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Thoughts from a Battlefield

2011-05-25 · explainer · Hank · 3:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: recurring series, heavy topic

After stopping at the Big Hole battlefield, Hank explains that the 1800s Nez Perce were militarily powerful and economically rich, how US greed for their land and gold led to war and the ambush at Big Hole, and argues we should remember places where we lost our humanity.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Are the wonderful things in our lives built on suffering? Hank and Katherine's hot-spring mini-vacation in Jackson, Montana and a roadside sign

  • ★★ Hank opens by asking John whether he ever worries that the wonderful things in our lives are built on human suffering and misery. — 00:00:01
  • ★★ A couple of weeks ago Hank and Katherine took a mini-vacation at a hot spring in tiny Jackson, Montana, and on the drive home stopped at a big sign. — 00:00:08 · Katherine Green

00:00:23 — Hank's hair looks like Topher Brink's from Dollhouse

00:00:37 — The Nez Perce War; two prevailing views of 1800s Native Americans; the Nez Perce as militarily powerful and economically rich horse breeders

  • ★★ Hank says the stop taught him about the Nez Perce War, which he calls the last of the Indian Wars in America. — 00:00:37 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says two views of 1800s Western Native Americans prevail, cowboys-and-Indians fighting and New Age earth-wise nomads, probably each with some truth. (hedged) — 00:00:43
  • ★★★ Hank says what he would not have thought is that 1800s Western Native Americans were powerful and rich: not in wisdom or spirituality, but militarily and economically. — 00:01:01
  • ★★ Hank says they were much better fighters than the American cavalry, and far more cavalry than Native Americans died in these battles. — 00:01:09 · United States
  • ★★★ In the fifty years between white settlers' arrival and the war, the Nez Perce combined their land and knowledge with horses and guns to breed great horses, growing wealthy and powerful. — 00:01:21

00:01:53 — The board: treaties, cattle range and gold as causes of the war; the ambush at the Battle of the Big Hole

  • ★ Hank introduces 'the board', a whiteboard format he says he is experimenting with. (playful) — 00:01:53
  • ★★★ Hank says the treaty homeland had good cattle range and later gold; partly fearing the Nez Perce would keep it, the US forced them into another treaty, 'not a good deal', which many tribes refused. — 00:01:57 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says the tribes that refused to sign the treaty were the ones the United States went to war with. — 00:02:39 · United States
  • ★★★ At the Battle of the Big Hole the unsuspecting Nez Perce were ambushed at night; most losses were women, children and elderly in their teepees as General Gibbon's force rode through. — 00:02:39

00:02:56 — A beautiful valley, not a battlefield: remember the places where we lost our humanity; the Nez Perce lost because they were strong; sign-off

  • ★ Hank says that, to him, 'hundreds of years later' the site doesn't look like a battlefield, just a beautiful valley. — 00:02:56
  • ★★★ Hank says we are obsessed with remembering where we lost battles, but it is more important for our culture, maybe our species, to remember where we lost our humanity and moral sense. (hedged) — 00:03:00
  • ★★★ Hank says a nation of strong, wise people lost everything in this valley to greed, complacency and prejudice, not because they were weak but because they were strong. — 00:03:22

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Hank quotes Chief White Bird, October 22, 1877: the Nez Perce left their homes as wanderers, robbed of their wealth by white man's greed and made beggars with no country, people or home. — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Battle of the Big Hole · Big Hole Valley · collective memory · Native Americans in the United States · Nez Perce · Nez Perce War

Also: People: John Gibbon · Katherine Green

Works: Dollhouse

Organizations: United States Cavalry

Concepts: stereotype

Places: Jackson, Montana · United States · Western United States

Events: American Indian Wars

Characters: Topher Brink

Only in the description or credits: Big Hole National Battlefield · Chief Joseph · Thoughts from Places · White Bird

Also centred on collective memory: This is How You Load a Dishwasher - A Song · Make Your Art.

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