Interview with Shermann Goose
Clinton, Oklahoma *
November, 1996
Shermann Goose, an elder of the Southern Cheyenne Nation, passed away not long after this interview was conducted. Our condolences to his family, friends, and fellow members of the Southern Cheyenne Nation. He is greatly missed
After the massacre at Sand Creek, the people left there, scattered in bunches, small bunches. On further north, they regrouped, probably 18 miles, 25 miles somewhere in that vicinity, north of Sand Creek, Lamar. At that time there were not enough horses, because of the shooting that took place. They killed horses as well as the people. Survivors had to regroup. A lot of these people wanted to go back, wanted to go back to see Black Kettle's band and reform a group that would make another band of the survivors that had not perished at Sand Creek.
What had happened was evidence of armed white men who were out to kill all the Indians that were in the vacinity of that, especially around Lamar. The stagecoaches had been attacked and people had been scalped. Nevertheless we knew why the Indian was fighting. He was fighting for his family. He was fighting for his life, fighting for his country. He was fighting to survive. He wasn't fighting because he hated the white man. He wasn't fighting because he wanted to kill somebody. He was fighting to keep from becoming extinct, to keep from getting killed. But history books, historians, some of them depict the Indian as a savage, as a heathen, as they were called for a while.
The justification of killing the Indian was that he was a heathen, he didn't believe in anything. But he did believe in the Great Spirit, as we all do. In all churches, in all denominations. The Great Spirit or Lord as we all know him, Jesus Christ, God, the Higher Being.
The Massacre at the Washita
These Cheyenne regrouped and went south. It was getting winter time, October. They went to Cheyenne, Oklahoma, the vicinity of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, Roger Mills County now. They went into winter encampment on the Washita River, on the north side of the river at the bend of the river as it back slightly toward the north. There were several camps, 3 camps to the East. Kiowas, Arapahos were camped further on down, separate camps. The Indians designated each place where they wanted to camp by leaving it up to the chief. The Cheyenne were first. That's why they were attacked first.
On that massacre at that time. At Cheyenne, which was called the battle of the Washita, was no battle at all. It was surprise, massacre, massacre of an unarmed and unsuspecting victim. They didn't let the Indian know they were trying to kill him. The Indian thought he was living just like the way he was supposed to with the United States, backed by the teepee of Black Kettle, the chief. Nevertheless they were sought after and found by George Custer and his people. The intention was to kill all of them. Decimate them to the point of complete extinction. One can easily imagine now days, 1996, how it would sound to kill a race plum out.
Q: Why do you think they wanted to eliminate the Indian?
Because they stood in the way of progress and civilization. Which wasn't the real reason. The real reason was for selfishness. The land that they occupied was their home. They thought the Great Spirit put them there to live there from now on. Which of course was true. But the white man wanted that land for his own use. Did he care about civilization or progress? Only the land. All of this has been depicted down through history. Northeastern Oklahoma is occupied by the Cherokee Nation, 13 counties now. Those people were moved from Georgia, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, were moved against their will. They left their homes. They left their property. They left their crops. First they had lost their identity. They had lost their culture. They had lost their ability to communicate like they did years and years before. They took up the white man's way of life the plow, the cultivator, cotton and tobacco to be shipped back East across the waters for sale.
The Cherokee Indian was the first to lose his identity as a first American. So they moved him West despite the fact that they wanted to stay in their homeland of Georgia, and S. Carolina and N. Carolina. They were moved against their will. They were driven like cattle. They say 700 and some died on the walk to the West. Now it was planned that they be located in northeastern Oklahoma, which, of course, was Indian Territory at that time. Because the land was so sorry it would not sustain a crop. Too many rocks, too many trees, and shrubbery. Even the wood was no good. Put the Indian there, why that's what he deserves just because he's Indian.
It seems very little is said about the character and the lack of principal involved in the people that made up the government of the United States at that time. What kind of people governed the people, made the laws passed bills, amendments, so forth. Talked about the constitution of the United States, it was formed by a people of what you might call misfits in life. They didn't even know how to be proper. Some of them. Now days, right now in 1996, everybody has found out that the northeastern part of Oklahoma is becoming wealthy. Land cost a lot of money, 15 hundred dollars a square foot. That's a lot of money for real estate. The Indians occupy it. Of course, by now most of them have been cheated out of their land. They say the first pilgrim that landed at Plymouth rock had 3 items on his person. He had the bible, a shotgun, and a pint of whiskey. One of those items would get him a home. If it failed he'd try the next one, maybe use all three. But it got him a home.
