# Talk:Indian Peace Commission

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-1867-medicine-lodge-treaty-changed-plains-indian-tribes-forever-180965357/ GMGtalk 20:25, 11 June 2018 (UTC)


### Mutual understanding
Gump, James O. (2016). The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux, Second Edition. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-8455-5., page 81

You must have the protection of teh Preisdent of the United States and his white soldiers or disappear, from the earth...We have not been making war with you. You are at war with us. We have not commenced yet. -Harney [1] p. 34
[You] must understand that if peace is not now made all efforts on our part to make it are at an end. -Sanborn, same source next page.

Yo VM. The civilize bit is POV probably yeah. But it's accurate as the POV of the time, and in fact, considered by many to be the more humanitarian side of the debate. But anyway, it's directly from the bill that created the commission and it's stated purpose To suggest or inaugurate some plan for the civilization of the Indians. So yeah good or bad that was their stated goal. GMGtalk 20:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

OK, but then if it's directly from the bill it should be in quotation marks. That would also avoid the POV problem.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Also, User:GreenMeansGo, this could potentially make for a good hook too: " These were however rarely used, with the first and only plaintiff to win such an award in court being Lavetta Elk, who received a judgement in the amount of $600,000 in 2009" Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Yeah. In retrospect, I should have used that after the article for Fort Laramie II passed GA, but I was too distracted writing this article at the time. But the War Department issue ended up being of some lasting debate at the federal level, in addition to being deeply ironic, and a symptom of a growing rift among the commission and among DC as a whole, all in a way that is really interesting, but unfortunately more suited probably to a book than an encyclopedia article. I guess I could try for two DYKs once this passes GA. Is there a rule against that? I don't think I've read one. GMGtalk 21:29, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
I guess for context, as an example of this that never made it into the article for being overly detailed, Sherman was recalled to Washington the first time because there was a dispute with Johnson over replacing Secretary of War Stanton (who Sherman despised), which eventually lead to Johnson's impeachment. Sherman refused the post. He hated politics to the point of being mortified when the Peace Commission tried to elect him their president, and passed the buck to Taylor, who was a big softy and preferred cultural genocide over the good old fashioned killing sort of genocide.
Nevertheless, Sherman asked the House and Senate Indian Affairs Committees for interim funding for the treaties. The House couldn't fund the treaties directly until the Senate ratified them, but then the House bucked when they submitted appropriations with no funding, and the Senate added it having ratified the treaties and sent it back to the House, because the House felt they were stepping on their power-of-the-purse toes. They eventually gave Sherman a quarter of what he asked for, but they gave it directly to Sherman, rather than the Bureau  of Indian Affairs as Sherman wanted, appalled at the prospect of political service as he was. That was basically a transparent "fuck you" to the Bureau, renowned at this point for corruption, and eventually meant that instead of having civilian Bureau commissioners overseeing the two tracts of land set aside for the Sioux, Sherman had to appoint two commanding officers, Harney included, so they could spend the money given to the military as members of the military. That was a fuck-you-by-proxy to the Bureau, and Congress made Harney publicly defend his expenditures that should have gone to the Bureau, except Congress didn't give it to the Bureau, so the Bureau couldn't spend it, and the military had to.
Sherman was basically overridden in the January report by the softies of the commission, enamored with the humanitarian appeal of Taylor's touchy feely ethnocide, and very little of Sherman's darling death incarnate. At some point here, Sherman and Tappan start a long chain of letters that escalate from "consider going straight to hell" to "GO TO HELL AND DIE", and when the second report comes around, Sherman sees his opportunity, and outvotes the softies now that their buddy Taylor was back in Washington far away from Chicago. So the military members (some of whom Sherman was within their chain of command) cram in the War Department bit, because Sherman knew full well that he was the commander of much of the theater in the west, and his good buddy Grant was Commanding General of the Army. So this was very nearly a recommendation to place the entirety of Indian affairs in the hands of Sherman himself, and cut out the softies at the Bureau, who wouldn't be able to get in the way of the genocide he'd honestly been planning, and detailing in letters to Grant even before the Peace Commission started.
The whole thing is a soap opera really. GMGtalk 12:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Indian Peace Commission/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Auntieruth55 (talk · contribs) 16:39, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

I'll start this in a day or two.  auntieruth (talk) 16:39, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
GreenMeansGo, I've read through this.  Very interesting.  So sorry for the delay.  See my edits  here.  auntieruth (talk) 13:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
No worries auntieruth. I did see the tweaks you've been doing. Are there any specific additional areas of weakness you feel need addressed? GMGtalk 14:15, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
would you go through it again and clean up, similar to what i've done?  Sometimes it seems repetitive, and sometimes I'm not sure what treaty we're talking about....auntieruth (talk) 14:33, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Hey auntieruth. I've gone through again and tried to clear up where I can. I'm not sure how much more I can really simplify things given the breadth of the topic covering 5ish other main articles. GMGtalk 15:02, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo:, thanks for showing me the way to this article;[2] it shows that American politics was just as shitty in 1868 as it is now…  I have started copyediting to help with your drive to GA, and I'd like your opinion before going further. A lot of interesting and relevant content is currently tucked away in footnotes, perhaps because editors felt that long quotes would be undue. On the contrary, I think we should weave the footnote contents into the main article prose, so that readers would not be distracted by paging back and forth when looking for details. Would you approve of this approach? — JFG talk 20:33, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Hey JFG. And thank you very much for your improvements. I'll take the blame for the formatting. I've written this article almost entirely on my own, and I have an unhealthy fascination with using footnotes. Compare Baltimore railroad strike of 1877, which is so far my first and only FA, and I wrote that almost solo also. The problem with this topic is that it is such a large topic (even though it's almost entirely forgotten). It would make a good FT or GT if I can ever get it there. But we're near the medium cutoff of WP:TOOBIG already. So I tend to funnel content to footnotes when possible, to try to keep things at the level of conciseness that would hold the attention of a secondary student. I suppose I also assume that most people will skip over both the refs and the footnotes, and only those that are super interested in it will dig that deep. Maybe that's a wrong assumption. But if you feel that any of the footnotes are central enough to be incorporated into the body, then go for it. No need to ask permission from me. GMGtalk 21:21, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
OK, I'll keep that in mind. Fresh eyes are helpful. Great job there, GMG! — JFG talk 21:23, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
FYI, the article is nowhere near WP:TOOLONG at this stage: 22kB of readable prose is quite reasonable for such an important historical topic. We could easily double its size without risking a fork. Perhaps you mixed up text length with markup length (we all do, sometimes). — JFG talk 21:27, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
I am admittedly and knowingly conflating them. But I'd considered breaking out my old recording mic from college and doing an audio version of this article once it hits GA. And even at it's current length it's a substantial read (having read it out loud to myself several times). Maybe the better way to put it is that I'm trying to tell a compelling narrative with compelling characters, and maybe I shunt everything off that doesn't come off a compelling to the central narrative. GMGtalk 21:49, 30 August 2018 (UTC)