob of hundreds of white men had gathered around the jail where Rowland was being held, a group of 75 black men, some armed, arrived at the jail to protect Rowland. The sheriff persuaded the group to leave the jail, assuring them that he had the situation under control.

The most widely reported and corroborated inciting incident occurred as the group of black men left when an elderly white man approached O. B. Mann, a black man, and demanded that he hand over his pistol. Mann refused, and the old man attempted to disarm him. A gunshot went off, and then, according to the sheriff's reports, "all hell broke loose." The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men were greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood. At the end of the exchange of gunfire, 12 people were dead, 10 white and 2 black. Alternatively, another eyewitness account was that the shooting began "down the street from the Courthouse" when black business owners came to the defense of a lone black man being attacked by a group of around six white men. It is possible that the eyewitness did not recognize the fact that this incident was occurring as a part of a rolling gunfight that was already underway. As news of the violence spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. White rioters invaded Greenwood that night and the next morning, killing men and burning and looting stores and homes. Around noon on June 1, the Oklahoma National Guard imposed martial law, ending the massacre, but not the many years of trama to come.

Mike and Bone learned that about 10,000 black people were left homeless, and the cost of the property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $39.66 million in 2024 terms). By the end of 1922, most of the residents' homes had been rebuilt, but the city and real estate companies refused to compensate them. Many survivors left Tulsa, while residents who chose to stay in the city, regardless of race, largely kept silent about the terror, violence, and resulting losses for decades. The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories for years.

Finally in 1996, 75 years after the massacre, a bipartisan group in the state legislature authorized the formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission's final report, published in 2001, was unable to establish that the city had conspired with the racist mob; however it recommended a program of reparations to survivors and their descendants. The state passed legislation to establish scholarships for the descendants of survivors, encourage the economic development of Greenwood, and develop a park in memory of the victims of the massacre in Tulsa. The park was dedicated in 2010. Schools in Oklahoma have been required to teach students about the massacre since 2002, and in 2020, the massacre officially became a part of the Oklahoma school curriculum.

Walking out reflective and sober from the Museum on man's inhumanity to man over something so stupid as skin color, they read through the part that the Vernon AME Central Church.

 

The Vernon AME Church, Central to the Massacre

Vernon AME Church is where many black's hid during the hideous events. Fairly disgusted, the Boys grabbed a local coffee from the re-invigorated neighborhood and headed west toward a big mistake for George Armstrong Custer, whose mistake made him famous as an Indian hunter.

 

Catching Custer's Karma: Battle of the Washita

The Battle of the Washita River occurred on November 27, 1868, when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River.

The Cheyenne camp was the most isolated band of a major winter encampment along the river of numerous Native American tribal bands, totaling thousands of people. Custer's forces attacked the village because scouts had found it by tracking the trail of an Indian party that had raided white settlers. Black Kettle and his people had been at peace and were seeking peace. Custer's soldiers killed women and children in addition to warriors, although they also took many captives to serve as hostages and human shields. The number of actual Cheyenne killed in the attack has been disputed since the first days.

The background on this sad story started shortly after the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty in October 1867, they were – according to the final treaty text as affirmed by Congress – required to move south from present-day Kansas and Colorado to a new reservation in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma). The actual oral accord of the treaty negotiations, however, had guaranteed the Cheyenne their traditional hunting lands as long as there was sufficient buffalo to justify the chase, a crucial treaty stipulation that was intentionally dropped in the subsequent ratification process. This forced the Cheyenne to give up their traditional territory for one with little arable land away from buffalo, their main source of meat!

Months of fragile peace survived raids between warring Kaw Indians and Southern Cheyennes, but in summer 1868, war parties of Southern Cheyenne and allied Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Northern Cheyenne, Brulé, Oglala, and Pawnee warriors attacked white settlements in western Kansas, southeast Colorado, and northwest Texas. Among these raids were those along the Solomon and Saline rivers in Kansas, which began August 10, 1868. The warriors killed at least 15 white settlers, wounded others, and were reported to have raped some women, as well as taking others captive to be adopted into their tribes.

Based on this attack, General Philip Sheridan, in command of the U.S. Army's Department of the Missouri, planned a winter campaign against the Cheyenne. While difficult, a winter campaign offered the best chance for decisive results, since it was the only time of year the Plains Indians were stationary and easy to catch. If their shelter, food, and livestock could be destroyed or captured, not only the warriors but their women and children would be at the mercy of both the Army and the elements. They would be forced to surrender. Sheridan planned to have three columns converge on the Indian wintering grounds just east of the Texas Panhandle: one from Fort Lyon in Colorado, one from Fort Bascom in New Mexico, and one from a supply camp to be established (Camp Supply). There, Lt. Col. George A. Custer commanded the 7th Cavalry's 800 soldiers against the various bands on the Washita River. They set out on November 23, 1868, in the midst of heavy snow of the early winter.

