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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 11, 2008 8:59:36 GMT -6
When you DO get around to rereading that set of threads, note my critique of his introduction which features very bad math among other things.
It's not "bullshit." He wants the West to be much more Indian dangerous than it was.
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Post by markland on Jun 11, 2008 9:22:41 GMT -6
When you DO get around to rereading that set of threads, note my critique of his introduction which features very bad math among other things. It's not "bullshit." He wants the West to be much more Indian dangerous than it was. The West was dangerous-I have 9,502 Regular Army dead who will testify to that fact. Billy
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 11, 2008 9:53:00 GMT -6
Nobody said the west wasn't dangerous, did they Markland? It actually IS bullshit to imply I, or anyone, said that.
What I said, specifically about Michno: "He wants the West to be much more Indian dangerous than it was." 'Indian' as adjective.
And this is exactly the same thing Michno tries to do in his introduction to the Encyclopedia. The number of dead killed by Indian vs. the hordes that came through is pretty small. More people, I've read, died by incompetence with their own guns, one of the many reasons railroads banned weapons.
Break out the mode of death among your 9k 'regular' Army dead, unless you're claiming they died at the hands of hostiles in the West. Disease, booze, guns going off, dumb ass activities. Doesn't have the same effect, does it? That's why you need to imply they died by Indian (since you're answering that question....)rather than be specific. It's what Michno does and Donovan does and its fueling motivation is to implant a falsehood.
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Post by markland on Jun 11, 2008 11:01:13 GMT -6
Nobody said the west wasn't dangerous, did they Markland? It actually IS bullshit to imply I, or anyone, said that. What I said, specifically about Michno: "He wants the West to be much more Indian dangerous than it was." 'Indian' as adjective. And this is exactly the same thing Michno tries to do in his introduction to the Encyclopedia. The number of dead killed by Indian vs. the hordes that came through is pretty small. More people, I've read, died by incompetence with their own guns, one of the many reasons railroads banned weapons. Break out the mode of death among your 9k 'regular' Army dead, unless you're claiming they died at the hands of hostiles in the West. Disease, booze, guns going off, dumb ass activities. Doesn't have the same effect, does it? That's why you need to imply they died by Indian (since you're answering that question....)rather than be specific. It's what Michno does and Donovan does and its fueling motivation is to implant a falsehood. You are right in that I missed the word "Indian" in your original post. However, since you bring it up, the introduction to Michno's book is three complete pages-the portion you are quibbling about are seven sentences (two paragraphs) of the three pages. Those sentences state: "In additon to the entries, a summary of the conclusions I drew from the data appears at the end of this book. In it I attempt to challenge some widely accepted generalizations about the Indian wars and the frontier military, generalizations based upon deductions I believe are faulty. Among these generalizations is a revisionist assertion that may surprise the average American: the Wild West was not wild. The frontier was, according to this theory, an unexceptional place in its era, the Wild West image simply a creation of popular media. "In addition to supposedly debunking the idea that the nineteenth-century American West was violent, these historians question whether we should even continue to study western warfare in any detail. At a roundtable discussion at the 1999 Western History Association conference, some participants went so far as to suggest that historians should deemphasize violence and warfare in history in the hopes that this might curb the violence in our culture. I believe that while we need not glorify violence, we must be careful not to distort the facts to conform to our own political agenda." Notice, he makes a point of stating that the "Conclusions" chapter were "conclusions I drew...". Personally, I do agree with you that he seems to be mixing violence as a whole in the West with Indian-White violence using the listed battles as proxies for that. Nonetheless, in my opinion, Michno actually understates the amount of Indian-White conflict by not going deeply enough into civilian-Indian fights, whether talking about the massacres inflicted upon the west coast tribes by settlers/militia or the numerous murders of farmers, ranchers, freighters, messengers and other travelers by various Indian tribes. So, unless I am missing something, your contention is that because Michno, by including his personal conclusions separately from his factual (whether those are sometimes inaccurate is beside the point for reasons already discussed) rendering of the fights, voids the contents of the entire book? Later I'm sure, Billy
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Post by markland on Jun 11, 2008 11:28:56 GMT -6
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 11, 2008 11:47:15 GMT -6
You, in turn, are correct, a much preferable way of saying "I, in turn, was wrong...." I'm referring to his conclusions at the book's end (yes, absent index.....),not the Introduction. Lazy error from memory. All other points valid, though. I say, and reference how, Michno uses "casualty" vaguely, says casualties "caused" in certain graphics when he means "sustained", and then has a totally misleading comparison to an airliner crash with bad math. I'm not looking it up, it's in there. Oh, hell, here's my takedown from that board. Dark Cloud Brigadier General
USA Status: offline Posted - September 28 2004 : 2:23:35 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Really? Michno's Encyclopedia? The one where he states on page 296: "Custer, meanwhile, approached from the northeast, aiming for the Cheyenne lodges, then moved downstream to await support from Reno and Benteen. The support never came. Custer's scattered companies were picked off in detail...." Rarely do Custerphiles so blatantly dispense such questionable theory as fact.
