On this day, 17 March 1876 US troops attacked sleeping Cheyenne and Oglala Sioux people in Montana in the Battle of Powder River, marking the beginning of the Sioux wars. They destroyed the village and stole large amounts of the Native Americans’ possessions.
However fortunately there were not many casualties, and the Cheyenne and Sioux managed to regroup and recapture 500 of their horses the next morning.
The US commanding officer, colonel Joseph Reynolds, was court-martialed following the failed assault, and suspended from duty.
The incident likely galvanised resistance to the enforced relocation of Native Americans from the Black Hills to a reservation.
Learn more about Indigenous resistance in the Americas in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hill
Pictured: Two Moons (Éše'he Ôhnéšesêstse), one of the Cheyenne chiefs https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1376843429167470/?type=3
Lee Myers is a senior at Berea College in Kentucky. Up until March 14, he was living in a dorm called Deep Green, majoring in philosophy with a minor in economics, and looking forward to a future career in social justice. Now that the campus has closed and graduation is canceled due to coronavirus, he and his classmates have bigger things to worry about.
“Some people are panicking, rightly so,” he says, “because they don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s sort of like a bombshell that dropped on campus.”
Every day, more colleges and universities are canceling in-person classes due to the threat. Most are keeping dorms and dining halls open for now, but a growing number have asked students to pack up and leave campus indefinitely. That presents a problem for the significant fraction of students who depend on their school for basic needs — food, housing, financial aid, health insurance and on-campus jobs. And, as colleges shift to online learning for the remainder of the semester, not everyone can afford the necessary laptops and broadband.
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