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Post by wolfgang911 on May 3, 2009 18:12:39 GMT -5
hou conzclair sometimes you read like some of those revisionists on youtube the custerdivison + 7th cavalry & co going in the direction > indians and especially lakota got what they desserved. may I add this to your impossible to follow discussion about historians and get back to the mutilating > WHO CARES they were already dead!My readings don't give that much of mutilating among tribes and it was often linked to courage or history of prior events (you took my wife i cut your balls etc) and very brave men were left untouched in lakota war fare. With Kearney it is just a pity they spent to much time doing it and did not concentrate their efforts on what was left in the fort ;D Plus in those days of bigscale landrobbery what the hell some scalping here and there justifies the anniliation of a complete civilisation and putting proud people from warlords of the plains into a nation of dependant beggars.And as jimmy and many others already stated the US army was already famous for mutilating them selves at many previous instances that decade, all know to the lakota & cheyenne warriors : ask the shoshones and the cheyennes and the arapaho. Rape was what I've red common reward (piegan baker 1870 for instance) for tired soldiers. Plus I don't know about your manhood Conz but would you 'on command ' start a rape of indian women just because some settler woman from germany you never heard off got raped 500 miles from there a year ago? If rape took place it was after the fight when all were done and 'squaws' were rounded up and dispatched among the men.. they were not raped while digging for flying arrows where they? Get my point? First the revenge factor is not valid and second these were not 'accidents' : it must have been known to officers. Lighter : nice pix from the battle ground. I imagined a lot more trees on the ridges. Where they cut down since? Those guys got decoyed real easily it looks like. Anyway nice job tashunka Witco   wolfgang |
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Post by wolfgang911 on May 3, 2009 18:52:21 GMT -5
We treated Pawnees, Arapahoes, Crows, and Shoshone eventually, much better than we ever treated Sioux, Cheyenne, Commanche, and Apache, overall. Even within tribes, we grew to understand that some bands were more hostile and violent than others, especially among our allies such as the Shoshone. Clair  arapahoes better treatment? yeah sure. pawnees ended up emptyhanded in poor oklahoma crows got screwed also after 1880 for land but OK maybe shoshone? yep right what was let of it after 63 massacre, the biggest wipe out of a peaceful camp ever. pawnees crow and shoshone just were 'less hostile ' because in your view they were helping the helping the army > so less violent (what a horse manure! as you say)... well they sure liked to fight with us army rifles! Without the interering of the men of these tribes, scouts and front row in fight (except LBH), the Sioux would have held out 10 years longer at the least. Not that I blame them : 1st their young man were already bored at the agencies 2nd original enemies of the lakota They thought it was their best bet, hélas! The ones that were the most violent, Sioux Apache did not end up with the worst treatment (or ask the peaceful tribes on the trail of tears). Most "violent" or resisting tribes have the most fairsized rez nowadays. And even among those so called violent pirates, bullies of the plains ;D the sioux and cheyennes, unfortunately there were many many way to many, a majority of non violent ones >>loads of loafers, betrayors and carreer peacechiefs people with other interests then living on the buffalo and who spoiled the plans of the only ones with vision, which was to make a big fist, the only way to negociate for better terms of larger and better located land deals. |
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Post by conz on May 3, 2009 20:49:28 GMT -5
You say historians don't know how to use their sources. This is false. Using sources is what we do and what we are trained to do. When confronted with conflicting information, we study as much as we can to get to the truth, but in the end, we have to make informed and highly thought out conclusions about the conflicting information we are confronted with. Does that mean those conclusions are always right? Of course not. Just as your alternate conclusions to those same documents are not necessarily right either. RIGHT HERE...this is where the historian MUST consult with a modern professional with the skills the historical subjects had and required. No way a historian can read enough to understand properly everything needed to evaluate conflicting or missing information. Historians who think they can read enough to understand the inner workings of any profession are too arrogant to be making judgments. Aye, and you can't do that without specialized help...and not help out of just books on the professional skills. Historians, as a group, tend to use books and written evidence too much. They don't work hard enough on using the skills of the profession, or traits of the culture, they are writing about to get it right without help from other than the written page. They don't think so, but they are, because they would rather look up more stuff in books, for hours and hours of hard work, than make a phone call to set up an on-line chat with a professional, be it a Soldiers, a politician, a Union boss, a mafioso, and immigrant smuggler, etc. Historians with similar, and more, experience show it in their products. Read Ed Bearrs [sp?]...some marvelous stuff you can just tell a Soldier wrote it. Yes...all very necessary to form an educational basis for understanding the subjects...good reference list, too, for aspiring history students. Add to it collaborative exercises with Soldiers and Native Americans close to the Warrior experience. Think about modern collaborative on-line techniques organizations are using these days (including the military). On-line chats, forums like this, supplemented by a couple beers at a local establishment, are a fine way to get a military interpretation/perspective of certain events. Gordie swears he is going to live long enough to publish his "perfect" work before he dies. He's gonna live to be a thousand, we suspect. <g> We will all be dead before we can read, and criticize, it of course...maybe that's his plan...to outlive all his compadres so we won't be able to dis' him...<g> Aye, and I don't take that lightly, and you are right to make a point of it. Yet... Gotten over. <g> Thanks for the soapbox, for a moment! Aye...always helps to get down to the basics, once in a while. Keep up the good work. Clair |