How many drunk Indians have lost all their property because of being drunk? How many have been shot? Murdered? And how many have been cheated, just out right of their property? There's no rectification of wrongs that have been done to the Indian. No, it's not possible, they're too numerous. The only thing that we can hope and pray for at this time is stiffer education for our people, the Indian people, to learn how to compete with the white man in this world he has created for us to live in. This conglomeration of races, a melting pot they call it, we have to learn to be wary of the murderer or the thief, of the bandit. We have to learn to appreciate the good person, the Christian person, the moral person. In some places in our nation, morality has lost its way. Morality does not exist in a lot of places.
We have flagrant use of dope, alcohol, out and out killing. This whole country produced dope narcotics, controlled substances. That's how they live. We as a nation should be like the Indian was before the white man came. He enjoyed living here. He never bothered anybody, however, they fought among themselves for hunting rights, hunting boundaries. In fact at one time warfare consisted of counting 'coup'. You had a coup stick, with this coup stick you rode by just as fast as the horse could go and you struck the enemy on the head with that little coup stick. More or less like a fly swatter. That carried more honor than killing the enemy. But nowadays they want to knock a man's head off.
All in all there's a lot of people that have been moved from their home territories in the United States before it became the United States. The Navajos were removed from their homeland in and around Monument Valley, Tim's canyon, all around in there. They moved the Navajo out. They sent them to Bosque Rodondo. They made 'em walk. They stayed there for so long a time, then they made them walk back.
All right, they have people in the Northwest. They were subjected to abuse, Nez Pierce. All the stories that we read and that we hear about were actually true, they happened. The things that were inflicted on them are, we wouldn't do to a dog today. Chief Joseph, all the rest of the people going down through the ages: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, all them people. They're gone. They fought for us, a purpose. They fought for a grand purpose. Their lives, their families lives. They fought for their country. They thought this was their country. The Great Spirit had given them to live in.
The desert country, General Crook (Cook?) told the Apaches, "if you help me track down Geronimo, Cochise, Mangas. If you help me, I'll give you 10 ponies apiece when we catch them." At the surrender of all these men, chains were put on these scouts wrists. They were shipped to fort Marion, Florida. That's where the 10 ponies were. They were fortunate, a lot of them, they went to school from Ft. Marion. Some of them got a chance to go to school at Carlisle, Penn, which was a boarding school. Some learned how to talk English. Some learned how read, write. They became well educated. And some just learned how to work.
So we have the red man as he is right now, descimated by liquor, drugs, the untruthful man. The white man, they'll rob and steal at the drop of a hat. The Indian, woo to the Indian that has not learned how to beware of the crooked white man. There should be a school established for that. Each and every Indian ought to be made to go to that school before he's turned loose out in this world.
We had one man, one Indian man, Geronimo. He fought for his people and he was called savage. He was supposed to have been locked up at Fort Sill, which he never was. He stayed around the post there at Ft Sill. Mended saddles, and harnesses. Made little bows and arrows to sell to the people, tourists, visitors. Had that man died on the battlefield he would have been probably more happy about the situation, but he surrendered to help his people, the Apache people.
Q: How did the Cheyenne come to this part of the country?
My father and my maternal grandparents often spoke of the time that they came from the North. I presume it was Minnesota where they originated, the Cheyenne people. They had trouble with the Indian agent up there then. He was, the Indian agent was selling their food. Sugar and coffee to the settlers. And they went and ask him for something to eat. Some flour, or sugar, bacon. And at that time there were two tribes involved. The Sioux and the Cheyenne. He told them to eat grass. On Sunday they had church. Now the Indians didn't wait to attack just because it was Sunday. They were just getting ready to attack and they did and they caught the agent. They killed him. They stuffed grass in his mouth. After that, well, I think there was mass hanging, probably 30, something like that. They didn't know who the guilty people were. They just said 'you, you and you.'