With great amusement, I read Gregory F. Michno’s Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, a listing of most or all encounters between 1850 and 1890, when the Frontier was declared closed. In conjunction with the tabloid-like and increasingly sensationalistic (and bozo) presentations on The History Channel, Discover Channel, and other assumed conveyers of Truth - done in dramatic templates of recorded ‘conversations’ and discussions that are clearly carefully rehearsed for the camera - Michno’s book is agenda driven and flies off the map of logic.
Michno is offended that ‘revisionist’ historians downplay the violence and drama of the ‘wild’ West. He feels they are essentially saying that most transients could cross the plains and not hear a shot fired in anger or see an Indian. The only historian mentioned in this context, revisionist or otherwise, is fellow Coloradan Dr. Patricia Limerick, who reigns at the University of Colorado, while Mr. Michno with his mere Masters Degree ruminates and mumbles in Longmont, Boulder’s far less prestigious neighbor. I frame the combatants thus because I believe that is how Michno sees it: a heroic truth teller taking on the effeminate revisionist establishment of Western History, a blue collar scholar taking on the namby pambies.
I am not immune to this attitude myself, and enjoy nothing so much as famous hagiographers employed as historians having new evidence blow their theories - traditional or revisionist or, now, post-revisionist - apart. (Especially if they pointlessly use three or more names.) Patricia Limerick, though, while thinking well of herself, has retained few airs from her ascent into academic ionosphere. And her ‘revision’ of history is actually more correctly described as a less hysterical boosterism of macho myth. I’m not sure she has an agenda other than a wider net of inclusion for historical veneration. You know, like perhaps mentioning the other gender outside of its normal function of being in peril or axing open liquor kegs.
Michno assembles with the fastidiousness and energy of a baseball card collector the minutiae of incident and battle, and his book is quite valuable for that, if true. His conclusions are not supported by his own book, though, and reveal much of the frustration and anger felt by the more traditional when their idols are framed in testosterone-free terminology and simply viewed as competent or not. Most were not, by the way.
However, let’s look at Michno’s conclusions and see if they fall apart on their own, without any aid. My comments in brackets.
