re: William Tecumseh Sherman

quote:

---

Everybody knows about his Civil War exploits. Less well known is that he presided over the destruction of the Plains Indians, using tactics explicitly designed to starve them onto reservations.

---

Nice get Jim Rockford. Whenever I see Sherman's name I think of the irony. Sherman's father gave him that middle name because he respected what an Indian leader Tecumseh was......and Sherman went out and killed all the indians.

When they were tracking and starving the last tribes, the Navajo, their chief came in surrendered and asked that his people not be harmed (they were marched and starved anyway). When one of his guards heard this he laughed and said he will be hanged when he gets to the fort. The chief responded to the interpreter who then laughed.

When the guard asked the interpreter what the chief said, he responded "The chief says your missionaries' tell him your chief died so that you might live".