Migration to the South began at that time. Little bit at a time. Really, the disruption of the way of life up there was the entering of the white man into their hunting reserves, or hunting areas that they had marked out with other tribes. They came down into Colorado, and further south into Oklahoma and still further south. They call the area the Staked Plains. They had crossed the Staked Plains several times, hunting buffalo. In fact that's when they found out the buffalo had migrated south and were grazing around the Red Fork, north fork of the Red River. In that area. Which to day would be Altus, Mangum, Oklahoma. And then when the migration began back to the North, they followed the herds again, in order to sustain their people.
Thru all of this, they had a close association with tribes of other Indians. On the plains, the Plains Indians. The Comanche to the South. Kiowas also in the vicinity of the Wichita Mountains. The Caddo Indians whence we have the great war chief among the Comanches who was half white, Quanah Parker. His mother was Cynthia Anne Parker. They had a close association with the Cheyenne after all this fighting with the white men. At one time they had released Cynthia Anne Parker to the white soldiers. She wanted to go home and they said that she could go home. But she was one of the Indians. She had spent so much time with the Indians, the Comanche Indians, that she spoke Comanche and thought that she was a Comanche. They got her home, she didn't want to stay. She said she should come back and live with the Indians. She had a baby daughter that contracted pneumonia. Died, the baby died, little girl. Cynthia Parker refused to part company with the dead body. Little dead body. She held on to it. They had a hard time getting the dead body in order to bury it. This day and age there's lot of people, mostly they settled around Richardson Texas, descendants of Quanah Parker. And they had one, that I know of, east of Lawton, Oklahoma, 12 miles, near Pumpkin Center.
The Comanche had been, I'll call them Mexican Indians. They lived in Mexico quite a bit. However, after a certain number of years had passed they'd raid back in Mexico and kill the Mexicans and take their horses. But the Apache was clearly marked by boundaries. Had different Apache – San Carlos, Jicarillo, Warm Springs Apaches. All these people that live down around there now, around Ft. Sill, Ft. Sill Apaches, are Geronimo's people. There's some people from San Carlos at Ft. Sill, there's some people at Gary, Oklahoma that are Ft. Sill Apache. 'Course the dialect is the same. They all speak the same Apache.
We have two different people now, two different tribes of Cheyenne. Their dialect is a little different because of the naming of objects that came with the white man when he came to this country. That we had no name for. For instance, we didn't have any coffee. When the white man came we had to think a little bit to dig up a name for coffee. So we call it 'black soup'. Same as oatmeal. We never had oatmeal. We never did grow any oats. So we called it 'slabber gravy' because of it's constancy, when you spoon it up out of the bowl. It's kinda thick. So we called it 'slabber gravy'. Sugar – call it 'sweet water'. Course, light bread was called 'white man's bread'. Whiskey – 'white man's water'. All in all there's several different names that we had to think up in order to stay up with the white man. We had to tell him our needs some way. We had to name different articles. There was always a possibility of different objects coming into our possession that we didn't know the name of but we made up names.
At one time after the white man got settled in Oklahoma, it was declared not to allow the Indian to talk Indian. I don't know what harm that would do. I don't think there would be a uprising now. The Indian being what he is now and what he used to be is a big difference. And the time came when they told the Cheyenne that "we're going to take you back to Oklahoma to look over Oklahoma. If you don't like it, you can come back. If you don't like Oklahoma, we'll let you come back up here to your home country, in the mountains." So they readily agreed. 'We'll go down and look. See what Oklahoma looks like". They brought 'em down the vicinity of El Reno, Oklahoma. They had an agency there called old Darlington. They didn't like it. The moisture, humidity, lack of food. The Bureau of Indian Affairs would buy a cow for them that wouldn't make soup. They said it was so skinny, they couldn't make soup out of it.
So they told the soldiers that they were leaving, going back home. Nobody believed them, 1500 miles. Less than half had horses. So one night they left the fires burning in the front of their teepees and left. My grandfather was in that bunch. He walked all the way to Montana. And he walked all the way back. He got home sick after he got up there. He was 17 years old. The way the Indian was treated then is a lot different now. There's a whole lot of difference now than then. Not the difference I would like to see.
Right now, the Indian is depicted as a seconc rate citizen in Indian towns. We call Indian towns, where there is enough Indian population to make a difference. The towns that are like that are very rare. Full of prejudice. Been a while back, I seen a sign in Cody, Wyoming in a restaurant window that was not conducive to good relationship between the Indian and the white. "No Indians or dogs allowed". So that was back in 1962 or 1, I forgot what year exactly. But it was in that period of time...