From his conclusion, page 361:
What about Indian attacks on settlers? Thousands of homesteaders were killed by Indians. {Where? Between what dates?} Even the trip west was perilous. Some historians, in their quest to downplay the violence of the frontier, would have us believe that the danger along the Overland Trail was minimal. {Really? Sure they just didn’t say the risk of Indian attack was minimal?} Stewart Udall believes it is a ‘myth that emigrants in wagon trains faced ever-present threat of attacks" by Indians!” {Not sure about the point of the second quotation marks, unless Udall was quoting someone else, or one of them is a mistake} Some authors quote from Merrill Mattes's study, which gives an excellent account of the migrations up to 1866, or John Unruh's synthesis, which makes use of Mattes, but goes only up to 1860. In their estimations, about 200,000 people went west on the central route from 1850 to 1860. Unruh figures Indians killed only 316 emigrants in that decade. But he leaves out the attack on the Fancher train, the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which Mormons and their Indian allies executed 121 emigrants. This brings the number up to 437. It may still look like a small number at first glance - less than 1 percent. {You bet, but it’s way less than even that. It’s one fifth of one percent, and it would be unfair and untrue to credit the Mountain Meadows horror to Indians; it was willed and ordered in Salt Lake City by the Mormons. Otherwise, include Civil War caused deaths or any white on white violence, like range wars.} But what if "only" l out of 100 passenger airplanes flying between New York and San Francisco crashed? It would not seem insignificant. {I don’t understand this, switching counting individual deaths to airliners…. And why New York, given you’re only concerned with states west of the Mississippi? How about we say, to keep some sense of syllogims, that .22% of airline passengers between St. Louis and San Francisco were murdered by a group of related crime gangs over the course of a decade. That would be a huge number, and would never have been allowed to go on for a decade, given that passengers would cease flying. Even so, if 1000 people a day fly from SL to SF for a decade, that’s about 3.65 million, and .22% of that is 8030 dead folks. 80.3 a year. That’s considerably less than 1 out of 100 airliners crashing in Michno’s syllogism…..which doesn’t fit anyway. In any case, traffic deaths, accidents, drugs, other travelers, outlaws, disease, snakes and gun accidents kill more, just like they did back then. The question for Michno is how far down the Threat Matrix list were Indians to travelers? Pretty far down, which is why he pads the stats with Mountain Meadows. Indians were hardly a statistic at all.}
Granted, in the 1840s there were relatively few conflicts on the trail, but this was because there were relatively few people using it. They were little threat to the Indians. Yet John Faragher's statement in his study of families on the overland trail that "there were no war parties directed at emigrants" during the 1840s and early 1850s is incorrect. Those "nonexistent" war parties killed several hundred travelers! {Proof? In any case, there is bleed over to the stats above.} Later, as gold and silver were discovered, particularly in California, Colorado, and Montana, more white people poured in and more conflicts developed. As the casualty numbers in the entries of this book show, there were more than enough confrontations between 1850 and 1860 to belie the assertion that the trail was safe {Nobody's saying that, they're saying Indians were a statistically minor threat}: 62 emigrants were killed at Bloody Point in 1852; 19 died in the 1854 Ward Massacre; 11 were killed in the initial attack on the Utter-Van Ornum trains in 1860; and there were many more emigrant deaths, rapes, and torturings at the hands of Indian attackers. {Again, proof?} Faragher admits that in the late 1850s and 1860s emigrants "had to be more vigilant!' Still, he consoles readers, "most people got through!'828
I hope I have laid to rest, once and for all, the revisionist theory that the American frontier was not as tough as people think {you have not}, that it's all just a tall tale passed down from Great-great-grandpa. While we should not romanticize frontier violence, neither should we deny the facts: the West of the late nineteenth century was dangerous, destructive, bloody - in a word, wild. {Fine, but you go back and forth between the danger of Indians and everything else.}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dark Cloud copyright RL MacLeod darkcloud@darkendeavors.com www.darkendeavors.com www.boulderlout.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited by - Dark Cloud on September 28 2004 2:29:05 PM
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Post by markland on Jun 11, 2008 17:47:15 GMT -6
You, in turn, are correct, a much preferable way of saying "I, in turn, was wrong...." I'm referring to his conclusions at the book's end (yes, absent index.....),not the Introduction. Lazy error from memory. All other points valid, though. I say, and reference how, Michno uses "casualty" vaguely, says casualties "caused" in certain graphics when he means "sustained", and then has a totally misleading comparison to an airliner crash with bad math. I'm not looking it up, it's in there. Oh, hell, here's my takedown from that board. Dark Cloud Brigadier General
USA Status: offline Posted - September 28 2004 : 2:23:35 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Really? Michno's Encyclopedia? The one where he states on page 296: "Custer, meanwhile, approached from the northeast, aiming for the Cheyenne lodges, then moved downstream to await support from Reno and Benteen. The support never came. Custer's scattered companies were picked off in detail...." Rarely do Custerphiles so blatantly dispense such questionable theory as fact.
