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Post by conz on Jul 30, 2009 7:37:46 GMT -6
Some people just have to be great cynics in the human condition...it makes them feel better about themselves and they aren't ever disappointed by their expectations in their fellow humans.
Its just a way to avoid pain, and to avoid moral ambition.
Trouble is, such self-styled "realism" doesn't advance the human condition, so what's the point? It is a waste of your life.
As for buffalo, I have no trouble finding them around my house in Kentucky...we have several small herds in the neighborhood. Make some outrageous noises, compared to our cattle herds. All quite friendly and docile beasts, as long as you don't provoke them. <g>
Just like us rural Kentuckians, so I guess that's why we get along so well!
Clair
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Post by conz on Jul 30, 2009 7:58:26 GMT -6
<I wonder how many coyotes were shot from trains> Just how numerous were coyotes back then? I believe the Plains Wolf was more abundant and thus the coyote would not be that numerous. Reading my Lewis and Clark, the men once walked right up to a pack of wolves that were engorging themselves on a large buffalo kill (the buffalo had drown when the ice broke and were piled up, rotting), and killed one with an axe! Clair |
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 30, 2009 9:05:14 GMT -6
Wolf and Crhrs,
Before entering a point by point response, you might want to reflect upon the various foot stomping, stone throwing sessions by the various entities over my response to the Irish periods of self congratulations and primping on these boards.
I'm Scot, by heritage. Not Irish but genetically so close it's silly, since Scotland gets its name from the Irish Scotti tribe. The Highland Scots - my people - were considered by Samuel Johnson and most English vicious apes up to the 1750's (Voltaire considered Edinburgh the intellectual capital of Europe fifty years previous; no mutual exclusive), and along the border mothers warned their children the Scots would eat them if they misbehaved. What a vicious thing to say, when we have such lovely wool tartans and Loch Lomond and can aid the digestion of the revolting haggis by great - I speak from authority - single malt whiskey.
Of course, the accusation is probably true: starving people subject to vicious winters might well resort to cannibalism. Happens today among first world citizens confronted with starvation. Highland Scots were the Boogeymen in literature and myth. When a young member of the Beecher Island crew tried to describe how scary Roman Nose and crew were, he said they were like Highland Scots coming out the earth.
That corresponds to how the British soldiers felt, eight inches shorter, a hundred pounds lighter per man, suddenly confronted with shrieking bagpipes and huge Vikings with what looked to be six foot broadswords, called claymores, running at you while your lisping officer repeated loading instructions from the British military manual.
The Highland Scots, for all the romance and nonsense, weren't far ahead of the Native Americans. They could not unite, they could not see the big picture, and so they were banned to the colonies, and Scotland became a theme park for British nobility. Scots with money and/or brains joined the Imperial bandwagon with gusto and became more British than Victoria. The reason western Canada is named for all these Scottish guys is one reason there was small issue with the Indians: Scots understood intuitively what Sitting Bull was going through. They just had.
But reinstalling variants of these myths and claiming cultural equivilancy by mere existence is quite foolish, and perpetuates the conflicts and horrors. The Scots were defeated, admitted it, moved on. The Irish, the Confederacy, the Kaiser's subjects were also defeated, following an internal collapse, and established cults that defied reality. How'd that work out for them in the long run? Why do the clearly walloped Native Americans try to revive those silly myths?
1. no clue what point you're making about conz.
2. Whether or not Wolfgang's "model" (and the inclusion of buzz words and military terminology unnecessarily deflates any point they might make) has superiority or not, it is a fact that a society that cannot protect itself or show much interest in how to protect itself against an enemy it's been aware of for a century or two, is inferior and will lose. Chest pounding warriors look pretty bad, given their record.
3. The plains Indians - the least impressive if most attractive variant of Native Americans - are not inferior as individuals to anyone else, anywhere. It does a great disservice to them and their future to fluff their mythologies, which has allowed their culture and what was once land they could ride, to become a theme park for ill informed Americans.