There was a time from the information related to me by my grandparents, that they welcomed the white people. And it was strange that when they gave the white man a place to live that he fenced it immediately. They said it was particular that a person should do that. Why did they do that? They couldn't figure out why he wanted to put a fence around what little acreage they gave him to live on. But, of course, after that relations got bad. After the Indian was exploited by the white man. Like for instance, they likened the Indian to a child. They say 'you know I went over and I borrowed horse from that Indian that lives down on the creek here. And he didn't ask when I was going to bring it back and I still got it. And I'm going to keep it, too.' Remarks and events such as that lead to friction between the Indian and the white man. 'Course later on, it grew more serious. Murder, rape, out right robbery and then the justification, of course, was hid away was that the Indian was heathen.
During 20s they discovered oil, it was Fairfax, Osage County. There was one white man married into a Indian family. And they tried to kill the whole family so he could have the head rights. I think his name was Jones. Anyway, he was going to do away with the whole family and own all the mineral rights, involved in that family.
But no, the Indian and the white man got along very well at the beginning of their relationship, their business dealings. They were destined to become great friends and to stay great friends until evil took over.
They (Cheyenne) were leaving the Great Plains, the Staked Plains. Llano Estacato. They were leaving that area and they were approached by Mexicans, Commancheros. There was trade that was going on between the Mexicans and the Indians. In that respect, a Commerancho might have 2 white women or 2 children or whatever and they wanted to trade whatever the Indian had to trade. 4 or 5 horses, maybe 6 horses. They carried on trade with the Commanchero like that. Then of course they came on north to the trading post at Adobe Walls across there and came on north. They avoided difficult trails around Trinidad. They went to the east.
All of this shows that the chance meeting with the white man was more or less peaceful until they ran into, until they ran across the trail of, I'll call them bandits. That just attempted to kill the Indians for what they had, horses, or women or whatever.
The Cheyenne, the northern Cheyenne prevalent around Lame Deer, Harden [Montana]. Harden is a Crow agency. All these people that are related to northern Cheyenne, they live down here in Oklahoma visit back and forth quite often.
All the ways of living are similar with the exception of the language. There's a few minor differences in words. The northern Cheyenne had to develop words of their own to specify what they were talking about. A watch or a...Whereas the southern Cheyenne had a name for a watch, the northern Cheyenne had the same object, but a different name to it. But it meant the same thing.
A scout was also , was an interpreter. A scout usually stayed around white men, soldiers, settlers and learned English to a certain extent. Thereby describing who he seen that day on the prairie or how many people he saw. Could describe numbers in English. Description of horses in English. And the general direction in which, the way the subjects were traveling. That was because of him scouting the trail ahead to make sure they were going in the right direction. A scout was invaluable to a wagon train and also to the army, to the cavalry. He was invaluable in such a way that he insured their safety, insured their livelihood. Therefore a good scout was usually paid the going rate. Which of course right now we don't understand that as any money at all. But they got, they got compensation.
And we had such a scout for the army, cavalry for a long time and he has descendants living in the Seadden (??) area yet and he got his leg shot off. I was trying to think of his last name a while ago, Chapman. Chapman was one man that got caught out on the high plains in a buffalo wallow. And he like to lost his life.
So we have people that are half Indian and full blood Indian that were scouts. Course we have people like Henry Standing Bird that was a Cheyenne scout for a long time. Their depiction of a scout way back in them days in frontier stories and magazines and news articles is entirely different that actually what it was. It wasn't a romantic sort of person. He was just someone who knew how to get around and how to live a long time against people shooting at him and everything. Trying to kill him.
And he was an interpreter. He had to know the sign language, which was universal among frontier people. The settlers, and the soldiers and the Indians. Sign language was universal and they could carry a decent conversation by sign language.
My grandfather told me, my father's father, Lame Goose, told me that when they traveled and it became dark and could not go any more because you'd get lost. And there's a time to rest, anyway. He'd carry a stick and lay that stick pointed in the direction that he was traveling before that he retired for the night. The next day they would pick out a distant spot, a landmark, a mound, a cliff, a mountain or where ever that is way off in the distance and line up on that. And go until they got to that place and then they'd pick another object to line up their travel on. However, right between Lame Deer, Montana and Oklahoma here every stream they crossed had a name. And the Indians knew the streams and their names. No Indian, no Cheyenne Indian went without knowing were he was and how he was traveling, how far he had to go yet and how many days and how many sleeps it was going to take to get to Montana.
