Fort Robinson
Coordinates: 42 ° 40 ′ 8 " N , 103 ° 28 ′ 2" W.
Fort Robinson is a former United States Army base and is now a state park in the state of Nebraska . Fort Robinson is located in the north-west of the state in the Pine Ridge region in Dawes County on the outskirts of the township of Crawford. Fort Robinson was founded in March 1874 on the territory of the Red Cloud Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs , a division of the US Department of the Interior. The fort was named after Lieutenant Levi H. Robinson, who was killed by Indians in February 1874. The fort played an essential role in the Sioux Wars. Crazy Horse, the leader of the Oglala Sioux , was killed in the fort on September 5, 1877. The fort was abandoned by the army in 1947. In 1956 a museum was opened. In 1960 it was declared a National Historic Landmark .
history
The Red Cloud Agency was formed on the North Platte River in what is now Wyoming after the Fort Laramie Treaty was signed in 1868 . The treaty laid the area of the entire present-day US state of South Dakota west of the Missouri, including the Black Hills (from the northern border in Nebraska to the 46th parallel and from Missouri in the east to the 104th meridian in the west) as Indian land for unrestricted and unmolested use and settlement by the Great Sioux Nation. Since the American federal government had also committed itself in this contract to take over the health care, the school system and the supply of food for the Great Sioux reservation , the government established various bases in and around the reservation. In August 1873 the agency moved to Crawford. The agency was responsible for the Lakota - Sioux and other prairie tribes . At that time, around 13,000 Plains Indians lived on the agency's territory. The situation became more and more tense due to the breach of contract by white hunters, soldiers of fortune, gold prospectors and settlers. Because of this, the federal government decided in March 1874 to station US Army units in and near the agency. The soldiers were actually supposed to enforce compliance with the treaty.
In the same year the US government sent an expedition under the military protection of George Armstrong Custer to the Black Hills, during which gold was discovered there. The gold rush that followed immediately in the Black Hills ultimately led to war. The army had previously tried in vain to keep the prospectors out of the mountain range. The Black Hills are sacred mountains for the Lakota Sioux and the Cheyenne . They are also the subject of numerous Lakota myths. Even today, some tribesmen visit the spiritual places in the mountains to practice their religion. After the gold was discovered, the government tried to persuade the Lakota to cede the mountain range, but without success. The reservation Indians under Red Cloud turned down a sale. Certain groups under Sitting Bull , Crazy Horse and Gall had never recognized the contract of 1868 anyway and stayed outside the Sioux reservation in the non-ceded hunting areas. In December 1875 the government decided to wrest the Black Hills from the Indians by force. She gave the Indians an ultimatum to “return” to the reservation in the middle of winter and thus to clear the Black Hills for the whites. Aside from the fact that many Sioux and Northern Cheyenne did not come from reservations to return to, they would have been unable to meet the ultimatum in the dead of winter.
The fighting began by General Crook in March 1868 with the Battle of Powder Creek, where soldiers attacked a Cheyenne winter quarters. But the campaign ended in disaster. After the lost battles at Rosebud and Little Big Horn , the defeated soldiers withdrew to Fort Robinson. This Indian victory was short-lived. The army came back with larger, better-equipped units. In the following months, the army pursued the last free Sioux and Cheyenne detachments in a merciless campaign that also continued over the winter, which led to flight, devastating defeats and surrender of the Indians, not least because of the rapidly dwindling herds of bison, their livelihood . On May 8, 1877 Crazy Horse , the leader of the Oglala - Sioux surrendered with his warriors to the army at Fort Robinson. He had realized that his people were weakened by cold and hunger and could no longer fight. On September 5, 1877, Crazy Horse was killed by soldier William Gentiles in the fort.
The Red Cloud Agency was relocated to the White River in South Dakota in October 1877 . It still exists there to this day and formed the basis for the Pine Ridge Reservation . The Pine Ridge region of Nebraska State no longer has any significant Oglala Sioux settlements.