With great amusement, I read Gregory F. Michno’s Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, a listing of most or all encounters between 1850 and 1890, when the Frontier was declared closed. In conjunction with the tabloid-like and increasingly sensationalistic (and bozo) presentations on The History Channel, Discover Channel, and other assumed conveyers of Truth - done in dramatic templates of recorded ‘conversations’ and discussions that are clearly carefully rehearsed for the camera - Michno’s book is agenda driven and flies off the map of logic.
Michno is offended that ‘revisionist’ historians downplay the violence and drama of the ‘wild’ West. He feels they are essentially saying that most transients could cross the plains and not hear a shot fired in anger or see an Indian. The only historian mentioned in this context, revisionist or otherwise, is fellow Coloradan Dr. Patricia Limerick, who reigns at the University of Colorado, while Mr. Michno with his mere Masters Degree ruminates and mumbles in Longmont, Boulder’s far less prestigious neighbor. I frame the combatants thus because I believe that is how Michno sees it: a heroic truth teller taking on the effeminate revisionist establishment of Western History, a blue collar scholar taking on the namby pambies.
I am not immune to this attitude myself, and enjoy nothing so much as famous hagiographers employed as historians having new evidence blow their theories - traditional or revisionist or, now, post-revisionist - apart. (Especially if they pointlessly use three or more names.) Patricia Limerick, though, while thinking well of herself, has retained few airs from her ascent into academic ionosphere. And her ‘revision’ of history is actually more correctly described as a less hysterical boosterism of macho myth. I’m not sure she has an agenda other than a wider net of inclusion for historical veneration. You know, like perhaps mentioning the other gender outside of its normal function of being in peril or axing open liquor kegs.
Michno assembles with the fastidiousness and energy of a baseball card collector the minutiae of incident and battle, and his book is quite valuable for that, if true. His conclusions are not supported by his own book, though, and reveal much of the frustration and anger felt by the more traditional when their idols are framed in testosterone-free terminology and simply viewed as competent or not. Most were not, by the way.
However, let’s look at Michno’s conclusions and see if they fall apart on their own, without any aid. My comments in brackets.
From his conclusion, page 361:
What about Indian attacks on settlers? Thousands of homesteaders were killed by Indians. {Where? Between what dates?} Even the trip west was perilous. Some historians, in their quest to downplay the violence of the frontier, would have us believe that the danger along the Overland Trail was minimal. {Really? Sure they just didn’t say the risk of Indian attack was minimal?} Stewart Udall believes it is a ‘myth that emigrants in wagon trains faced ever-present threat of attacks" by Indians!” {Not sure about the point of the second quotation marks, unless Udall was quoting someone else, or one of them is a mistake} Some authors quote from Merrill Mattes's study, which gives an excellent account of the migrations up to 1866, or John Unruh's synthesis, which makes use of Mattes, but goes only up to 1860. In their estimations, about 200,000 people went west on the central route from 1850 to 1860. Unruh figures Indians killed only 316 emigrants in that decade. But he leaves out the attack on the Fancher train, the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which Mormons and their Indian allies executed 121 emigrants. This brings the number up to 437. It may still look like a small number at first glance - less than 1 percent. {You bet, but it’s way less than even that. It’s one fifth of one percent, and it would be unfair and untrue to credit the Mountain Meadows horror to Indians; it was willed and ordered in Salt Lake City by the Mormons. Otherwise, include Civil War caused deaths or any white on white violence, like range wars.} But what if "only" l out of 100 passenger airplanes flying between New York and San Francisco crashed? It would not seem insignificant. {I don’t understand this, switching counting individual deaths to airliners…. And why New York, given you’re only concerned with states west of the Mississippi? How about we say, to keep some sense of syllogims, that .22% of airline passengers between St. Louis and San Francisco were murdered by a group of related crime gangs over the course of a decade. That would be a huge number, and would never have been allowed to go on for a decade, given that passengers would cease flying. Even so, if 1000 people a day fly from SL to SF for a decade, that’s about 3.65 million, and .22% of that is 8030 dead folks. 80.3 a year. That’s considerably less than 1 out of 100 airliners crashing in Michno’s syllogism…..which doesn’t fit anyway. In any case, traffic deaths, accidents, drugs, other travelers, outlaws, disease, snakes and gun accidents kill more, just like they did back then. The question for Michno is how far down the Threat Matrix list were Indians to travelers? Pretty far down, which is why he pads the stats with Mountain Meadows. Indians were hardly a statistic at all.}
