Grieving After-Christmas Massacres

It was not long after that joyous first Christmas that things turned violent in Palestine. Although it didn’t happen as soon as depicted in most Christmas pageants, not long after Jesus’ birth there was a horrendous after-Christmas massacre.

The “Massacre of the Innocents”

According to Matthew 2:16~18, Herod the Great, the reigning king of Judea, ordered the execution of all male children two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem.

The Catholic Church has long recognized those massacred baby boys as the first Christian martyrs and celebrates the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28.

That terrible “massacre of the innocents,” as it is often called, has been depicted by famous artists such as Raphael and Rubens in their paintings of c.1512-13 and 1611-12. But those works are so “busy,” I am sharing this 1860-61 painting of Italian artist Angelo Visconti:  

The Indian Massacre of December 26, 1862

What was at the time the largest one-day mass execution in U.S. history, 38 Dakota men were hanged on this date, Dec. 26, in 1862.

The Dakota War of 1862, also known by several other names (including Little Crow’s War), began that year on August 17—in the middle of the Civil War raging mostly on the east side of the Mississippi River.

That “Indian war” was between the U.S. and several bands of the Native Americans known as the Dakota and also as the eastern Sioux. It began in southwest Minnesota, four years after its admission as a state.

Treaty violations and late annuity payments led to hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Their desperation led to extensive attacks on White settlers in the area and resulted in the death of some of them.

Hundreds of Dakota men were captured, and a military tribunal sentenced 303 to death for their deadly use of violence. President Lincoln commuted the sentence of 264 of the condemned men, and one was pardoned shortly before the remaining 38 were hanged.

It was a sad, day-after-Christmas massacre.  

The Indian Massacre of December 29, 1890

The end of the Indian wars came 130 years ago this week, on Dec. 29, 1890, with the Wounded Knee Massacre.

The story of that massacre is told in some detail in the last chapter of Dee Brown’s widely read book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970). (The highly popular TV movie with the same name was aired in 2007.)

That after-Christmas massacre took place near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. (The Lakota and Dakota are the same Native American nation that is usually called the Sioux by Whites.)

By the time the massacre was over, more than 250 Native Americans, including women and children, had been killed—and perhaps as many as 50 more died later from wounds received on that fateful day.

Most of those who died were needlessly and unjustly killed. Accordingly, in 1990, a century after the massacre, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution expressing “deep regret” for the grievous slaughter.  

Beyond the Massacres

Some of those injured at Wounded Knee were taken to the Episcopal mission at Pine Ridge. Dee Brown ended his book (on page 445) with these words:

When the first torn and bleeding bodies were carried into the candlelit church, those who were conscious could see Christmas greenery hanging from the open rafters. Across the chancel front above the pulpit was strung a crudely lettered banner: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.

That reminded me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wonderful Christmas carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The third verse of that carol, written during the Civil War, says,

And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then verse four exults,

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

+++++

**For more about Longfellow and his 1863 poem, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” see my 12/25/18 blog post titled “Can You Hear the Christmas Bells?”