"In 1891, as the so-called Indian Wars were drawing to a close putting an end to unabated carnage of the American frontier, columnist L. Frank Baum described what was then perceived as an American victory over the indigenous population writing that “the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation?”
[1] Baum was expressing the popular and political sentiment of that epoch, that is, agenda of the removal of the American Indian populations by any means necessary, including outright extermination! Future President Teddy Roosevelt, in his Indian Wars days as Rough Rider expressed this same inclination in his 1889 book
The Winning of the West, saying, “I don’t go so far to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
[2]
From the outset of American colonial expansion up until the beginning of the twentieth century, the American Indians were viciously targeted by both the governments and the general populace, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and even millions of people! As with many historic incidences of mass murder and dehumanizing ferocity, it has been a struggle to exactly define this history and there has been much debate. However, it is clear from the evidence of history that, even according to criteria of the
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, that the brutality inflicted upon the indigenous populations of the United States under either the auspices of the government or the actions of its citizens, constitutes the most heinous crime of genocide.
[1] Hewitt, 61.
[2] Meider, 46.