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Post by markland on May 3, 2009 21:00:07 GMT -5
You say historians don't know how to use their sources. This is false. Using sources is what we do and what we are trained to do. When confronted with conflicting information, we study as much as we can to get to the truth, but in the end, we have to make informed and highly thought out conclusions about the conflicting information we are confronted with. Does that mean those conclusions are always right? Of course not. Just as your alternate conclusions to those same documents are not necessarily right either. RIGHT HERE...this is where the historian MUST consult with a modern professional with the skills the historical subjects had and required. No way a historian can read enough to understand properly everything needed to evaluate conflicting or missing information. Historians who think they can read enough to understand the inner workings of any profession are too arrogant to be making judgments. Aye, and you can't do that without specialized help...and not help out of just books on the professional skills. Historians, as a group, tend to use books and written evidence too much. They don't work hard enough on using the skills of the profession, or traits of the culture, they are writing about to get it right without help from other than the written page. They don't think so, but they are, because they would rather look up more stuff in books, for hours and hours of hard work, than make a phone call to set up an on-line chat with a professional, be it a Soldiers, a politician, a Union boss, a mafioso, and immigrant smuggler, etc. Historians with similar, and more, experience show it in their products. Read Ed Bearrs [sp?]...some marvelous stuff you can just tell a Soldier wrote it. Yes...all very necessary to form an educational basis for understanding the subjects...good reference list, too, for aspiring history students. Add to it collaborative exercises with Soldiers and Native Americans close to the Warrior experience. Think about modern collaborative on-line techniques organizations are using these days (including the military). On-line chats, forums like this, supplemented by a couple beers at a local establishment, are a fine way to get a military interpretation/perspective of certain events. Gordie swears he is going to live long enough to publish his "perfect" work before he dies. He's gonna live to be a thousand, we suspect. <g> We will all be dead before we can read, and criticize, it of course...maybe that's his plan...to outlive all his compadres so we won't be able to dis' him...<g> Aye, and I don't take that lightly, and you are right to make a point of it. Yet... Gotten over. <g> Thanks for the soapbox, for a moment! Aye...always helps to get down to the basics, once in a while. Keep up the good work. Clair Clair, very nice for someone who thinks that documented army general orders or special orders are something to be scoffed at. Billy |
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Post by conz on May 4, 2009 11:55:39 GMT -5
3) You just need to shovel it with a lot more subtlety. LOL...I think you know by now that is never going to happen. Subtlety not my forte'. And that is all I ask, my friend. It is the reason that I am here...to be challenged on my views and conclusions, as well as challenging others on theirs. Just don't devolve to personal insults, eh? Oh...maybe THAT is what you mean by "subtlety?" <g> Me too, yet we may still rarely agree on how the evidence should be interpreted, and what evidence is more reliable that others. It sure does, and I thank you for that. On occasion it even changes my views on things, or at least modifies them. When it happens to me again, I'll try to point that out so that you'll know your efforts are appreciated, and not in vain! Clair |
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Post by conz on May 4, 2009 12:05:14 GMT -5
hou conzclair sometimes you read like some of those revisionists on youtube the custerdivison + 7th cavalry & co going in the direction > indians and especially lakota got what they desserved. Well, I DO think that we ALL get what we deserve. If you can't defend yourself, don't bother trying to fight, eh? Surrender early, and save your people's lives. I understand...reading forum threads is a new skill history students need to get good at. <g> Yes, I read cases where bodies were left unmutilated as some sort of tribute. But I do think this was a rare, and notable, exception among the tribes. I think mostly they just hated each other so much they wanted to pervert their dead bodies as much as possible...man, woman, and child...even babies. Yeah...not very brave, is it? That is rather the white perspective...only a coward and barbarian would desecrate a dead body (even though some individuals succombed and did it, but it was very frowned upon as immoral). But Native culture was different. Yes, quite so. Especially if the "scalping here or there" was your wife and children trying to move to California. Very wrong, my friend. The U.S. Army rarely ever desecrated the dead bodies of Warriors. It's too gross, and unmanly. Not in the Army. It was an offense punished by prison if you were caught raping an Indian, a black, or a white woman. Since that never happened, I'm not too concerned about it. I personally would shoot a Soldier myself who tried to rape any of our prisoners of war. So would any officer in the Army in the 1850s to 1890s. I don't think so. Would have to be VERY strong evidence to prove such a thing. Its a capitol offense in most cases. Clair |