Granted, in the 1840s there were relatively few conflicts on the trail, but this was because there were relatively few people using it. They were little threat to the Indians. Yet John Faragher's statement in his study of families on the overland trail that "there were no war parties directed at emigrants" during the 1840s and early 1850s is incorrect. Those "nonexistent" war parties killed several hundred travelers! {Proof? In any case, there is bleed over to the stats above.} Later, as gold and silver were discovered, particularly in California, Colorado, and Montana, more white people poured in and more conflicts developed. As the casualty numbers in the entries of this book show, there were more than enough confrontations between 1850 and 1860 to belie the assertion that the trail was safe {Nobody's saying that, they're saying Indians were a statistically minor threat}: 62 emigrants were killed at Bloody Point in 1852; 19 died in the 1854 Ward Massacre; 11 were killed in the initial attack on the Utter-Van Ornum trains in 1860; and there were many more emigrant deaths, rapes, and torturings at the hands of Indian attackers. {Again, proof?} Faragher admits that in the late 1850s and 1860s emigrants "had to be more vigilant!' Still, he consoles readers, "most people got through!'828
I hope I have laid to rest, once and for all, the revisionist theory that the American frontier was not as tough as people think {you have not}, that it's all just a tall tale passed down from Great-great-grandpa. While we should not romanticize frontier violence, neither should we deny the facts: the West of the late nineteenth century was dangerous, destructive, bloody - in a word, wild. {Fine, but you go back and forth between the danger of Indians and everything else.}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dark Cloud copyright RL MacLeod darkcloud@darkendeavors.com www.darkendeavors.com www.boulderlout.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited by - Dark Cloud on September 28 2004 2:29:05 PM But see, you are only attacking his conclusions, which he emphasized are his alone, not the facts of the episodes included in the book's body. In essence, it appears that since you don't like his conclusions/opinions, you are more than willing to burn the reference material in the book at the stake with his opinion, which is nicely segregated into one final chapter. Or in plain English slang, you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. At one time, Eric Johnson was trying to inventory both soldier and civilian deaths at the hands of the Indians. How far he has gotten I don't know but if anyone who reads this participates in Art's forum, they can ask him there. Billy P.S. What I will do is look through some of my books and identify civilian casualties from Indian actions. No time-frame mind you as his is something you could easily do if you really were curious about it rather than fault-finding.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 11, 2008 19:45:31 GMT -6
Someone who'd actually read it (yes, I'm lookin' at you) would know that my observations on his statements of fact about the LBH are NOT from the conclusion.
And again:
1. His conclusions are supposed to be logically generated, or should be. And his facts do not support them, yet he claims them proven by an obvious and dumb straw man: nobody claimed the west wasn't dangerous, just not as dangerous as myth made it. A break unto me giveth.
2. I've noted my appreciation for his listing of actions. But he has obvious desired conclusions in mind before he starts. Given the throngs moving and settling west, and by not attributing every early death to the west's "dangers" but rather the times and general health and medical knowledge, he doesn't accomplish his goals. It really bothers me that you seriously think he has, Markland.
3. There really is a battle to reclaim the old patriarchal image of the west, the romantic one, the one with the Last Stand. Michno and Donovan are knowingly part of it. He nearly admits it in his conclusion, bitching about the 'revisionists.' They can't argue with Limerick and her clique (and it very much is) based on scholarship - she's way out of their league - but they can imply and confuse. Read that syllogism about the airliner again. It doesn't remotely apply and doesn't even give him the results he says it does.