In September 1878, a group of Cheyenne Indians fled their reservation in what is now Oklahoma to return to their old home in Montana . They crossed Kansas and Nebraska. On October 23, 1878, a group of 300 Indians, led by Chief Morning Star, were surrounded by soldiers from the fort and forced to surrender during a devastating snow storm. The soldiers provided them with food, but took away their horses and most of their weapons. On October 26th, the soldiers brought the group to Fort Robinson and quartered the Indians in empty barracks. On January 9, 1879, the Cheyenne Indians under the leadership of Chief Morning Star broke out of the internment of the fort, as they were to be relocated back to Indian territory in what is now Oklahoma. The Cheyenne feared they would not survive due to the harsh conditions in Oklahoma. To force the Cheyenne to do so, the soldiers denied them food and fuel during a harsh winter. The refugees were mercilessly butchered. This war crime known as the 'Fort Robinson Massacre' was recognized as such by the US Supreme Court in 1901.
In 1885 the 9th Cavalry Regiment was moved to Fort Robinson. This consisted of blacks. The fort was massively expanded. The fort played an important role in the campaign in the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1990. On December 29, 1890 soldiers of the 7th US Cavalry Regiment killed men, women and children of the Minneconjou - Lakota - Sioux - Indians under Chief Spotted Elk (but mostly wrongly also named Big Foot ) at Wounded Knee. This massacre broke the last resistance of the Indians against the whites. This was preceded by the "ghost dance" movement of Wovoka , a prophet of the Paiuts . The ghost dance revitalization and redemption movement was aimed at all Indian tribes.
During and after the First World War , it was the largest military stud in the world. During the Second World War it also served as a training center for dogs. At the end of World War II it was used as a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers. The first 600 prisoners of the German Africa Corps arrived there on November 19, 1943 . It later served as a prison camp for members of the German navy. The prisoner of war camp was closed in May 1946. In 1948 the fort was abandoned by the army.
The United States Department of Agriculture took over the site and used it as a research facility for cattle breeding. Efforts have been made since the mid-1950s to keep the site as a museum after some historic buildings were demolished. Since 1955, the Nebraska State Historical Society acquired parts of the property and set up a museum. Fort Robinson has been a National Historic Landmark since 1960. In 1971 the Department of Agriculture handed the remaining property over to the state of Nebraska.
In culture
The surrender of the last free Sioux at Fort Robinson is mentioned in the final sentence of Kevin Costner's film Dances with Wolves : “Thirteen years later, their villages were destroyed and their buffalo disappeared, the last group of free Sioux in Fort Robinson, Nebraska, submitted. The great herds of horses on the prairie had perished and the American Wild West was soon to become part of history ”.
Web links
- Fort Robinson State Park (English)
- Fort Robinson Museum (English)
- Kriegsgefangenenlager (English)
- Spiegel Wounded Knee Massacre Blood stained the prairie
- Fort Robinson Time line (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frank N. Schubert, Buffalo Soldiers, Braves and the Brass: the Story of Fort Robinson, Nebraska (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing Co., 1993 Fort Robinson, in the northwestern corner of Nebraska, was established in 1874 as a base for operations against the Northern Cheyenne and Lakota tribes. Named for Lieutenant Levi Robinson, who was killed while escorting a woodcutting party near Laramie Peak in February 1874)
- ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Nebraska. National Park Service , accessed August 17, 2019.
- ↑ Pine Ridge Agency of the BIA ( Memento of the original from February 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ American Indian and Alaska Native alone, July 1, 2014, 4.1%
- ↑ Conners v. United States , 180 US 271, 21 S. Ct. 362, 45 L. Ed. 525 (1901) (Judge Henry Billings Brown on behalf of the court).
- ↑ On November 19, 1943, the first group of six hundred German PWs, veterans of Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps, arrived. Camp population remained at 500-600 until after the allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. A second surge of arrivals brought the camp to its maximum population in December 1944, all from the German army. In early 1945 the camp was designated a naval camp, and German sailors replaced most of the army prisoners. That fall the camp became a satellite of the Scottsbluff, Nebraska, prisoner of war camp. Although the war with Germany ended in May 1945, the last few PWs and American camp personnel did not leave Fort Robinson until May 1946.
- ↑ Fort Robinson remained an operational post until 1916. Afterward it was the site of a cavalry remount depot and a training center for military dogs. During World War II it also served as a prisoner-of-war camp. The fort was finally closed in 1948. Significant numbers of discharged and retired black soldiers once lived in the nearby town of Crawford.