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Post by conz on May 4, 2009 12:13:54 GMT -5
arapahoes better treatment? yeah sure. pawnees ended up emptyhanded in poor oklahoma crows got screwed also after 1880 for land but OK maybe shoshone? yep right what was let of it after 63 massacre, the biggest wipe out of a peaceful camp ever. It would make for a good study to see how the tribes that allied themselves with the American fared compared to those that didn't. I gave my current opinion and thesis...we can all challenge that. Didn't these tribes, despite the trail of tears, end up with the best lands, homes, even owned slaves, etc., at the end of their ordeal. Besides that, they mixed their blood with a good part of the white population of the states that they travelled through...seems like most Kentuckians and Tennesseans have some "Cherokee" blood in them. These tribes may have ended up better off than any I can think of, in terms of standard of living, education, and assimilation into American society. There may be more Cherokees today than any other tribe with pHDs, business owners, that are millionaires, etc. If anyone has information on that, it would be interesting to know. The Crows own the Little Big Horn valley today, right? The one the Sioux lost at the end of the LBH campaign, even though they won the battle? I spoke to a Cheyenne guide at the field once that was still quite bitter about it...the LBH valley is some of the best land in that part of Montana. I'd say the Crow got the better treatment, all around, compared to the Sioux after the wars. LOL...good "hostile" perspective. Even the great Red Cloud, though, figured out the best way to secure his tribe's future, and it was not on Sitting Bull's path. The greatest Native heroes should be the appeasers and surrenderers, not the Warriors and unrecalcitrant "freedom fighters." All they did was get their people killed. It was the chiefs that accomodated that kept their tribes alive after the wars. Were it not for them, nobody would be speaking Lakota, today, right? Clair |
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Post by conz on May 4, 2009 12:15:44 GMT -5
Clair, very nice for someone who thinks that documented army general orders or special orders are something to be scoffed at. Billy LOL...well, orders from higher headquarters are kinda like "ivory tower histories" to the Soldiers in the trenches. <g> You follow what works, and ignore what doesn't. Just don't tell anybody. That's the only way the system really works...otherwise it would come to an ineffecient bureaucratic halt. Clair |
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Post by biggordie on May 4, 2009 13:11:39 GMT -5
Regarding Gordie and his perfect work - a couple of things - one, the way I'm feeling these days, it may be a tight race to the finish, and I'm not at all certain where to place my wager [although obviously I DID have a small bet on that Canadian horse, whatsisname, in that race the other day].
Two - it can never be perfect, because there are too many vested interests in maintaining the fictions and myths, or in drumming up some nonsensical [but KISS] theory to explain something or other which is more easily explained by the simple truths of events and personages. I do invite criticism, otherwise I would post nothing of substance. Maybe I don't anyway. Eye of the beholder etc etc etc.
Three - as Hunk has admonished all to do - I use, as much as possible, original sources, rather than quotes or opinions from the published works of others [and reproduce the sources for the reader to use himself].
I still have a lot of work to do, and a lot of writing to do - it's difficult to say which is harder for me, but I'm still pointing toward 2011 for initial completion, so somebody alive today should still be around.
Jimmy - I never did bid you welcome, being sick and all, and thinking that perhaps you wouldn't be around too long. But, Illegitimi non carborundum..........and hang in there, just don't allow yourself to become hung up on a single strand of wire.......
Gordie
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Post by AZ Ranger on May 4, 2009 20:20:36 GMT -5
See, I am an EXPERT in horse manure. I doubt AZ or our resident horselady know more about manure than I do. <g> I shovel more crap in a day than most, and I analyze it and can tell a lot about my horses attitude, past day, and health by it, over a wide range of different kinds of horses, than most in our business.
Okay...I need to write a book, but what manure specialists can I consult with? <BG
With all the horses you have you can take that title. "EXPERT in horse manure" As biologist we do analysis of manure to determine feeding habits. I never found it interesting to do it. That is usually done by our research branch and there is plenty of manure experts in the wildlife field.
AZ Ranger
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Post by runaheap on May 5, 2009 7:25:47 GMT -5
Oh how scatalogical!
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Post by conz on May 5, 2009 8:21:11 GMT -5
AZ,
Yes, there are your "ivory tower" manure biologists, and then there are your stable manure shovellers that daily pick up after each particular animal. <g>
I'm a trench-manure operator...we tend to see the basic lessons manure teaches us and apply that knowledge daily to our horse maintenance activity. You can't learn this out of any book...you just have to "do" it.
Men and women with manure pHDs don't know crap about how manure variations reflect a particular animal's health. They operate in the stratosphere of the veterinary bureaucracy, and write thesis and edicts and "general orders" about how the peons should be doing things "in the field" (or stall). But stablehands never read those things...hell, they can't even understand them if they did. So they go about their business applying the time-honored traditions, passed down orally and by practice, since Xerxes days of Greek horsemanship and stall mucking.
