Cowboys and Indians and Honesty
More honest than leftists, Pilgrim.
Traveling in New York — and blogging on the fly — I read an interesting book review in the Wall Street Journal this morning: Newsday’s Daniel Akst reviewing Sincerity by R. Jay McGill Jr. — a book about how the idea of sincerity developed and whether honesty is good for society and, if so, how much.
The review put me in mind of the old John Wayne western Hondo — a 70-minute long adaptation of a Louis L’amour novel, sort of a rip-off of Shane but well worth while all the same. The thesis of the story is that Wayne, a friend of the Apaches, has learned their highly truthful ways and essentially has to learn to tell the “noble lie” in order to join white civilization. Wayne laments the death of the more honest Apache way: it was a good way, but its time has passed. Compare this with Fort Apache, also with the much-maligned-by-leftists Wayne, in which the Apaches, led by Cochise, come off as peaceful and reasonable people abused by dishonest U.S. government agents and by Henry Fonda’s martinet cavalry leader.
In both these excellent films, we see a nuanced portrayal of Apaches and white men both. No one has a monopoly on decency. Red and white humans are both humans, given to corruption and war.
Now read these remarks by anthropologist Keith Basso in the Wikipedia entry for “Apaches:”
Of the hundreds of peoples that lived and flourished in native North America, few have been so consistently misrepresented as the Apacheans of Arizona and New Mexico. Glorified by novelists, sensationalized by historians, and distorted beyond credulity by commercial film makers, the popular image of “the Apache” — a brutish, terrifying semi-human bent upon wanton death and destruction — is almost entirely a product of irresponsible caricature and exaggeration.
Thank you for this excellent post. Indeed, during the great golden age of the western, American Indians (it is correct to refer to them as that) were not portrayed as leftists would have us believe. The same with Hispanics.
The movie “The Alamo,” again starring Wayne, portrayed the Mexicans as brave and determined, and even showed that there were Texans of Hispanic origin who fought on the side of the Anglos. Also, the Anglos were shown to be a fractious lot making their own doom more certain. Of course the Alamo defenders were portrayed as brave and ferocious fighters as well, but, as best could be done in early 60′s Hollywood, the overall portrayals were complex.
I don’t think I ever saw a single “cowboys and indians” film from the 40′s to the 60′s that portrayed Native Americans as one-dimensional savages.
I should also point out that John Wayne’s children are of mixed (Anglo and Hispanic) heritage.
Glad you mentioned “The Alamo.” It has been many, many years since I’ve seen it, but the one scene that sticks in my mind, the one that moved me the most, was at the end where Santa Anna and his men stand up and show respect to the handful of survivors as they walk out. It showed how all of us can transcend our particularity in appreciation for a purely HUMAN virtue like courage.
John Wayne understood this. Too many of our contemporaries do not.
And the film-makers did so despite the fact that the historical evidence shows that Santa Ana had many of the surviving Alamo defenders, including David Crockett, tortured to death.
And this historical information comes from…where?
memoir of Lt. Col. Jose Enrique de la Peña
If you have 10 minutes, check out the names who were at the Alamo and where they were born. Not many from Texas originally, but the foreign born ones caught my eye–England, Ireland, Germany, Scotland, Danemark.
The American ideal to live free is rooted in those men, but that type of “diversity” isn’t to be celebrated these days.
That’s because they all get classified as “white” these days, nevermind the massive cultural differences, or medical issues, or beliefs, etc…
I was particularly annoyed by “Into The West” (Spielberg-produced; 2005). Every time an Indian has a dream it’s a prophecy. Every time an Indian speaks, it’s poetry.
The “Jedi Indian” notion was really irritating.
They fought among themselves for territory and resources. Another tribe comes from across the sea and joins the wars… and wins… big! What – the white man wasn’t supposed to fight for territory and resources? Is it a case of varsity playing junior varsity? It’s humans killing humans. Gone on since the dawn of time; ever since the first monkey beat another monkey with a bone. (Damn that huge, black, rectangular obelisk!)
“Jedi Indian”! Brilliant! That’s exactly how I feel about it, and I bet a lot of American Indians do too.