And the only way they could get lost was in a fog. And they say it was dangerous to travel when they had foggy weather. Their most experienced could get lost in fog. Yeh, they call the fog 'turtle'. They make the statement, it's foggy outside, they say "turtle is hanging outside.' I don't know why the fog resembles a turtle, I don't know. I just know the word for it.
Q: Tell me about the trouble at Sand Creek.
Sand Creek was supposed to have been a safe camp. Black Kettle and his emissaries went to Denver. They were going to confer with Governor Evans as to what location to camp so they would be assured of safety for their people, women and children. When they got there they were informed, "camp anywhere, hoist that flag. Just camp anywhere you wish." In reality, behind closed doors, Governor Evans said, "I've already wired for permission to form a volunteer group to annihilate all the Indians. Therefore tell these people to go camp wherever they want to. They're going to be killed anyway." But they told them, "you'll be safe, hoist that flag, camp anywhere you want to." So not knowing what was going on, they happily went to Sand Creek and camped there. It is presumed that they went there because of one of the Bent boys or someone advised them. Bent was married to a Cheyenne Indian woman and probably they think, the rest of the people think now that is why they camped on Sand Creek, because of the proximity of friendly people. Bent's Fort was well established. Everybody knew where it was.
The Great Plains were not so distant that people didn't know about everything out there that went on. Distances meant traveling and everybody was used to traveling on a horse. Nowadays it'd kill us to travel on a horse all day. But back in those days the mode of travel didn't affect them at all. They were still effective in whatever they wanted to do. We have people that cannot get lost; they know their 4 directions immediately. That's people that have lived with nature all, every day of their lives. They feel the air, the cold snap of the air, they say ' well snow is coming'. Sure enough, it snows. Well how'd they know. Had we practiced the, just the mode of living, outdoors all the time, well we'd know that, too. We'd know what to look for. Horses running and playing, kicking at each other, that there was going to be change in the weather. We'd notice the dogs, how they live, how they behaved. See our dogs are acting up, a storm's coming. Or any number of animals that are easily scrutinized and studied by people that stay outdoors all the time. They noticed a change in behavior of these animals. Of course, the leaves and the trees also gave out signals that the weather was going to change, all the things that are involved in Mother Nature's world, the Indian understood. Because he lived with it.
Q: Back to what was happening at Sand Creek.
They felt betrayed. They felt as if running away would solve the problem. But they thought it out and they thought the best way of survival was to keep in close contact with their chief, Black Kettle. And to regroup and to stay together. And of course they found out the difference between a bullet and an arrow, which was an immense difference and their feeling was of loss. Utterly lost. And the only way that they could get by was to stay together and trust someone. So they were advised also, by daily contacts with other people, the Bents and the scout that came to stay with the Cheyenne, the white scouts that they could carry on conversation with. That they were advised to stay within the confines of the United States flag and the United States government's protection. Of course, at that time there was no what so ever protection for the Indian. None whatsoever. In fact, his fate was sealed already.
Now this national prejudice that I often speak of was caused by this wanton killing of the Cheyenne. This wanton killing of children. Children's arms and legs shot off and thrown in the fire to burn up, all of that was brought on by brutality by the white men. And the Indian felt it. The Indian felt betrayed. He felt lost. I can imagine how he felt. Encountering somebody as brutal and savage as that. Always wonder, always wonder why this name persists in being passed on to generation to generation among the white people. The Indian was a savage. The stories that we hear and the stories that we know about Sand Creek and Washita and other small incidents tend to make me want to ask, "who was the savage?"
Who was the savage? Who committed all these bad things, and morality? Why do we not have a proper definition, interpretation of what went on? Today it still persists I'm sorry to say if everything was on the level. If everything was even stephen, right now, the white man would have sat down and revised all of the text books that do not depict the proper, true treatment of the Indians by the white man, for years that have gone by, and still they persist today. Still exist the same way. When I leave that front door, every morning. I know somewhere down the road I'm going to meet prejudice and I'm going to have to be able to handle it. I'm not going to lose control and knock somebody down and have to go to jail.