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Post by markland on Jun 12, 2008 8:12:50 GMT -6
Someone who'd actually read it (yes, I'm lookin' at you) would know that my observations on his statements of fact about the LBH are NOT from the conclusion. And again: 1. His conclusions are supposed to be logically generated, or should be. And his facts do not support them, yet he claims them proven by an obvious and dumb straw man: nobody claimed the west wasn't dangerous, just not as dangerous as myth made it. A break unto me giveth. 2. I've noted my appreciation for his listing of actions. But he has obvious desired conclusions in mind before he starts. Given the throngs moving and settling west, and by not attributing every early death to the west's "dangers" but rather the times and general health and medical knowledge, he doesn't accomplish his goals. It really bothers me that you seriously think he has, Markland. 3. There really is a battle to reclaim the old patriarchal image of the west, the romantic one, the one with the Last Stand. Michno and Donovan are knowingly part of it. He nearly admits it in his conclusion, bitching about the 'revisionists.' They can't argue with Limerick and her clique (and it very much is) based on scholarship - she's way out of their league - but they can imply and confuse. Read that syllogism about the airliner again. It doesn't remotely apply and doesn't even give him the results he says it does. Give me a break for crying out loud-it has been at least 5 years since I read the conclusion despite the fact that I use the book almost daily. That being said, it may be another five years before I read it as I dimly recall disagreeing with some of his contentions but not caring enough to get overly flustered with self-righteous outrage. If the pages of the conclusion twist you into such knots, my recommendation would be to tear them out of the book and burn them . Billy
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 12, 2008 12:37:25 GMT -6
It's not self righteous on my part, although that's an accurate description of his written conclusions.
He wrote the book and researched the book to obtain those conclusions, he near admits, and they aren't supported. Travelling through the West or settling there doesn't look to be as dangerous as living in Hell's Kitchen or in many big cities, although stats are dubious for minority ghetto.
It never was as violent as, stats prove, at least one county in South Carolina, for two hundred years at least the highest rate for murder. And the military in general has never been the most dangerous occupation per capita. I'm guessing, but I'd think whaling or other fisheries might top the uniform and cowboy hat for mortal danger. God knows the early industrial revolution did not have an OSHA.
And again, NOBODY of import really said the west wasn't dangerous, just not as ridiculously so as myth made it.
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Post by markland on Jun 12, 2008 15:33:54 GMT -6
It's not self righteous on my part, although that's an accurate description of his written conclusions. He wrote the book and researched the book to obtain those conclusions, he near admits, and they aren't supported. Travelling through the West or settling there doesn't look to be as dangerous as living in Hell's Kitchen or in many big cities, although stats are dubious for minority ghetto. Pardon me for disagreeing but the Introduction begins, "I had several reasons for compiling this survey of battles and skirmishes in the trans-Mississippi West, beginning with the personal. My own library of a ffew thousand books, scattered among several rooms and covering various subjects, did not contain a fast and easy reference to the hundreds of American Indian versus military fights. There are a few reference books on the subject out there, but none are sufficiently comprehensive, detailed or accurate for my satisfaction. I realized that if I wanted such a volume, I would have to write it myself. This conclusion was not an unhappy one; I have long had a fascination with the Indian wars and the personalities and places involved. Digging up and cataloquing the whos, whats, wheres, and whys-as well as tabulating statistics to reveal mosts, leasts, bests, and worsts-satisfies my peculiar itch to organize information." He then goes on to explain that he used the data for the 675 incidents in the book as well as an additional 795 other incidents to formulate his conclusions. The first sentence in Conclusions states that "In order to make this compilation of battles, names, places, and numbers more than a reference book, I tabulated the data and analysed [sic] the results to find patterns upon which I could base meaningful conclusions." Just out of curiosity, what are you sulking about again? I just counted and the Conclusions chapter is nine pages. The "violence" portion I distantly remember you bleating about composes less than two pages, six paragraphs to be exact (although there is one sentence in the fourth paragraph referring to the issue). Really, you should drink less coffee and more booze if that little bit is going to raise your blood-pressure! You are saying that one county in SC had two hundred years to kill more people than were killed in the American West between 1850-1890 inclusive? Me thinks you had better go back to coffee before getting on the keyboard. So far, I have 1,128 regular army troops dying as a result of wounds received in action with Indians with the bulk having died between 1865-1882. Another 110 died from wounds which the regimental returns stated were caused by murder. There were another 423 men who died from wounds received where no explanation was given whether the wounds were received by combat, accident, homicidal-intent or self-inflicted. Just as an aside, I have a total of 781 dead from gunshot wounds, whether falling under the murder classification, accidental, self-defense or suicide. So we have 1,128 + 110 + 423 = 1,661 dead troops by violence. We are not including the hundreds of civilians who were killed by violence, whether Indian-White, White-White, Indian-Mexican, White-Mexican nor are we including the thousands of Indian dead from violence. DC, the next time you want to blow smoke up someone's a**, don't try me. Billy
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 12, 2008 18:06:39 GMT -6
I was unaware I was paying you any compliment, much less an insincere one. One reason is you apparently cannot read (common in Kansas), as those annoying extra words like "Indian" that affect meaning and entirely flummox you suggest.