That type of stuff is really irritating to me because it comes from the exact people who whine about racism the most. And yet they casually buy into, what? Positive racism? I think liberals have a very high naivete factor brought about by their obvious fascination with race. They think showing an Indian as an “other” is okay as long as they’re not asking him to stand in a ditch. I kinda understand where they’re coming from but it’s kinda like the idea of the benevolent dictator – as long as he’s good everything’s fine but when this type of racialism is turned around, and it has no moral compass, it can be dangerous and even deadly. It’s a language I despise. The idea an Indian on the Ganges has any more inherent spirituality than a truck driver is childish.
Liberals don’t understand Indians at all. This is what I’ve heard from real Indians – and yes – they prefer to be called Indians. They were born Indians and they’ll die Indians. They don’t hold with all the touchy feeling PC crap the left insist on.
Indians are, in fact, PROUD that they lost to a warrior people who ended up being a super power. They are PROUD that it took the BEST to beat them – and they went down HARD taking a lot of whites with them and they are PROUD that they gave as good as they got.
It is with dispair that they look at what we’ve become because of what it says about THEM! I.E. HOW could they have been beat by these soft puddings of a people? If the left cared ANYTHING about these people they would strive to make America STRONG if nothing else than for the PRIDE of these people.
I’m astounded that people think “Native American” is more meaningful or sensitive than “Indian.” Check out the blank look that pops up on a liberal’s face when you inform them “America” is OUR word. You’re sticking OUR name for the continent on them. How is that sensitive?
It seems this concept has never occurred to a liberal before.
“Indian” makes more sense, what with them having arrived here from Inida.
Really? Ask them – I did. I used to live in Oklahoma and was advised NOT to call them Native Americans if I wanted to avoid a fat lip.
The European came to America and joined into the wars for land and territories with the Native Americans true . But not being satisfied with the lands and territories they had won they chose to steal the rest . One has only to look at history and the event’s in the American West during the 19th century . I suppose we could go even farther back to the very first European settlers but most people are not well versed in the history of the times . The expansion of the United States into the west began innocently enough with the colonial ‘Longhunters’ and continued with the Mountain Men . Both for the most part attempted to get along with the inhabitants of the territories they hunted even adopting their ways and in many cases marrying into one tribe or another . As western expansion brought settlers in the conflicts with the Indian increased and the cry’s to Washington did to . Democratic legislators jumped on this , much as did Andrew Jackson when he removed thousands of peaceful Cherokee , Creek , Choctaw and other tribes from their lands in the South and force marched them to the Oklahoma territories . This time Democrats forced them onto resevations only to allow settlers to encroach on the lands given to the Indian . These people reacted in the only way that got any notice , they fought back . For the most part , Native american peoples at the time had no concept of land ownership . Being a nomadic people they followed the game that was their food source . The greed of the white settlement and expansion is responsible for the ‘Indian Wars’ in 99% of all cases .
Should you be so inclined to study and read historical fact , I refer you to a couple of excellent books . 1. “A Century of Dishonor” and 2. “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” . Both a study of facts and politics of the era as well as the governments attempts to ‘assimilate’ the Indian Peoples .
Being of Native American extraction I feel very strongly about the systematic persecution of my people be they Apache , Lakota , Cheyenne or my own people , the Mohawk . I do not claim that all Native Americans were the Noble Redman of movies , but neither are they the villans portrayed by Hollywood .
I’m Seminole, Choctaw, Scot and English – my ancestors apparantly learned to get along. And you’ve just spouted every liberal talking point there is on Manifest Destiny.
Historically speaking, neither side was lilly white and pure. It happened as any conflict will occur with two such diametrically opposed cultures clash.
With all due respect, the native peoples that American settlers confronted in the 1800′s West had no concept of property rights or individual rights at all. So it is inaccurate and illogical to characterize the territories as stolen from them. To have anything stolen, it must first be possessed. The fact is the nomadic tribes of the continent lived by and large by force and were in constant war with other tribes before American settlers entered the picture. Areas were conquered by force and no attempt to legitimize the dominance by establishing property rights was made. American settlers and the Army not only conquered the land, but brought the rule of law to it. Ancestors of American natives likely would have never experienced the protections of individual rights (not to mention all manner of compensation to tribes no conquering native tribe would have ever offered) if it had not been for the American’s that conquered the land and and legitimizing their conquest by bringing the rule of law with them.
Mr. Brasso would be very helpful if he’d point out the movies where the Apaches, or any tribe, were portrayed as “a brutish, terrifying semi-human bent upon wanton death and destruction”. I’ve watched a lot of old westerns and never seen Indian’s portrayed that way. Worst I’ve seen is a hot-head young brave going off on some ill-conceived crusade or a tribe backed into a corner by a dumb-ass, bigoted cavalry officer (against the advice of all his lieutenants).
