What parallels and differences do you see between the inhumanity Libbie glimpses during the Civil War and the suffering the Indian tribe experience at the hands of the U.S. military?

Libbie is shocked by the inhumanity she glimpses during the Civil War. The Indian tribe that Anne lives with suffers inhumanity at the hands of the U.S. military. What parallels do you see between the two? What differences?

The similarities are easy to see. One realizes that our country was forged in violence both by the Civil War and then for 30 years thereafter by the Indian Wars. The difference was that in the Civil War, it was literally brother vs brother, whereas in the latter, it was framed as “us vs them”.

War is always the same, from the ancient Greeeks through today. War is hell, whether you are the aggressor or not. Everyone suffers, everyone causes suffering. It only differs by degrees.

Inhumanity was certainly on both sides. General Custer tried to keep his promises to the Indians but our government did not make his job easy by reneging on their many treaties with the Indians.

Man’s inhumanity to man is universal. When humans are afraid they can commit horrors on other humans. We are taught to hate. All of the actors thought they were doing what they must to survive. I cannot judge those who came before because I wasn’t there and cannot see within their minds. Who am I to judge? It is easy to judge those who came before us from the comfort of our modern chairs, but unless we lived what they lived, we can only speculate. History is told from the perspective of the winners & the losers vilify the victors. The real truth is like,y an amalgam if the ‘truths’ seen by either side. I cannot, I will not, judge harshly because I wasn’t there!

From a female perspective, the inhumanity of war is horrifying and life changing. The brutality and images are etched indelibly in one’s mind permanently altering how you move forward in to world. For Anne even the harsh realities of life had moments of comfort and community, but the indiscriminate violence both physical and emotional was encountered in both the Indian world and the world of civilized white people. For Libbie the freedom of life on the frontier made up for the physical deprivations, but the inhumanity of war was a horror she could not process or cope with.