August 13, 2024- One of my co-workers at the Monday night soup kitchen was of the understanding that the African-American troops who were organized after the Civil War were exclusively used in the Spanish-American War (1898). I corrected him, in that they were previously sent to help quell Native American resistance to the homesteading of the West, particularly the Southwest. The “Buffalo Soldiers”, so named because of the woolly nature of some of their coiffures, and their ferocious style of fighting, were sent to monitor the Ghost Dancers, among the Lakota Sioux people, fight the Comanche in the Llano Estacado of Texas and had other duties, relative to the Apache, Cheyenne, northern Puebloans and Arapaho. They also kept order among White settlers, in parts of Wyoming, a task that was at times far more brutal than anything they experienced with Indigenous people.

It has occurred to Native Americans, then and now, that using African-Americans, most of whom were formerly enslaved, to keep them “in line”, was a cynical, insidious practice. It pitted the two groups against one another, at times, and has resulted in some Native Americans taking on the worst racist notions coming from the dominant society against Black people. To be sure, I have heard a few African-Americans, over the years, denigrate Indigenous people, with ignorant slurs. The idea of controlling both groups by pitting them against one another, however, has by and large been unsuccessful.

The arc of history is moving in the direction of people understanding one another’s good qualities and towards unity, at all levels. The insipid appeal of various prejudices will continue to fade. This is “the Day that will not be followed by Night”, in that sense.