“Ulzana’s Raid,” 1972, Burt Lancaster.
Given that Burt Lancaster was famously (notoriously?) Liberal, I wonder where the bias in that film was?
Don’t forget that everything is relative and depends a lot what the terms meant in those days and which liberal was defining them.
Pathfinder and Last of the Mohicans by James Finamore Cooper gives true value to the North American Indian and the European White Settlers. Great Stories, yet to today. These were the first books I read as a young boy in school.
also, Conquered into Liberty by Eliot Cohen is a super book about the 100 years long battle for superiority between France, England, Canada and America.
North American Indian is a big part of the story.
Great Books about the foundation of being American.
Seek out the Enemy, and Engage.
“Crucible of War” by Fred Anderson is also an outstanding history of the French and Indian War and the events which led up to it.
Some tribes allied with the French, some with the English, and some tried to remain neutral.
The Commanchies of Texas terriority and the southern plains were savages. Their raids on settlers homestead,s,were legend for their atrocities, and theirtreatment of captives was without even a shred of human compassion. Read the book ” Forgitton battles and fights ” , about the settlement of the southern plains. The Texas Rangers and their Walker revolvers, distinguished themselves in many fights against the Commanchies , but it was a long ,slow , painful, fight.
Moreover, the Apache tribes were forced off the high plains into New Mexico and Arizona by the Comanches. Compared to the Comanches, the Apaches were were reasonable. The Apaches, who previously fought the Spanish, actually begged the Spanish to take them in and protect them from the Comanches. The Comanches, not european settlers from the United States, actually stopped the Spanish expansion northward from present day Mexico and all Spanish settlements and presidios were withdrawn to the San Antonio-Nacogdoches line, south of Comancheria.
And one of the reasons that Mexico began encouraging entrepeneurs like Green DeWitt and Stephen Austin to come and settle in Texas was because of the danger of the Comanche, and other raiding tribes over their northernmost frontier. They simply couldn’t get too many Mexican entrepeneurs to establish working settlements. (IIRC, De Leon at Victoria was the only one.) They wanted a buffer zone: all they needed to do was to offer land, under extremely generous terms.
The Comanche themselves were pretty recent arrivals, too – they had originally come from the Great Basin, but they took to war and hunting from horseback like a duck to water. They came roaring down over the Southern plains, and pushed the Apaches west, the Tonkawa east and the Karankowa to oblivion. They raided for horses, booty and slaves, and feared no one. Accounts of what happened to captives of the Comanche (Anglo, Mexican or other Indians) make pretty stomach-churning reading.
Sometimes it all gets a little tiresome, how ‘Indians’ are all sort of grouped into one big amorphous blob of ‘others’ – when the various tribes and groups were as different as … well, European nations. There were the so-called 5 Civilized tribes, the Cherokee and their allies, and then the Comanche who were fierce warriors, and the Navaho/Hopi who were farmers and sheepherders …
more here: http://celiahayes.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/indians/
TH Fehrenbach’s book about the Comanche – The History of a People is really good, and quite unsentimental.
Loved the Celia Hayes site, Sgt Mom. Here’s a few for you, in a sort of time sequence:
http://www.southtexastraveler.com/index.php/south-texas-history-mainmenu-30/41-frontier-tales/38-the-scalping-of-josiah-wilbarger.html
https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/indian/index.html
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btp03
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Palo+Duro+Canyon+Photos&FORM=QSRE6
Palo Duro Canyon is where the Comanche Wars (as two nations in contention over meets & bounds) more or less ended –Mackenzie’s 4th Cavalry caught the Comanche & Kiowa in their redoubt and killed off their horse herd, breedstock and all. In 1874, two years before the Little Bighorn fight on the far other side of the plains, sixteen years before Wounded Knee ended the Plains Injuns’ faintest hope of the old way.
