The saddest smile in history !!

 This smiling girl is named O-o-be and belongs to the Kiowa tribe.

She wears a traditional dress made of three deer skins, decorated with an elk's tooth.

She was born during the "Reservation Era."

Here, after their original lands were sold and taken away, Native Americans were only allowed to settle in reserves. These were legally defined pieces of land allocated by the government to federally recognized tribes.

This served two purposes for the United States:

Freeing up Native American lands for westward expansion.

Implementing a program to Americanize the tribes into small agricultural communities.

Neither goal was truly achieved.

Consequently, tribe members on the reservations relied mainly on food rations provided by the federal government.

An "unconditional basic income," so to speak, kept them in complete dependence after their means of livelihood were taken away.

Let's return to the Kiowa and O-o-be.

The United States had tried to assimilate the Kiowa by sending Quakers and Christians as "Indian agents."

These agents were supposed to teach the Kiowa English and introduce them to the concepts of Christianity and Euro-American culture.

They also attempted to persuade the Kiowa to give up hunting and focus on agriculture.

The attempt was unsuccessful.

Soldiers were sent to destroy the tribe's food, clothing, shelters, and horses, so they couldn't survive on their own through the upcoming winter.

The Kiowa were reluctantly forced to settle on the reservation.

Kiowa leaders received permanent houses but continued to sleep in their tents.

In 1873, Quakers established a school that Kiowa children had to attend.

Some children were captured and placed in boarding schools far from the reservation.

They had their hair cut and couldn't wear their traditional clothing or speak their language.

And they couldn't practice any religion.

Seeing their parents and other tribe members was forbidden.

Boys had to learn farming, while girls had to perform household chores.

These weren't schools but institutions for uprooting tribal culture, resembling concentration camps, often surrounded by barbed wire so no one could escape.

Three Kiowa boys had been beaten and whipped by the headmaster.

They managed to escape in 1891 but later froze to death in a snowstorm.

In 1892, 220 children died of measles.

The sick children were sent back to their families. Thus, the disease quickly spread throughout the reservation.

We don't know how O-o-be lived her life.

But perhaps it's best not to know.