[Enter Henry Bell. He walks into a spotlight.]

Bell:       My name is Henry Bell. I was born in Alabama to William Montgomery Bell. I don't know who my father was. William Bell was my owner. I was his property.

I was eighteen when the war broke out. I ran away with three other slaves and joined the Union Army, the 101st Regiment. The white man who recruited us said that we had the chance to fight for the freedom of all peoples of my color. That's what he said. All peoples of my color.

We worked hard. We trained hard. I leaned to shoot a rifle and march in a straight line. And to say "yes, sir" to the white officers in charge. Wasn't all that much different from being a slave, except I had a gun and the promise that things would be better, after the war.

We saw action at White's Ranch, Boyd's Station and Stevenson's Gap. Johnny Reb in his grays fought hard and killed many of my fellows. And we killed many of them. Emanuel Greaves said that when he looked at the grays he could see the face of his white master. The man who beat him and took his woman away. The man who wouldn't let his boy into the house to sit by the fire that night he froze to death.

When I looked into the face of the gray man, lying in the mud, his chest all torn and red, all I could see was the face of a man who would never see his family again.

After the Union victory, I was discharged. There was no where for a man with this face to go. The South saw a traitor, good only to be strung up and bled. The North saw someone itinerant and untrustworthy. A few of us were taken into the factories and given demeaning work. They were the lucky ones.

Colonel Edward Heath began recruiting for the Ninth U.S. Calvary Regiment in 1866. It was going to a colored troop. Those of us who fought in the war were valued. We already had discipline. We had already proved we could fight. I joined. The pay wasn't much; $16 a month. But it included food and shelter and clothing. (smiles) And the chance to have your own horse.

We trained while we waited for them to get enough intelligent coloreds to do the work, and to find enough white officers to lead a colored troop. George Armstrong Custer refused to serve with us. I think we might have refused to serve with him as well.

My first posting was in Texas. I helped build forts, and protect mail routes from Cheyenne.  The white Texans resented us. They said that the sons of bitches in Washington had deliberately sent colored troops to Texas to humiliate and debase them. All we wanted was the chance to earn the respect and equality we never had the chance to earn when we were slaves. We wanted to be seen as free men, not property.

In 1876 I went to New Mexico. The white government wanted us to herd up the Apache and settle them on a reservation at San Carlos, Arizona. It seems that a group of cattlemen and lumber barons wanted the land the Apache were on, so they wanted to move the Indian out and move the white settlers in. They turned to the colored man to do that work for them.

The Apache didn't want to go. San Carlos is a desolate waste. So many of them turned renegade and we were sent out to ride them down. The Apache are magnificent warriors, fearless, resolute. Their ponies could race across the desert like the wind of fire. And they knew the land as well as you know your beloved's face, every dip, every valley, every river, and every tear.

I fought the Apache for years. Or I should say, I chased the Apache for years. He is crafty. We rarely caught up to him. Most of their leaders surrendered only after they had grown tired of the chase, too weary to continue.

Their numbers dwindled over time. When you are being chased across the desert by an enemy with the resources of the United States, even if you are the Apache, you are eventually worn down, diminished, broken.

I was heartsick to see proud men, who wanted only to hang on to what had been theirs for generations, bow their heads and accept a meager existence living off government largess in a spiritless wasteland. Their only consolation was, at least while they were on U.S. government lands, no one would be claiming the bounty the Mexican government offered for Apache scalps. $50 for a man. $25 for a woman. $10 for a child.

I retired after twenty five years in the U.S. Army. When I was discharged I rode east in the company of a white lieutenant who had also finished his service.

We were near Fort Sill when we saw a line of maybe forty Indians headed west on foot. The Indians were obviously being resettled. There was a commotion near the head of the line. Three white men on horses were pointing guns at the Indians, who were piling blankets and other items on the ground in front of them. I drew out my rifle and the two of us, still in our Union blues, rode hard towards the head of the line. The three white men rode off when they saw us approach.

We told the Indians to pick up their things. They thanked us and shambled on. The lieutenant asked me, "Henry, what you got waiting for you in Alabama?" I said, "I reckon nothing much but the long end of a short rope." Lieutenant said, "I don't think I've seen everything there is in the West, yet. Maybe I should have me another look around." We followed that group of Indians. Least ways they'd get to where they're going, even if we didn't.

[Exit Bell. Enter Eris]

Eris:       The Judeo Christian Bible notes that one of the first acts of mankind was brother slaying brother. It is one of the sins that has marked man for generation after generation. You would think that after thousands of years, mankind might eventually erase the taint of that one act.

In 1868, the American government signed a treaty with the Sioux nations, recognizing that the Black Hills were Sioux lands, and promising that (she pulls out some papers and reads) "no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the same; or without the consent of the Indians, first had and obtained, to pass through the same..."

Five years later, George Armstrong Custer led a secret expedition into the Black Hills, protecting a group of miners who wanted to know if there was gold in them there hills. There was.

Naturally, mining companies and prospectors soon followed. The Sioux were appalled at these intrusions on their lands. They treated them as trespassers, as they would treat other Indians found doing the same. The prospectors appealed to the American government for protection.

The American government considered the situation... (Eris throws away the papers) ...and decided to protect the whites from the savages.

Custer calculated correctly that finding gold in the Black Hills would start a process which would eventually drive the Sioux from their lands. The Sioux fought bravely to try and stop the incursion of the white man, but the U.S. Army beat the Indian back. The Sioux were defeated and consigned to ever decreasing reservations of little economic interest to a growing, industrialized nation.

Custer did calculate badly, however, when he tried to personally drive the Sioux from a place named Little Bighorn.

General William Tecumseh Sherman fared better in his plan to exterminate the Plains Indian. The man who set fire to Atlanta used a more indirect approach. He knew that the buffalo was central to the Indian way of life. They were able to enjoy a pastoral life style, in harmony with nature, in great measure because there was an abundant supply of food and warm clothing and bone and sinew for tools available in the vast herds of buffalo that roamed the prairie.

In 1872, when a new tanning process made buffalo hides more desirable, General of the Army Sherman encouraged the slaughter. He pointed out to the railroads that there was an endless supply of free meat to feed their workers.

The railroad also knew that the buffalo represented a hazard. If one of the vast herds decided to migrate across the track, trains would be unable to pass and schedules would not be kept.

So the railroad sponsored sporting expeditions. You could ride the train through the magnificent Western plains and shoot as many buffalo as you wished from the comfort of your seat in your state car. The railroad didn't even bother picking up the carcasses. They left them to rot.

The strategy worked. By 1890 it was estimated that thirty million buffalo had been killed. That left less than one thousand to roam the plains and feed the Indians.

You don't have to go back thousands of years to find the mark of brother killing brother on the face of mankind. You need only go back to Wounded Knee.