I caught the first few minutes of a series a few years back which was hosted by Kevin Costner. It was called 500 Nations and apparently made the claim that there were 500 different tribes in what is today America.
a little research on the net will educate as to recent findings of ‘native’ Americans. in the 80′s an excavated bog in titusville, fla (windover bog) uncovered a cemetary w/ almost 200 bodies somewhere around 8,000 years old. thousands of years before indians got here. who were they? europeans.
also, look up the Kenniwick man, dug up in Wash. the indians tried to scurry him away and rebury him under an old treaty. it took 7 scientists to file suit and save this almost 10,000 y.o. caucasian man. that’s right. caucasians were here (coast to coast) thousands of years before the migration from across the pacific or bering strait. no telling how many of whatever the indians have quickly and quietly buried trying to keep their ‘special’ status, possibly to avoid paying taxes on casinos.
there are also old indian stories telling of how their ancestors had to destroy the white devils that were here before them. due to pc it will probably take decades before the truth is taught in schools.
so, the age old custom af conquest continues. mongolians wiped out (or absorbed) caucasian populations who millenia later come back and killed (or absorbed) their offspring. nuttinu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teh90FTIKec
excellent youtube by the bog project
I watched the Youtube clip. One rather big problem: while the remains found in the Windover bog were carbon-dated as being 7000 years old, there is not a word to support the contention that these were Europeans. Given that the crossing of the Bering Strait via the then-existing land bridge is said to have happened 15 to 25 thousand years ago, I see nothing here to preclude the possibility that the bodies in the Windover bog were Indians, not Europeans.
Am I missing something?
Sparky, search [ windover bog caucasian ] and you’ll see a lot of DNA controversy –i think the question is probably still open –
It should also be noted that those old Western movies employed more American Indians as extras than any movie has done since the 50s. It got to the point where you could recognize the same faces among the Comanche/Apache/Kiowa/Sioux warriors (the truth is, most of them were Navajos, and Navajo was the “Indian” language most often used as Comanche/Apache/Kiowa/Sioux, etc).
Hey R, do I know you from Wall Street?
My mother’s people came from Montezuma Co. CO. There are all kinds of Indians around, and all the tribes are very different. The Utes are really pretty sour, and much richer. The Navajo are truly possessed of the comic spirit. The Apache, I would note, speak are also Athabascan speakers, and strike me as good natured too.
The trouble is that the PC have never met any, except under controlled conditions, and in fact, never new that there were any people different from themselves, except for the TV.
While watching the recent remake of _True Grit_, I was stunned when Jeff Bridges sauntered up and began repeatedly kicking an Indian boy at a trading post for, well, just because. Such mean behavior was unthinkable during the original _True Grit_. The director of the remake no doubt thought himself more sensitive towards portrayal of historic relations by the kicking scene. So we’ve arrived at a strange place: showing our enhanced sensitivity towards Indians by, well, kicking them.
In that scene, the two Indian kids were tormenting a tied-up mule at the hitching post. That’s why Rooster booted the boy a time or two.
In the thirties and forties there were strong women as lead characters in movies. Think of Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Bette Davis. They played strong, independent women who had careers and who had to struggle on their own since. They aren’t many characters like that in today’s movies.
To Cowboy
Did you really watch the remake of “True Grit”? The scene of Bridges slapping around the young Indian kid was because the kid was abusing an animal. Tn my book the brat deserved it. The message, obvious to me, was that the Bridges character, very mean to many other humans thru-out the movie, would not tolerate anyone abusing an animal. The scene didn’t have any message at all about the “white man’s historical abuse of the Indian”. In fact, the portrayal of the kid as a Indian (long black hair, dark skin), or at least a mixed race kid, had more power because of this fact. The kid could very easily have been scripted in as a white kid. The movie was a powerful and good one because it was continually juxtapositioning sterotypes, and surprising audience expectations.
Ironically, the later scene of Bridges abusing an animal (riding the horse to death—which was very hard for me to watch), to save a human (one that he had grown to care for in the course of the movie), turns the beating of the Indian boy scene on it’s head again.
Again, the subtle points, and constant rearranging of Western sterotypes is the power, and one of the key thrusts of the movie.
Forgive me. I don’t want to be critical of you, as anyone who watches, and likes Westerns is a Grade A Number One Person in my book. However, I had to set the interpretation of the scene (that you referenced) right. Cheers, Amigo.
–agree with what you said and how you said it. Coen Bros are in a class by themselves. True Grit is incandescent.
There are three movies that have it right on Indians, A MAN CALLED HORSE, LITTLE BIG MAN and DANCES WITH WOLVES. They deal with the very human Indian.
