So they claimed anyway. Doesn't really excuse the supposedly civilized people running down women and children who had managed to run up to 5 miles away from the "battle." Sand Creek was even worse, btw.
Not really. At best you might claim an equivalence, but then you lose any kind of moral high ground you might have thought you had there. The Lakota certainly weren't the nicest people, but we generally didn't go out of our way to wipe other people out (as in, as a people or culture), and while we did take scalps, we didn't cut off genitals and use them for saddle horns or coin bags and the like as was done at Sand Creek. That was led by a minister, incidentally.
This is only amongst the intellectually dishonest. Like the feminists and LGBT types who ignore the atrocities Islam has perpetuated on their kind and defend them like some kind of underdog.
The irony is that I only bring it up at all when someone like yourself makes that kind of argument in regard to immigration. For me it's simply a matter of perspective, because here you are whining about the same kind of thing, basically, and yet here you are using the "whatabout" argument.