Pyramid Lake: Eagle Staff Run and Honoring Warriors of 1860

Photos by Carl Bad Bear Sampson and Buck Sampson

Article by Brenda Norrell

Censored News

PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE NATION -- The Eagle Staff War Memorial Run recounted the Pyramid Lake War of 1860. The nine mile run on Friday, May 20, 2016, ended with a feed for the people. 

Buck Sampson said, "It was the Eagle Staff War Memorial Run for the War Between the Calvary and the Indians at Pyramid Lake in 1860, told by the Indians and their descendants who fought to save the Natives. It was the Indians telling their side of the story of how it all started."

"Two white traders kidnapped two Indian girls, nine and twelve, and raped and molested them for a week. Indians found the girls tied up in their cellar and the Indians killed the five white men there," Sampson told Censored News.

"Volunteers from Virginia City went to Pyramid Lake to teach the Indians a lesson. Some of the warriors stayed back, allowing the women and children to escape to main camps in Nixon, Nevada, at Pyramid Lake."

Sampson said that at Pyramid Lake, they had two wars.

"Indians defeated the volunteers in the first battle. Major Ormsby was killed in the war by Paiute Indians. Native casualties weren't bad compared to the Calvary.

"Then, at the Mudd Lake Massacre in 1865, the Calvary wiped out women and children, and the old men, at Mud Lake."

Copyright Buck and Carl Sampson

Censored News

American Indian Genocide Museum: Buffalo Soldiers, KKK, and the language of history

American Indians ask Buffalo Soldiers to halt using derogatory terms for Indians

By Steve Melendez, Pyramid Lake Paiute
President, American Indian Genocide Museum  
http://www.aigenom.com

Censored News

HOUSTON -- The American Indian Genocide Museum and the Southern Apache Museum met today with the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum’s founder, Capt. Paul Matthews.  This historic meeting was moderated by Mr. Peter N. Berkowitz and Mr. Ian Hancock of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission.  

The native people expressed their great displeasure with the Buffalo Soldier Museum representatives referring to our ancestors with the term “hostile” because that was a designation given to all Indians who “rejected reservation life." 

Capt. Matthews was shown a picture of a Ku Klux Klan parade in the nation’s capital in 1939 which showed thousands of hooded Klansmen marching down Pennsylvania Ave.  He was asked if people dressed like that, marching down the street would bother him.  His reply was , “I don’t mind, it’s a free country."

When Capt. Matthews  stated that the Buffalo Soldiers chased robbers, thieves and Mexican bandits, he was asked on whose land they were on when they did that, he had no answer.  When Capt. Matthews told how the Buffalo Soldiers also strung telegraph lines, laid railroads, and guarded stage coaches, he was told that that was a lie.  “We didn’t string telegraph lines? How is that a lie?” He was told that it was a lie because it was a half-truth.  He was told that in order to be truthful, he should say, “The Buffalo Soldiers strung telegraph lines on Indian land. They laid railroad tracks on Indian land and that they guarded stage coaches on Indian land.”

The meeting was productive as far as the Buffalo Soldiers  Museum no longer using the term “hostile” or any other inflammatory words when referring to the Indians, especially in the classrooms.  Also, Capt. Matthews offered to allow the Indians to put up a display in the Buffalo Soldiers Museum  to teach  their side of history and for both sides to find common ground that would teach co- existence and tolerance. 

Also see: American Indian Genocide Museum, Buffalo Soldiers and Genocide: Buffalo soldiers with US soldiers at Wounded Knee:

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/09/american-indian-genocide-museum-buffalo.html