I am sorry to disagree but Dances with Wolves had to be the most fanciful fable of the Souix and the US Calvary I’ve come across let alone based on any remote fact. And though Hondo is a great film it barely resembles the Louis L’amour tale “The Gift of Cochise” that it purports to be based on. For reading I would suggest “The Truth about Geronimo by Britton Davis and “On the Boarder with Crook” by John G. Bourke. These will open a door that is hard to close. The settling of the Plains, North and South are a very complex subject and there is much out today that is just hog wash accepted as fact because of sympathy for the Natives. The main point of it all is how our Constitution enables us to all be of one, and in that manner we all prosper.
I grew up on the Great Plains, and as a boy was adopted into the Omaha Tribe. My feelings toward the Indians is completely different than yours. To me Dances With Wolves was a pretty accurate portrayal of the Great Plains Indians especially the Lakota. I remember seeing the film with my friends and having to explain many of the things portrayed in the film. Without question many of the qualities I saw portrayed in the film, I saw in the Indians I knew. Now what is left are the reservation Indians, stoned or drunken. Believe me none of that was their fault. They were honest, strong, trusting and totally vulnerable.
Don’t over-romanticize the Native Americans – their ancestors killed mine, enslaved the women and children, and forced them to stay, far from their family. The women (ALL) “decided” to stay and have children by men of the tribe – come on! They were raped! That’s often called “captivity” by the PC types – it’s slavery, and no different than Southern slavery.
Three other great movies along those lines are “Windwalker”, “Jeremiha Johnson”, and “Blackrobe”.
If you like the three movies that you mentioned, and haven’t yet seen these three, you have 3 tasty threats in your future.
“treats”, not “threats”, sorry. (early morning here)
Watch the movies, if you haven’t seen them, yet. You will like them. Good tasting things ahead.
Well,
Apaches were Apaches, and clever and sadistic raiders to boot. The story of Apaches raiding a Mexican village, then asphyxiating the inhabitants holed up in the church by dropping burning hot pepper bombs down the chimney sticks in my mind. And the Mexicans weren’t any better when it came their treatment of the Apaches. Which is to say, human beings have a history of violence and vicious warfare that goes way back and shows no sign of ending soon. I think the problem is that the Left romanticizes various groups and divides them into good and bad just as much as they claim the movie industry did. This hides human nature in the foggy corners and makes it nearly impossible to have a discussion with any basis in reality.
Slavery is another of the those historic human universals that is seldom treated with any honesty. The resulting neutered fairy tales are frankly boring.
the slave trade/raids into Apache territories by Spaniards and the Mexicans,caused a lot of animosity. white Americans showed up in the middle of a life and death struggle between these two groups. Americans then replaced the other white people/Hispanic fighting the Apaches.
Apaches got even during the scalp bounty. The whites (dunno if it was Army or civilian authority) began offering gold for Apache scalps at one point, for a few years in the 1850s iirc. What ruined the program was the Apaches raiding Mexican villages, taking Mexican scalps –which looked just like Apache scalps –and selling them themselves to the buyer agents.
The scalp bounty was instituted by Mexico (“proyecto de guerro”).
Thanks, Rich. I thanked you in longer form earlier, but the comment appears to’ve gotten lost. I’ll truncate, and just steer you to this excellent Virginia dot edu site:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/oldfolks.html
“If you wrote it in a novel, it would never sell, it’s just too incredible”
The Indian wars of the great plains during the last third of the 19th century, featuring the modern industrial Age of Machines crossing a ten thousand year gap and running head on into the Paleolithic Era –the telgraph wire and railroad in the same place and time as the painted horsemen of the Stone Age, under the vast blue sky over the endless empty plains of the center of an unmapped continent.
“Just too incredible –take it home and rewrite it, son.”
See also the leftist critique of classic war films; I find “modern” war films much more packed with stereotypes and offensive generalizations than I do those of the 40′s, 50′s, and most of the 60′s.
I also believe what gets lost today is the fact that the Plains-Indian Wars were just that, WAR. People acted savagely on both sides, but the fact remained that they were wars and were fought as such. Nobility or “playing by the rules” didn’t mean much if you were a farmer scalped by an Indian or if your village was overrun by the 7th Cavalry at the Washita River. This was a brutal war to the death in many cases with atrocities committed on both sides. War is a terrible thing and the ones fought with the American Indians (both in the west and in the northeast during colonial times) proved that there were no “good” people in those wars. Only victims, on both sides.
