Columbus Day: Celebrating a holocaust

From today's web edition of Indian Country Today.

Columbus Day: Celebrating a holocaust
Posted: October 11, 2004
by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today

DENVER - While Americans celebrate Columbus Day, American Indians remember one little toddler who played on the quiet banks of Sand Creek, until the morning in 1864 when the American soldiers came.

''Then, as one of the cavalrymen later told it, while his compatriots were slaughtering and mutilating the bodies of all the women and all the children they could catch, he spotted the boy trying to flee,'' wrote David Stannard in ''American Holocaust.''

''There was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk through the sand,'' wrote a Calvary man.

''The Indians had gone ahead, and this little child was behind following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked, traveling on the sand. I saw one man get off his horse, at a distance of about seventy-five yards, and draw up his rifle and fire - he missed the child. Another man came up and said, 'Let me try the son of a bitch; I can hit him.' full article