The evening before the battle, on November 25, a war party of as many as 150 warriors, which included young men of the camps of Black Kettle, Medicine Arrows, Little Robe, and Old Whirlwind, had returned to the Washita encampments. They had been raiding white settlements in the Smoky Hill River country with the Dog Soldiers.

 

Mike and Bone Battling at the Washita!

Major Joel Elliott of the Seventh Cavalry found the trail of the raiders on November 26, which drew Custer and his forces to the Washita. On November 26, the same day that Black Kettle returned to the Washita, a party of Kiowa returning from raiding the Utes passed through Black Kettle's camp on their way to their own village. They told the Cheyenne that as they had passed near the Antelope Hills on the Canadian River, they had seen a large trail leading southward toward the Washita camps. The Cheyenne discounted the information, as they did not believe U.S. soldiers would operate so far south in such wintry conditions. The Kiowa proceeded to their own village further east along the river, but Trails the Enemy decided to stay overnight with friends in Black Kettle's camp.

On the same day, Crow Neck, a returning warrior, told Bad Man (also known as Cranky Man) that he had left an exhausted horse along the trail to rest. When he went back to retrieve the horse that day, he saw moving figures to the north who looked like soldiers. Fearful, he turned back without getting his horse. Bad Man doubted Crow Neck had seen soldiers; he said perhaps he had a guilty conscience from having gone against the chiefs' wishes by joining the war party. Crow Neck told no one else what he had seen, fearing that he might be laughed at, or chastised by Black Kettle for having been part of the raid.

Meanwhile, that evening, Black Kettle held a council in his lodge with the principal men of his village to convey what he had learned at Fort Cobb about Sheridan's war plans. Discussion lasted into the early morning hours of November 27. The council decided that after the foot-deep snow cleared, they would send out runners to talk with the soldiers. They wanted to clear up misunderstandings and make it clear that Black Kettle's people wanted peace. Meanwhile, they decided to move camp the next day downriver to be closer to the other Indian camps.

Later that night, Custer's Osage scouts located the trail of an Indian war party. Custer's troops followed this trail all day without a break until nightfall, when they rested briefly until there was sufficient moonlight to continue. They followed the trail to Black Kettle's village, where Custer divided his force into four parts, moving each into position so that at first daylight they could simultaneously converge on the village.  At daybreak, as the columns attacked, Double Wolf awoke and fired his gun to alert the village; he was among the first to die in the charge. The cavalry musicians played "Garryowen" to signal the attack. The Cheyenne warriors hurriedly left their lodges to take cover behind trees and in deep ravines. Custer soon controlled the village, but it took longer to quell all remaining resistance.

The Osage, enemies to the Cheyenne, were at war with most of the Plains tribes. The Osage scouts led Custer toward the village, hearing sounds and smelling smoke from the camp long before the soldiers.

 

The Washita River Valley

The Osage did not participate in the initial attack, fearing that the soldiers would mistake them for Cheyenne and shoot them. Instead, they waited behind the color-bearer of the 7th US Cavalry on the north side of the river until the village was taken. The Osage rode into the village, where they took scalps and helped the soldiers round up fleeing Cheyenne women and children.

Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman, were shot in the back and killed while fleeing on a pony. Following the capture of Black Kettle's village, Custer was in a precarious position. As the fighting began to subside, he saw large groups of mounted Indians gathering on nearby hilltops and learned that Black Kettle's village was only one of many Indian encampments along the river, where thousands of Indians had gathered. Fearing an attack, he ordered some of his men to take defensive positions while the others seized the Indians' property and horses. They destroyed what they did not want or could not carry, slaughtering about 675 ponies and horses. They spared 200 horses to carry prisoners.     Near nightfall after the battle, fearing the outlying Indians would find and attack his supply train, Custer began marching his forces toward the other encampments. The surrounding Indians retreated, at which point Custer turned around and returned to his supply train.

In his first report of the battle to Gen. Sheridan on November 28, 1868, Custer reported that by "actual and careful examination after the battle", his men had found the bodies of 103 warriors – a figure repeated by Sheridan when he relayed news of the Washita fight to Bvt. Maj. Gen. W.A. Nichols the following day. In fact, no count of the dead had been made. The reported number was based on Custer's reports from his officers the day after the attack, during their return to Camp Supply. Cheyenne and other Indian estimates of the Indian casualties at the Washita, as well as estimates by Custer's civilian scouts, are much lower.

According to a modern account by the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the 7th Cavalry had 21 officers and men killed and 13 wounded at the Washita. They estimated the Indians had perhaps 50 killed and as many wounded. Twenty of the soldiers killed were part of a small detachment led by Major Joel Elliott, who was among the dead. Elliott had separated from the three companies he led, apparently without Custer's approval. Yelling "Here's for a brevet or a coffin!", Elliott and his small band pursued a group of fleeing Cheyenne. Elliott's contingent ran into a mixed party of Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho warriors who were rushing from villages up the river to aid Black Kettle's encampment. The warriors overwhelmed the small troop in a single charge. So for Elliot, it was a coffin!