What wears me out is the continual judgement of those in the past by todays standards. Thomas Jefferson may have had sexual relations with Sally Hemmings? OH THE HORROR!!!!! Whether we like it or not back in the day it was an accepted practice for slave owners to have relations with some of their slave women.
The Anglos conquered the “Native Americans” (BTW there is NO such thing as a “Native American” EVERYONE migrated here at some point)? Those dirty evil people. From time immemorial one race of people has taken over from another race of people who for whatever reason were not able to keep up with the changing times. Guess what? The same dang thing happens in the animal world.
The Indians by and large treated each other like crap because they all had things that the others wanted. Just like EVERY other civilization and culutre in the rest of the entire world for the entire history of the world.
Why was Cortez able to conquer the Aztec Empire with only a handful of men? We are told because those crafty Europeans had guns and horses. Really? you are telling me 100 men on horses with guns that take almost sixty seconds to reload when mounted and with an accurate range of thirty feet were a more capable weapons system than tens of thousands of Aztec Warriors with Bows that could fire twenty projectiles accurately at targets 2oo yards away?
Nonsense!!!! The handful of Spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs, and the Inca’s and every other dominant Equatorial Indian Empire for ONE reason. That being the Aztec and Inca were bloody savages to all other Indians in those regions. See Mel Gibsons “Apocalypto” for reference. The Indians in those areas joined with the Spanish when they appeared in the new world because the status quo was horrible and the Indians assumed that things could not get any worse under the Spanish.
The fact that they did does not excuse the Aztec, Inca, Comanche, and Apache, from the crimes against humanity that they inflicted on other Indian peoples.
Yet somehow it is only the evil whitey that has ruined the world? Give me a break. The people who espouse these opinions are only doing so for political reasons the same as the Earth First and Environmental Change Chicken Littles. They ignore the history they do not want to see and only acknowledge that which furthers their agenda.
Child please.
“Just like EVERY other civilization and culture in the rest of the entire world for the entire history of the world.”
Probably not “every” civilization but close enough for government work. But liberals are apparently too dumb (or just unwilling) to understand history in the the context of what is normal for any given point in time.
BTW, love the blog name – even more so if it is your real name.
By all accounts it was those few hundreds Spaniards who broke the back of the Aztec armies. That does not mean Cortez could have won the war without Its Tlazcalzatec allies: witn a mere thousand men he couldn’t hold the country, secure his commeunication lines or prevent canoe-born Aztecs to launch commando-style raids on his troops. It was the Tlazcaltec who in addition to providing him with the numbers for these tasks, carried the brigantins Cortez had had built from the coast to Mexico thus wrestling “naval” superiority from the Aztecs in the Mexico lagoon. But the Talzacltcs had never been able to conquer the Aztecs, it was closer to the opposite: it was their young who were being sent as a tribute and sacrified on the Aztec altars not the opposite
In addition to guns (who even if they were accurate only to fifty or sixty yards but had a loooong effective range when firing at a compact mass of Aztec warriors), the Spaniards had cannon (don’t k,ow if the had grapeshot but having a cannonball going through ten or twenty warriors and blowing them to pieces was desvatataing for Aztec moral), crossbows and more importantly horses, lances, swords and iron armor. Charges on horseback by lance wearing Spaniards were particularly effective because the Aztecs had never been confronted to anything similar and had neither the weapons (pikes) nor the tactics (greek-style phalanxes) to stop them. And their wood, copper and stone weapons were completely unable to pierce spanish armor. Their cotton “armors” couldn’t stop the blow of a spanish sword and their maces couldn’t parry them.
Actually The Aztecs were unlucky: they faced the Spaniards at the point the European way of war was at its deadliest for dealing with an enemy like them: a cantury earlier and the Spaniards wouldn’t have had fire arms, a century later lack of armor and overreliance on fire arms and limited stocks of ammo would have doomed the expedition. And of all Europeans they faced the Spaniards who after eight hundred years facing the Moors were probably (like evidenced by the supremacy of the Spanish Teercios) the best soldiers of Europe. And of all the Spaniard “generals” they faced the best one.
Actually, were the accusation true, it would be very much “OH THE HORROR!”
If you know anything about Southern honor and integrity, you would know why that would be so. It was never an “accepted practice” for slave owners to have sex with their slaves, and would be considered an immoral act, even if the South’s version of paternal chattel slavery was viewed as such by others, particularly high-handed abolitionists who called for the outright murder of white Southern men, women and children. So much for morality, I guess.