You're not interested in history. You're interested in myth and story telling, crzhrs, and readily believe tales that fit olde templates of which you're not aware. You cannot be nostalgic for that which you've never experienced. You can only imagine it. Whatever the Native American equivilant of Miniver Cheevy is, you're it.
4. Europe owes me nothing for D-Day. People not great soldiers are not lesser worthies, but you would be stupid to deny it. It's a cruel world.
5. "Just because someone was a "loser" does that make them less "equal." Yes, it does, in the specific field of contest. First, who established the equality and validated it? Second, it's only under the laws that came to us by western Europe that the concept of equality arose. It did not come from Native Americans, who celebrated the alpha males and not much else.
But the alpha males 'job' was to protect and defend. How'd they do? Not well, overall.
6. This is why words and meanings are important. I don't think you say what you meant to say here.
Peacemakers are not, necessarily, unarmed or pacifists. They may want a "peace" that makes them wealthy without the expense of war, where everyone knows their place from the untouchables to the dork on the throne. There's no violence, per se, but no violence is not the exclusive definition of peace.
The Pax Americana, like it or not, prevented many stupid and large wars. Having done so, we were, perhaps inadvertently, peacemakers. But, we aren't Hari Krishnas in outlook.
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Post by crzhrs on Jul 30, 2009 9:20:43 GMT -6
<The plains Indians - the least impressive if most attractive variant of Native Americans - are not inferior as individuals to anyone else, anywhere>
BINGO! . . . and that has been my point all throughout my time on these posts.
People, not race, culture, "civilization" is my interest.
Thank you.
<You're interested in myth and story telling, crzhrs . . .>
I think Joseph Campbell may have a thing or two to say about that . . . "Follow Your Bliss."
I'll admit it . . . I'm a hopeless romantic . . .better to think of the way things should be than the way they are.
But don't think for a minute I'm unaware of the ugliness that takes place all around us. I keep hoping man's good side will shine through . . . then we have something like the Gates/Crowley foolishness.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 30, 2009 9:59:21 GMT -6
<Locating buffalo must have been harder than the killing . . .> That may have been true when buffalo numbers were reduced . . . but when they were numerous the trails/droppings they left behind would have been a road map to the herds. And from accounts of buffalo hunters, buffalos were sitting ducks. <I wonder how many coyotes were shot from trains> Just how numerous were coyotes back then? I believe the Plains Wolf was more abundant and thus the coyote would not be that numerous. Here in NH the coyote has appeared. This, only after the wolf was extirpated opening the door for a large canine to emerge. Not saying there was no coyotes but wolfs will kill coyotes to eliminate them as a competitor. After the wolf was gone coyote numbers must have increased. It was kind of tongue in cheek but the buffalo were shot in large numbers from trains. How hard is it to move from a train. I have only seen around 100 buffalo killed but have never seen coyotes stand around as more shots are fired. I think finding buffalo was easy and killing them even easier. There was no place for the large numbers to hide. Our buffalo on Houserock Ranch having hiding cover in the Kaibab plateau and sanctuary if the make to the top on NPS land. |
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 30, 2009 10:03:13 GMT -6
<I wonder how many coyotes were shot from trains> Just how numerous were coyotes back then? I believe the Plains Wolf was more abundant and thus the coyote would not be that numerous. Reading my Lewis and Clark, the men once walked right up to a pack of wolves that were engorging themselves on a large buffalo kill (the buffalo had drown when the ice broke and were piled up, rotting), and killed one with an axe! Clair Maybe that is why wolves are endangered and coyotes are on the increase. |
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 30, 2009 10:08:39 GMT -6
"Bingo!" Bingo? If you've missed this, you haven't actually read my posts. Never, ever, said otherwise. But their cultures were/are inferior in nature and notion, and you contested that as stated, so this doesn't wash.
Joseph Campbell is wrong about a lot of stuff. Sure followed HIS bliss, but a wide disconnect to reality.
