164 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
panded the army from twenty-five thousand to nearly three hundred
thousand men by the time it invaded and occupied Cuba, undermin
ing the ongoing independence movement against Spain there. While
US troops were headed to Havana Harbor in 1898, Admiral George
Dewey led the US Navy to intervene in the Philippines-purport
edly to assist a force of thirty thousand indigenous Filipino rebels
who had won and declared their independence from Spain. Dewey
referred to the Filipinos as "the Indians" and vowed to "enter the
city [Manila] and keep the Indians out."3 It took the United States
three more years to crush the Filipino "lhdian" resistance to US oc
cupation, the army using counterinsurgency techniques practiced
against the Indigenous nations of the North American continent,
including new forms of torture such as water-boarding, and under
many of the same army commanders. Twenty-six of the thirty US
generals in the Philippines had been officers in the "Indian wars." 4
Major General Nelson A. Miles, who had commanded the army in
campaigns against Indigenous peoples, was put in general command
of the army in the Philippines war.
The continuity between invading and occupying sovereign In
digenous nations in order to achieve continental control in North
America and employing the same tactics overseas to achieve global
control is key to understanding the future of the United States in
the world. The military provided that continuity. As a colonel in
the 187 0s, Nelson Miles had been in charge of pursuing every last
Sioux and herding them onto reservations guarded by troops or re
cently trained Indian police. The reservations were not safe havens
for the incarcerated. Struck By the Ree told of multiple horrors of
daily life on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, which was not out
of the ordinary:Another time when General Sully came up he passed through
the middle of our field, turned all his cattle and stock into our
corn and destroyed the whole of it .... The soldiers set fire to
the prairie and burnt up four of our lodges and all there was
in them .... The soldiers are very drunken and come to our
place-they have arms and guns; they run after our women
and fire into our houses and lodges; one soldier came along