And they never write these lessons down, so you'll never learn about it in any book. If you REALLY want to know manure and its causes and effects, talk to the stable hands. Only they know the TRUTH.
Clair
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Post by conz on May 5, 2009 8:35:22 GMT -5
I still have a lot of work to do, and a lot of writing to do - it's difficult to say which is harder for me, but I'm still pointing toward 2011 for initial completion, so somebody alive today should still be around. Jimmy - I never did bid you welcome, being sick and all, and thinking that perhaps you wouldn't be around too long. But, Illegitimi non carborundum..........and hang in there, just don't allow yourself to become hung up on a single strand of wire....... Gordie Buck up, Soldier! Being dead is no excuse for not accomplishing the mission. Make the Queen proud. Hope you are feeling better...glad you enjoyed the Derby! It was quite exciting...we always like it when the underdog and a great jockey pull off a spoiler. Clair |
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Post by crzhrs on May 5, 2009 18:27:36 GMT -5
<Even the great Red Cloud, though, figured out the best way to secure his tribe's future, and it was not on Sitting Bull's path>
And what did Red Cloud have to say about the White Man?
(Paraphrase) After you (Indians) have gotten all you want . . . look around at what your neighbors have and take that too . . . just like the White Man.
I doubt Red Cloud loved the White Man any more than Sitting Bull.
As far as who got the "better" treatment . . . I think we better ask the Indians.
You better read the REAL story regarding the Trail of Tears . . . I think they'd rather have stayed in their original homelands where they had become "good" Indians . . .just what the Whites wanted . . . except when gold was discovered on their land they Indians were suddenly not so "good" any more.
Andrew Jackson is the only US president who failed to honor a Supreme Court ruling when the Court ruled in the Cherokee's favor to retain their land.
Andrew Jackson said the Court made the ruling they can enforce it.
As for using fingers and ears for bracelets . . . go back and read what Whites did to Indians at Sand Creek, among other places, and the body parts that were displayed in Denver.
I think you need to look at what happened to the Indians as a people . . . not just in warfare but as culture and what they suffered at the hands of the more "civilized" Whites.
Maybe you should be watching "We Shall Remain" on PBS and see what Indian descendants have to say about how great things were for them during the "Indian Wars" and how things are for them now.
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Post by wolfgang911 on May 5, 2009 18:31:05 GMT -5
hou conzclair sometimes you read like some of those revisionists on youtube the custerdivison + 7th cavalry & co going in the direction > indians and especially lakota got what they desserved. Well, I DO think that we ALL get what we deserve. If you can't defend yourself, don't bother trying to fight, eh? Surrender early, and save your people's lives. >> That's what cowards do. They only fight when they're sure they'll win.
Anyway Sitting bull nor Crazy Horse never got beaten and won every confrontation or avoided if necessary, and only turned in on lousy promises and division among their own people.Conz wrote > Yes, I read cases where bodies were left unmutilated as some sort of tribute. But I do think this was a rare, and notable, exception among the tribes. I think mostly they just hated each other so much they wanted to pervert their dead bodies as much as possible...man, woman, and child...even babies. Yeah...not very brave, is it? That is rather the white perspective...only a coward and barbarian would desecrate a dead body (even though some individuals succombed and did it, but it was very frowned upon as immoral). But Native culture was different.<<< I'm not starting again the whole list of us amry torture rape and mutilation on bear river washita sappa and so forth to compare apples with apples
but what is a little finger chopping or messy hair cut compared to napalm, gaz chambers, mines, anthrax and other nuclear fine inventions of the white culture that leave nothing let to mutilate Yes, quite so. Especially if the "scalping here or there" was your wife and children trying to move to California. More got scalped by Mormons then all indians combined... ;D
Scalping was rare on white 'movers', more common on white settlers or miners that shot first most of the time. They were tresspassers anyway. Very wrong, my friend. The U.S. Army rarely ever desecrated the dead bodies of Warriors. It's too gross, and unmanly. Here my pants fall down.Ask Chivington, Connor and his lads. Pff do you have books written after 1950?Not in the Army. It was an offense punished by prison if you were caught raping an Indian, a black, or a white woman. Ok now i understand the iraki men were Ok ;DSince that never happened, I'm not too concerned about it. I personally would shoot a Soldier myself who tried to rape any of our prisoners of war. So would any officer in the Army in the 1850s to 1890s. Well that's why they got shot at Phil Kearney and LBH by the official commander crazy Horse.I don't think so. Would have to be VERY strong evidence to prove such a thing. Its a capitol offense in most cases. I will get you some book quotes, no time at this hour for such a list. Maybe the others can give a hand. |
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