Romance is not history and is almost always the inferior and less interesting story.
Coyotes are in New England and NYC now, and will have both a bird flu vaccine and missile defense before we will. We've winnowed down their ranks leaving only the smartest.
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Post by crzhrs on Jul 30, 2009 11:52:22 GMT -6
<Maybe that is why wolves are endangered and coyotes are on the increase>
Wolves have always had a bad reputation going way back and were more widely distributed world-wide than the coyote (just a "new" world animal?)
In addition wolves were more of a pack animal than coyotes and were easier to kill and/or poison in groups.
The wolf has always been the bogey man and it's extipation was a prime factor for civilization.
The coyote is far more adaptable, can live close to humans and will eat just about anything whereas the wolf is more of meat eater and needs large undeveloped areas to thrive.
Can't understand why Wille E. Coyote was such a loser!
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Post by conz on Jul 30, 2009 12:04:55 GMT -6
Lewis and Clarke seem to be the first "Americans" to see coyotes, as they travelled up the Missouri river. Seems none of these creatures were east of the Mississippi back in the late 1700s.
They didn't worry at all about wolves...no real threat to man. I was the grizzly bears that caused both them, and the local Indians, the most consternation...very difficult to kill.
Clair
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 31, 2009 7:35:49 GMT -6
The word coyote comes from the Aztec language. The Navajos have stories about coyotes. The mountain lion is probably the most likely to attack and kill a person in our times.
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Post by crzhrs on Jul 31, 2009 10:52:52 GMT -6
The coyote is one of the most "in" animals in Native American mythology . . . he's been called a "trickster" by many tribes. The coyote may be more important to Native American myth than any other animal.
We seem to once again be veering off-topic . . . what's new?
As for the wolf . . . one would think they would be much harder to eradicate . . . but as we know the wolf was extipated from most of the lower 48s by the late 1800s and later out west.
Poison, trapping, shooting took its toll . . . opening the door for the coyote to now be much more numerous and wide-spread than they originally were.
The mountain lion after years of trapping, hunting, poisoning is now making major comeback and on its own . . . unlike the wolf which had to be re-introduced.
I say great . . . we need large predators in places where they can be introduced where they have limited contact with humans and livestock . . . which is few and far between but still there are places left in the lower 48s where that can happen.
We need to restore the balance of nature in places where there is large, undeveloped wilderness.
As Thoreau said "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World"
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Post by wolfgang911 on Jul 31, 2009 12:02:09 GMT -6
This thread is great, we're on page 25 and I think we should just keep it as the on going pro con indian topic we're we can yell at each other and have a beer after. I like all participants even my worse opponents, always pleasant to read your stuff guys.  |
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Post by wolfgang911 on Jul 31, 2009 12:03:13 GMT -6
Some people just have to be great cynics in the human condition...it makes them feel better about themselves and they aren't ever disappointed by their expectations in their fellow humans. Just like us rural Kentuckians, so I guess that's why we get along so well! ;Dsorry for the short cut Clair hey this one was for U DC |
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Post by wolfgang911 on Jul 31, 2009 12:53:42 GMT -6
2. Whether or not Wolfgang's "model" (and the inclusion of buzz words and military terminology unnecessarily deflates any point they might make) has superiority or not, it is a fact that a society that cannot protect itself or show much interest in how to protect itself against an enemy it's been aware of for a century or two , is inferior and will lose. Chest pounding warriors look pretty bad, given their record. 