One of your greatest heroes, General William Sherman, is known for the famous quote, "The only good Indian, is a dead Indian".
Sherman himself thought of the former slaves in exactly the same way. “The Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of the negroes if they are released from the control of the whites,” he once said.
Sherman’s goal was a “racial cleansing of the land,” beginning with extermination of the Indians.
Sherman viewed Indians as he viewed Southerners". During the Civil War, Sherman practiced a total war of destruction of property used to feed women & children … Now the army, in its Indian warfare, wiped out entire villages.”
Sherman ordered his men when encountering Indians, “to act with all the vigor he had shown in the Shenandoah Valley during the final months of the Civil War.”, where they burned and plundered the Valley when only women, children, and elderly remained there.
Sherman conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together.
Sherman gave the same orders he gave in Georgia, to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death.
Military records estimate that about 45,000 Indians, including women and children, were killed during the wars on the Plains Indians.
Sherman Married His Sister.