However, in our politically correct world, it is necessary to continue the slur against Jefferson’s character (first raised by James T. Callender in 1802) that has been kept alive over the years for obvious reasons.
This is more of the same, of course.
Remind me what the DNA tests showed. While the Jefferson “accusation” may once have been a slur, it has now entered the realm of an activity promoting diversity and multiculturalism. Rather than “accepted practice” would you accept, “a frowned upon, but not uncommon practice?”
Cortez defeated the Aztecs in substantial part because of native allies, but also because the outbreak of smallpox, measles, and other Euro diseases killed a lot of Aztecs and disrupted their society and their organization.
The Spanish conquered the Maya because at the time the Mayan civilization had already fallen. Mayan city states were ecologically unstable – they exhausted the land around them. There had been several previous cycles of city-building and collapse in Mayan areas.
The Spanish conquered the Incas because when they arrived, there was a civil war in progress (more or less). They murdered the Incan ruler Atahualpa, and put his chief rival on the throne, thus getting the support of a large faction.
Beyond that: there is a joke among the Guarani Indians of Paraguay.
There was a youth (who was basically a punk). One day he was out hunting, and he met the Old Witch Woman of the Jungle, who for some reason offered to transform him into whatever creature he wanted to be. The punk asked to be a jaguar, the fiercest of beasts.
As a jaguar, he roamed the jungle, slaying and eating as he pleased, until a fox tricked him of his prey.
He went back to the Witch Woman, who changed him to a fox. As a fox, he went about tricking all the other beasts, until he encountered a snake, which slithered up on him.
He went back to the Witch Woman, who changed him to a snake. As a snake, he slithered all around, until he encountered a wasp, which stung him with excruciating pain.
He went back to the Witch Woman again, and asked to be changed into a creature more ferocious than a jaguar, more cunning than a fox, more insidious than a snake, and more vicious than a wasp.
So the Witch Woman changed him into a Spaniard!
Excuse me but you have read too many liberal books.
You telm “Aztecs were vanquished because of an outbreak of smlalpox and measles”. Disease cuts both ways. The Spaniards could have inherited some resistance to these diseases but they were not immune and had no cure for them. Also for tropical diseases it was just the opposite: Aztecs had developped resistance and the Spaniards hadn’t. Finally, how it is that none of the liberal historains tells anything about effects of disease on Cortez’s Indian allies? The Tlazcaltecs were not more resistant than the Aztecs to European diseases. In fact Because of their earlier, longer and more intense contact with the Spaniards disease should have stricken them earlier and with far more intensity than they did to the Aztecs. If your explanation were true they should have been unable to field a sizable army against the Aztecs. Instead the same liberal historians teel us that even at Otumba after thousands of them had been killed during the “Noche Triste” (evacuation of Mexico) or had deserted he still had five thousand men (other historains tell of Cortez havig far fewer men in that battle). How it is they weren’t dead?
Forn the Incas when the Spaniards landed the civil war between Atahualpa and his brother was basically over and by the time of the first combats between Spaniards and Incas Huascar was already a prisoner.
You are assumming every Aztec warrior was armed with a bow. Most used other weapons. Also the two hundred yards range you give is the figure for the exceptionally powerful British longbow. The Aztec bow had lesser range and more important its arrows had a far lesser penetrating power against armor thna the metal tipped arrows of the longbow.
While we are correcting the record, it is mentioned here that the Spanish armor and edged weapons were superior because they were of iron. Actually the truth is even more so –the material was hammer-forged ‘Toledo’ steel, the best in the world (well, except for Japan). The swords especially, had to pass tests including a full-force blow against a strong helmet without damage, and a bending in a full 180 degree semi-circle and springback.
BTW, the soldiers were veterans of the Moor Wars –deadly wars, which the troops of Cortes and Pizzaro had won. The Spanish founded Matamoros, the Mexican city at the Gulf of Mexico mouth of the Rio Grande and cross-river sister-city of Brownsville, TX. ‘Matamoros’ means ‘Kill Moors’. Apparently the Spanish did not want the port city to welcome any Muslim sailors or shipping.
