COWBOYS AND INDIANS TODAY
Tammie’s Destiny, the latest volume of my series, Once Upon a Time in the Texas Panhandle, is a love story. It follows the seemingly impossible romance between a Comanche Apache young lady and a West Texas cowboy in the 1950s. Tammie is a reservation Native struggling to support her family by trick riding in rodeos throughout New Mexico. Grant is the pampered son of one of the wealthiest cattlemen of the Texas Panhandle. Both her people and his family oppose their relationship. In Texas, it is illegal. In New Mexico, it goes against both Indigenous and Spanish cultures. But they have Destiny on their side.
Their love story is at the same time a social commentary—more relevant today than ever.
Americans have always been fascinated by cowboys and Indians. Every major white Hollywood actor has made at least one movie where he appears as a cowboy hero, either attacking or aiding Native Americans. Today’s importance of re-examining the relationship between European Americans and America’s Indigenous peoples is such that President-elect Biden has nominated Debra Anne Haaland to become the first Native American to run the Department of the Interior, and the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. History.
Today, Native Americans are joining with Black Americans and other people of color in demanding recognition of the centuries of abuse that has been sponsored by the U.S. and state governments. Public symbols of this abuse—inappropriate statues and memorials—must go!
Most recently, on the day after Christmas, members of the Dakota Sioux defaced the over-sized bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln that sits on the law in front of San Francisco City Hall. Lincoln’s face was covered in red paint. At the base of the monument, Lincoln’s etched name was highlighted in the same bloody color. This vandalism intentionally coincided with the 158th anniversary of Dec. 26, 1862 mass hanging of Native American leaders, which was personally okayed by President Lincoln. This followed the 1862 Dakota Sioux Uprising in southwest Minnesota. Throughout the 1850s treaty violations by the United States and late annuity payments by corrupt Indian Agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. During the uprising, the Dakota killed as many as 800 white settlers. US soldiers put down the uprising. A military court then sentenced 38 Native leaders to death in the largest one-day mass execution in American history. The Dakota Sioux have not forgotten that President Lincoln himself approved this.
My love story begins with a similar uprising: The Red River War of 1874-1875. US Cavalry under Col. Ranald Mackenzie ended the war by surprising and capturing several thousand Comanche and allied tribal members in Palo Duro Canyon, near Amarillo, Texas. The soldiers then marched their captives on foot more than 200 hundred miles to reservations in Oklahoma—a “trail of tears” that resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of women, children, and elderly. The cause of the war was the decision by the Texas and U.S. governments to remove Indigenous people from the Texas Panhandle, so that white cattlemen and settlers could move in. To this day, this injustice perpetrated against Native Americans of the Texas Panhandle has been ignored. That their land was stolen is not taught in schools. Titles to land in the area make no mention of any recognized ownership by the Indigenous peoples who had lived there for centuries. … My story is intended to make known what happened.
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