No. I'm supposed to be smart enough to know how to handle the situation. Not run away from it. But the white man still persists in hiding the fact that the Indian today is declared a second class citizen because he is a Indian. For that mere reason. Lot of people say ' ah, I'm color blind. I don't care what color you are. Man everybody is the same color to me.'why that's not true. I can tell you that for the mere fact of him bringing that up like that. So I'm not a racist. I do not want to be looked upon as a racist. But I do want to be looked upon as a person who knows the difference between white and Indian. The assumption that the Indian is dumb is very prevalent among the white man. The Indian isn't dumb. The average is like the white man, of course. We have a lot dumb Indians, we have a lot of dumb white people. And a lot of them are not dumb, they're just uneducated, uninformed. Ignorance is nothing bad. We can be ignorant on any subject that we don't know about. I'm ignorant on how to operate an airplane. But I could lessen that ignorance by taking a training course on how to fly an airplane.
So, we have the equivalent what you might call beginners school in the Indian world and beginners school in the white mans world. We have the same thing in the Indian world. We learn when we're young, if we have the correct parents, the correct up bringing. We learn how to, we learn how to respect the other mans property, his rights, his being. We learn how to know the correct way of meeting people, of making them feel that they are welcome in our home, in our country, or wherever we are at. We want to learn also the proper way to thank the lord for letting us live this long in his creation. We want to know that we are one of god's children. God's creation. We want to be able to pray as we like. I hear so much, almost daily, that prayer isn't allowed in school. Prayer is allowed anywhere. If you want to pray silently, well pray anywhere. I call that dumb if a guy says 'hey, I'm going to pray.'
We are God's people and we encounter God every day, the dew on the grass, the wind in the willows. That's a story isn't it? The wind in the trees. God is everywhere. God is our thankfulness that we are alive. God is the appreciation, we give thanks for the gift of friendship. It's one of the greatest gifts that he gave us. Friendship to other people.
Q: Tell me about Fort Marion.
As near as I can recall what I have had told to me. It was people that came back and informed these other people what actually took place, and they thought it was the darkest hours of their lives. But they found out that the white man would lock them up from now on if possible. That a lot of the people that went to Fort Marion committed suicide by running their head up against the wall or were actually killed by the white men themselves, the guards . The roose was established that Indian tried to escape whereas only he was probably protesting the way he was being treated and killed for that. But there was actually no reaction until way later from the ones who were permitted to gain an education afterward. After their imprisonment. Now that was one good thing that came out, the only good thing that came out of their incarceration at Ft. Marion. They were permitted to go to school.
It's like caging a sparrow. A sparrow will die in captivity. And the Indians were used to roaming free, going where they pleased, when they wanted to . They were used to enjoying God's world. The creation that he gave them to live in. To travel wherever they wanted to. To hunt buffalo or deer or whatever they wanted to. And all at once all this freedom was lost. Which was the worse thing that could happen to a free person, a free people. I guess today, yet, we wonder how they survived. How they survived all the abuse, savage treatment that they got from the white man. They lost their buffalo, they lost their home countries because they were moved. they lost loved ones, brothers and fathers, families. They lost all that. And survival, the will to survive was very very prevalent. The only thing that they had to rely on was their customs and their ceremonials. Of course, their prayer and their faith in the Great Spirit. The only survival means that they had was not with their hands. Not with any instrument. But with their hearts and their minds. They survived where a lot of people wouldn't. You can imagine what they went through. All the hostilities formed in their minds against the white man were instilled in their minds by the white man. He defeated his own purpose. In fact his purpose was to get just as much from the red man as he could. If it meant killing all of them, then they like to killed all of them.
Its amazing how today, especially to me, to visualize and know about one race attempting to kill out another for what they owned or what they occupied. I find it to big to describe, too big to discuss. I sometimes I think about it a lot. I sit in my room and I think: why...why...Why it was done like that? Why did events take place like that? Why did they let happen? There's no change. Is there always going to be a Little Big Horn? Or is there always going to be a Battle on the Washita? There's always going to be a Sand Creek. Nothing that we do. Nothing that we think will change that. It's going to be there. Only the good people that survived today, only the good people, God's people, the moral , moral abiding people are the ones that are going to survive to think different.
It's like I say, we're always going to have a Sand Creek. We're always going to have a little big horn. Battle the Washita. All of that remains in people's minds. I find it hard to believe that people can be so unthinking at this time. I wanted the name of the national park changed.