Yassir,
Even as a tweener 40 years ago, I was perplexed by how Cortez conquered the Aztec nation with only 250 men. There just isn’t enough firepower to repel 10,000 warriors. Obviously, it was done with the help of unhappy neighboring tribes whom the Aztecs had victimized.
But the thing that struck me when I got older was that this help was almost never mentioned in my public school education. Even back then, the liberal education system was already presenting the pre-Columbian Indians as the “noble savage”, living in peace with nature and each other. Human sacrifice was mentioned, but it wasn’t pointed out that these sacrifices were tribute or prisoners of war. It was treated more like religion gone mad. (another thing I didn’t get at the time, the anti-religion nature of education).
Every time I think of the ridiculous Indian Utopia concept, I think of Neal Young’s song “Cortez the Killer”. The lines,
“Hate was just a legend
And war was never known
The people worked together
And they lifted many stones.”
It makes me roll my eyes because, being the Lefty he is, that’s the way Old Neal sees it.
Interesting take, Andrew. The integrity and honesty of the Apache and their cousins, the Navajo, was basic to their character.
As with all human individuals, character development centers around a worldview that involves honesty, sincerity, genuineness, truthfulness. A person without these qualities has a compromised character, regardless of their race or heritage. It’s just that same value these qualities above others.
Our society used to always operate under “The Golden Rule” (do unto others as you would have others do unto you) and “Honesty is the Best Policy”. Certainly if you can’t trust your fellow citizens then they have no reason to trust you. It is a cornerstone of society. Without it, order breaks down, criminals rule the day, and those with character and said honesty become chumps in a desperate jungle.
Our society has been molded and manipulated over these last few decades by media: Film, radio, music, television. These mouthpieces constantly distort and tell us what we’re supposed to be or give a distorted view of what we are. And guess what? People are influenced by it.
If we want to see this sort of honesty and integrity, openness and genuineness, then we need to practice it ourselves, teach our children these principles, and turn off the ugly influence from the media or counter it somehow.
As an aside, shouldn’t the Occupy Wall Street crowd be happy that the vast wealth of North America was taken away from a tiny group of landowners and distributed to a huge group immigrants?
*snicker*
haw!
“Give Your Heart to the Hawks” by Winfred Blevins
This book opened my eyes to the culture of the different tribes. He writes an honest history of the mountain men and what they encountered, before political correctness
About all I remember of “The Last Tomahawk” was how unfitting its music was!
A few disjointed thoughts:
The wars had plenty of cruelty on both sides; the broken contracts, seem worse.
To assuage some vague guilt, I give some money regularly to Billy Mills’s “Running Strong for American Youth.” Many of the reservations are disasters, at least as bad as inner-city America. There’s undoubtedly plenty of blame to go around.
Liberals miss some supposedly innocent and noble savage. Righties miss John Wayne movies.
It’s 2012, and reality is as overwhelming as ever; the best of times and the worst of times. One of the few easy things is listing those we despise.
“The Searchers” shows John Wayne’s magnanimity in that in the end, he does not kill his niece, who has been (somewhat eventually willingly, as I recall) defiled by an Indian. We take our small victories, wherever we can get them.
Among books about life among the indians, Garcia’s memoir “Tough Trip Through Paradise” is one of my favorites.
So far as I can recall, the Indian/whiteman conflicts were presented more as cultural conflicts or turf fights. Indians were strong, just on the other side.
Speaking of “white man’s word” being used for “native pride”, wasn’t “Africa” that part of the Mediteranian coast of (ahem) “Africa” currently called Tunesia, back when only “whites” of one sort or another lived there? So, calling someone an African-American uses two “white man” words.
And of the 5 Great Nations, oftimes people have to told that the translation of Mohawk is cannibal.
‘eats long-pig’
Here is a treasury of contemporary accounts of what made the local news during the pre-Civil War phase of Indian wars in the Louisiana/Oklahoma border regions with Texas, and Texas proper, around one of two times that the Comanches stopped and reversed the settlers’ westward migration. A second advance was turned back from the Trans/Pecos region to behind a San Antonio-Nacogdoches line protecting the so-called Nueces Strip –which was the area that Santa Anna was after when (after his quitting of the Constitution of 1828 caused the Texicans brown and white both to declare independence north of the Rio Grande) he rode north with his regulars through the Alamo to the San Jacinto river, where Sam Houston’s irregulars clobbered his army, took him prisoner, and released him in trade for a peace treaty and sovereignty transfer.
https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/indian/toc.html