Tobacco Pouch

Trey Smith

America has a long history of killing little children. Hundreds of thousands of children were taken from Africa to be enslaved in America, little children were lynching victims and children are now killed by drones, sanctions, and the other aggressions that this country meets out to the rest of the world. Israel, America’s client state, kills children in Lebanon or Gaza or wherever it feels the desire to carry out its evil intent. Entire families have been wiped out in Gaza, but the president who so solemnly mourns the loss of life in Connecticut, defends the carnage when his ally is the perpetrator.

America has a long history of state supported killing and the killings didn’t exclude children. Indian children were victimized from the moment the first Europeans arrived in their land. The British, Spanish and French all brought disease, enslavement and outright slaughter to the first American nations. On November 29, 1864, Colorado militia troops killed over 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne at Sand Creek. The victims were almost all women, children and old men. Eyewitness accounts told of children being shot, a fetus removed from its mother and scalped, and mutilations of many victims such as the Cheyenne chief White Antelope. “Besides scalping him the soldiers cut off his nose, ears, and testicles – the last for a tobacco pouch ...”

It is not only possible, but imperative that we remember all of the child victims in this country’s history. When the president goes to Aurora, Colorado or Tucson, Arizona or Newtown, Connecticut or wherever a crazed person kills en masse we cannot just allow ourselves to be drawn along with the tide of emotions. We must stop, think, and remember that indiscriminate violence made America what it is today.

~ from Freedom Rider: Killing Children by Margaret Kimberley ~

As a keen lover of the history of 19th century America, I can tell you that there are reports of the slaughter of native women and children too numerous to list. When most Americans read of these atrocities, the general sentiment is that it was a different time and place. America has grown up since then.

While it's true that our government doesn't target children in this country as much as in the past -- though blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, American Muslims and the poor, in general, might dispute that -- we have simply trained our guns predominantly on those who live outside of our borders.