So, no, I'm not "... saying that one county in SC had two hundred years to kill more people than were killed in the American West between 1850-1890 inclusive?" I know this because my aged eyes could look just above it where you quoted what I posted (pointlessly, being posted just above that), which was: "It never was as violent as, stats prove, at least one county in South Carolina, for two hundred years at least the highest rate for murder." Per capita, apparently this county wins hands down. Note the word "rate", which might be read "per capita." See, "rates" are different than "amounts."
Sixteen hundred men - hell, I'm finishing this bottle - say two thousand men died over a 40 year period in an area the size of most of Europe. Fifty people a year dying by Indian violence over that amount of land, and this inflated by "big" battles like LBH. Michno's final charts show year after year after year in most areas, including Montana but excluding New Mexico, where NOBODY was killed by Indians.
And, since you bring it up, Whitechapel may have had a far more violent and dangerous reality than the west.
But, if you like insincere compliments, you look ravishing tonight. Not open casket good, but good. Too much eye shadow.
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Post by markland on Jun 12, 2008 21:19:38 GMT -6
I was unaware I was paying you any compliment, much less an insincere one. One reason is you apparently cannot read (common in Kansas), as those annoying extra words like "Indian" that affect meaning and entirely flummox you suggest. Shall we discuss the difference between "Introduction" and "Conclusion"? As far as paying me a compliment...well since I know you hate ellipses, another one is in order...don't bother as I am not in a receptive mood...my carpal tunnel has returned and from my shoulder to my wrist feels like a bunch of (what else) drunken Colorado miners with dull picks are working piece-rate on my arm. If I drank booze, I would be curled up with a bottle of Jack Daniels...as it is, Tylenol # 3's will have to do. Actually I did miss the words per capita but with a little research of the Reports of the Secretary of War for the years included, we should be able to figure out the violent death rate of soldiers in the West and compare it to your Sandlapper county. Just out of curiosity, what county in SC are you talking about?
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 15, 2008 11:29:44 GMT -6
You'd think that either in the Introduction or the Conclusion to a book devoted (page 3) to debunking revisionists who think the west wasn't violent, he'd be able to quote or list those who actually have said that. He cannot, because there are NONE, and he knows it. They've only claimed it wasn't as violent as the patriarchal myths made it out, a fact his own book proves.
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Post by clw on Jun 16, 2008 6:27:09 GMT -6
Billy ~ I have carpal tunnel, though I doubt as bad as yours. I'll tell you a story that might help. Nobody laugh and roll their eyes. It's for Billy. We do acupuncture on the horses regularly. A while back I was complaining about my arm while my vet was doing her thing. She suggested I try acupuncture. I said I couldn't afford it, hoping that would prevent the conversation from going any further. She said she wouldn't charge me, so I said what the hell. Amazing! My range of motion is almost normal for the first time in years and I don't wake up in pain anymore. It's still there, but the improvement is major. And it didn't hurt one bit either. I heard that.
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