Custer's abrupt withdrawal without determining the fate of Elliott and the missing troopers darkened Custer's reputation among his peers. There was deep resentment within the 7th Cavalry that never healed. In particular, Frederick Benteen, Eliott's friend and H Company captain, never forgave Custer for "abandoning" Elliott and his troopers. Eight years later, when Benteen failed to race to Custer's aid at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, his actions were closely examined in light of his long-standing anger toward Custer for the events at the Washita River.

The  Battle of the Washita River demonstrated a key component in Custer's field strategy – Indian noncombatants included many women, children, and the elderly or disabled. Custer targeted them for capture to serve as hostages and human shields. Custer's battalions intended to "ride into the camp and secure noncombatant hostages" and "force the warriors to surrender". Custer demonstrated the value at the Battle of the Washita of a strategy that used "captured women and children" to "neutralize" the Southern Cheyenne superiority in numbers over the US military.

Larry Sklenar, in his narrative of the Washita battle, also describes the role of "hostages" as human shields: “Custer probably could not have pulled off this tactical coup at the Washita had he not had in his possession the fifty-some women and children captives. Although not hostages in the narrowest meaning of the word, doubtlessly it occurred to Custer that the family-oriented Cheyenne warriors would not attack the Seventh Cavalry with the women and children marching in the middle of his column.

Custer provided the military logic for tactical use of human shields in his book My Life on the Plains, published two years before the Battle of the Little Big Horn:

Indians contemplating a battle, either offensive or defensive, are always anxious to have their women and children removed from all danger…For this reason I decided to locate our military camp as close as convenient to Chief Black Kettle's Cheyenne village, knowing that the close proximity of their women and children, and their necessary exposure in case of conflict, would operate as a powerful argument in favor of peace, when the question of peace or war came to be discussed.

General Phil Sheridan, commander of the Department of the Missouri, has issued orders for the Washita River expedition, including the following: "to destroy Indian villages and ponies, to kill or hang all warriors, and to bring back all woman and children survivors." The purpose of this "total war" strategy was to make "all segments of Indian society experience the horrors of war as fully as the warriors".

 

The Site of the Cheyenne Village on the Washita

Benjamin "Ben" Clark, the highly regarded scout and guide attached to the Seventh Cavalry, recalled that women and children were not spared being killed at the Washita: "The regiment galloped through the tepees ... firing indiscriminately and killing men and women alike." One cavalry unit was seen pursuing "a group of women and children," shooting at them and "killing them without mercy". Lieutenant Edward Godfrey observed that soldiers made no effort "to prevent hitting women" during the attack.

Ben Clark reported "the loss of seventy-five [Cheyenne] warriors dead, and fully as many women and children killed". Greene notes that "all warriors who lay wounded in the village – presumably no matter the extent of their injuries" were (according to Clark's testimony) "promptly shot to death". This was consistent with Sheridan's orders to kill or summarily hang all [captured] warriors. The Seventh Cavalry tactical engagement of noncombatants contributed to the effective "destruction" of Black Kettle's village – it "ceased to exist".   So the question is was it a battle or massacre? Historian Paul Andrew Hutton wrote, "Although the fight on the Washita was most assuredly one-sided, it was not a massacre. Black Kettle's Cheyennes were not unarmed innocents living under the impression that they were not at war. Several of Black Kettle's warriors had recently fought the soldiers, and the chief had been informed by Hazen that there could be no peace until he surrendered to Sheridan. The soldiers were not under orders to kill everyone, for Custer personally stopped the slaying of noncombatants, and fifty-three prisoners were taken by the troops."

However, Historian Joseph B. Thoburn considers the destruction of Black Kettle's village too one-sided to be called a battle. He reasons that had a superior force of Indians attacked a white settlement containing no more people than were in Black Kettle's camp, with like results, the incident would doubtless have been heralded as "a massacre".  

 

Raggedly Religous Celebration of the Victims

Mike and Bone learning of the story headed done to where the Village had been, there, the trees were covered with ceremonial scarves and ribbons in the trees. Unfortunately there were so many signs warning people to not take pictures due to its religious significance, Mike and Bone paid it the same religious respect they gave the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and took a picture! Heading out it was high time to mess with Texas again!

 

Messing with Texas, Again!

 

The next few hours Mike and Bone kibbitzed on whether it was a lopsided battle or a durned massacre, soon the a signed appeared that changed their state of mind! The State of Texas!

Following along the iconic Route 66 Mike and Bone had fond memories of something that they never had a T-Bone of contention, the Big Texan!!!

 

Table Steaks!