Nits Make Lice

Sitaram asks, "Who was that wise person who once said that those who do not study history will be doomed to repeat it?"

I value the experience to read the posts at this progressiveislam.org site. As I read about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the following chapter from American history comes to mind. I did some google searching and found the following links, from which I here post a few excerpts.

I make no personal comment or judgment in this post, except to quote Jonathan Swift in paraphrase, who once wrote: "There is just enough religion in the world to make everyone hate each other, but not enough religion in the world to make everyone love one another."

When I studied this event some years ago, I came a cross an account which said that the Indian women beared their chests to the approaching soldiers, so that they may see that they are women, and perhaps not fire.  The mothers had hidden their babies in various places, in the bushes and tall grass.  The soldiers killed the women, and searched out and killed the infants.  I did not come across this information in todays brief google search, so I shall simply recount it from memory.

http://www.manataka.org/page161.html

The attack came at dawn. "Take no prisoners," Chivington ordered, adding his own slogan, "...nits make lice." The attack lasted over
eight hours, becoming one of the worst acts of savagery that exists in records of Colorado history. When the first shots were fired by the troops, less than a hundred warriors ran up the creek bed and hastily dug pits to established a line of defense.

As a military operation, the battle was a horrible bungle. The surprised warriors, ill-armed, managed to hold their own and keep the soldiers at bay for nearly eight hours. Meanwhile, nearly five hundred Indians managed to escape across the prairie, including Black Kettle.

Command was lost early in the day, fighting was confused, as soldiers were caught in their own crossfire.

Those Indians who could not flee the bloody insanity, died on the spot.

Eye-witness testimony estimated the number just under two hundred, while Chivington would boast six hundred hostiles killed. Two thirds of the dead were women and children. White Antelope was among the

first killed in the military fire. Once the firing began, he left his lodge with arms extended, in the traditional sign of peace. He was shot down in a single round of fire.

Black Kettle immediately flew the American flag, as well as the white flag given him by Major Anthony. The sign of peace ignored, the
military onslaught continued. Black Kettle eventually took his wife
and fled toward the prairie. His wife was shot, and as troopers rode
near, they put eight more bullets in her body. Black Kettle returned for his wife, and seeing her alive, threw her over his shoulder and ran. He later extracted the bullets, and his wife lived.

A three-old Indian toddler, perfectly naked, toddled out toward the dry creek bed. Three troopers dismounted some seventy yards from the child, and assumed the cavalry kneeling position for fire. One carbine shot hit the sand at the child's feet. Let me try... the second trooper demanded. He also missed. Hell, spat the third trooper, as he raised his carbine and fired. The child dropped in the sand. One nit that would never become lice.

http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/chiving.htm

The Sand Creek Massacre

On November 29, 1864, Col. John M. Chivington of the Colorado
Volunteers, brought his militia to a village of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Their leader, Black Kettle, believed himself under the protection of the regular U. S. Army, and his tepee flew an American and white flags. Chivington, wanting a battle before his men's three month enlistments expired, massacred and mutilated over 100 women and children and the few men who remained in the village after the main band had gone on a hunting party. Chivington was never brought to trail, and while many criticized what he had done, many others praised him to the end.

# There were Sympathetic accounts of Sand Creek

# Other eyewitness accounts referred to the event as the Sand Creek

massacre

# Those who heard the account of what had happened to the Indian "savages" on November 29, 1864, asked, "Who is the Savage"?

* Chivington ordered him men: "kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice."
* Black Kettle, Peace Chief escaped being murdered..

Chivington's Background: The "Fighting Parson"

# John M. Chivington was born in Ohio and had spent years as a
Methodist Minister before beginning his military career.

* In 1844 he was ordained a Methodist minister
* In 1853 he assisted in Methodist missionary expediation to

Wyandot Indians
* In 1860, he was made "presiding elder" of Rocky Mountain
District

Reaction to Sand Creek; Congressional Investigation

# After Sand Creek, Chivington was a hero in Denver until other
accounts began to surface:

* stories of drunken soldiers and mutiliated women surfaced.
* Chivington arrested 6 of his men, and charged them with

cowardice--until it was determined they were 6 who refused to
participate in massacre.

# Eventually, a trial was held.
# Col. Chivington's tombstone may still be seen.
# At his death, the "Fighting Parson" was honored by Coloradans and

Methodists alike. Almost 150 years later, in April 1996, the United
Methodist General Conference in Denver passes a "Sand Creek
Apology",. Donald J. Mitchell, "Methodists Apologize", Associated

Press, 4/27/96.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/tom_quick/8
.html

"When the Indian family — for the squaw was evidently the wife of the man, and the children his own — had got near enough to be within gunshot, Tom raised up from his recumbent posture, and ordered them in the Indian tongue to come ashore, and threatened to fire if they did not. As soon as the man saw Tom he turned very pale...He dared not disobey, however, and reluctantly came to the shore. Tom then inquired where they held been, and where they were go ing...He then told them that they had got to their journey's end; that the tribe to which they belonged had murdered his father and several of his relatives during the war, and that he had lifted up his hand in vengeance against their whole race. The Indian answered that it was 'peace time,' that 'the hatchet was buried,' &c. But Tom replied that there could be no peace between the red skins and him, and that he
would wage eternal war with them. He then shot the man, who
jumped out of the canoe into the river, where, after a few convulsive throes, he died. Tom, after killing the Indian, tomahawked the squaw and her children. As the hatchet sunk into the brain of the squaw, she sprang instinctively towards her youngest child, and fell on the bottom of the canoe, and was soon beyond the pale of mortal life. The two oldest children, as Tom afterwards declared, 'squawked like young crows' as he killed them. He had proceeded thus far without any compunctions of conscience, or feeling that he was committing a most horrible massacre, which ranked him with incarnate demons.

But when he came to the youngest, his murderous propensities were for a moment checked. As he raised the tomahawk to give the fatal
blow, the babe—for it was nothing more—looked up wonderingly into his face and smiled. The innocence and unconsciousness of danger
beaming from its sunny, childish eyes caused him to relent. His arm fell to his side. He could not strike it. At the moment, the idea of
taking the life of such an innocent, harmless being, seemed horrible to him. It held out its tiny hands to him, and in childish glee, seemed as if it would spring to his arms. Tom's heart was completely softened.

He thought he would convey it to some white family, and have it taken care of properly, and fancied that it would be very pleasant to have such a pretty, in nocent creature to fondle after he had been hunting, and when he returned to the settlements. But the fact suddenly thrust itself into his mind, that the child would in a few years become an Indian, and this so enraged him that he instantly dashed out its brains."

Quick kills Indian family

Quick would later justify his act of infanticide with these three words.
"Nits make lice."

Perhaps that too is apocryphal. But it is intriguing to note that in
1864, seventy years after Tom Quick's death and 13 years after the quote ascribed to him first appeared in print, the notorious Col. John Chivington urged his men to spare no children during the infamous Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado with those same three words.

Legends, it seems, have a way of finding their own way to truth.