3. The plains Indians - the least impressive if most attractive variant of Native Americans - are not inferior as individuals to anyone else, anywhere. It does a great disservice to them and their future to fluff their mythologies, which has allowed their culture and what was once land they could ride, to become a theme park for ill informed Americans. be consistent : so were they inferior YES or NO? You're totally mythic brave heart picture of the scotts appeals me. I would say go on and open your eyes to beauty. Beauty does not need proof or myth. A wolf is one of the most beautiful predators in the world. They don't have to be as successfull as the smart coyote, they just ARE. Same for Indians. They were won by treachery and smallpox, not because they were lesser warriors. They were better individual athletes and warriors always. I'm just rereading Utleys books because Conz states a lot from him. Even if his books are more 'balanced' the LIARS and the treacherous were the spanish and the english. On every page. Almost any conflict before 1800 was won by lying in the chiefs and then murdering, hanging, burning, them, it happened even untill... well 1880, Manags, Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, even Sitting Bull was trapped in wit lies. "You will have this and that if you surrender", in the mean time we surround them, just plain lies. Indians were superior in many moral ways : your sadistic plain indians did not know of these ways to go in combat. I have never read of these immoral ways : no lies, no treachery, no begging leaders in and then hang them. It is easy to win over a MORAL & PHYSICAL SUPERIOR enemy with those evil ways. Hitler could have won. He would no be superior, just so mean that we could not expect it. You guys are weird with your superiority. The Chinese might rule the world, they are not superior , even if those ants scare me. (obama the other day with chinese officials : human vs robots) DC you boost a lot of myth without noticing yourself : the other day you had a theory on dewey beard being 5 years old at LBH, and hop you create your own myth. Then you quote persians that leave their corpses to the dogs : just one engraving does not count for truth : another MYTH you were easy to copy and paste.Etc. Other myths : The Indians were sadists according to one of your prior posts. Just because they tortured 10 guys on the plains each year and scalp a dozen, this is NO match for YOUR superior sadists that threw in human canon flodder by the 3.0000000 with mustard gas. The same cultures that burned single women or non-believers alive by the thousand. Your opinion is so completely out of balance, you create your OWN MYTH of superior western society, the most CRUEL of all. Compare same periods. The worst cruel sadistic ways came from the Spanish and the early English settlers. The plain indians were just a couple of hippies compared to those guys, much to gentle untill 1865 towars whites, to be continued to be gunned down more then 300 old sick children and women in 1890. Your sadist MYTH is based on comparing lose exemples turning the balance 180° . If Indians had to go because they were sadists and slaveholders thus inferior especially cause they lost (and Conz has excactly the same theory), it is all the planet that has to go as indians did nothing compared to the massive cruelty even in your own country same period CVW. For as the enslaved women : another MYTH again you create. FIRST women all over the world are still in 2009 mistreated. What point is this focus on plain indians culture? It is plain stupid to use such a excerpt once again out balance. Second ; the women were ruling the tipis and their bucks pretty much untill the booz came in and the hide trade. OK the period was a little worse for them between 1830-1850 on the plains but some efficient leaders worked on this and conditions got better for lakota women after 1850. Anyway this was not what you could call slavery and was different in any tipi. If you think that the average white woman in Europa or in America at that period in a severe christian household were they obeyed the men in suffocating bedrooms were better off... Ask Mss Weldon why she preferred to be an indian woman being an outcast in her fine western society. Or ask Crazy Horse how he obeyed the charms of his women. Slavery.. Or ask all the women dancing till they died in 1890 to the ghosts all craving to return to the old ways. Their ways of indian women out on the plains, as beautifully dressed they were, out on the plains, with their families and well behaving children in harmony with the tribe as the best institution ever. Now compare that today.. Portraying indians as sadistic and slaveholders is just a cheap myth. A myth is not 1.0000000 black women hold in slavery by your superior society at the same time. Before accusing CRHRS and me of myth woreshippers (= ignorants and stupid) clean up your own myths. We have ours and we are working on it, you keep your cynical myths with no eye for beauty. This being said I like reading your posts : you were almost on a good thread with your scottish BRAVE HEART society that we miss so much in Dakota. Indians should be proud of their heritage. The day they will be real proud and stop being lame assisted couch potatoes and undo themselves from collaborating perverting unindian official structures still haranuing ever since they instaured the indian police, the hell will be lose. Just like in a couple of south Am countries... just as you don't respo,nd to the ecological question they were the first to raise will see who laughs last. ciao! ;D |
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 1, 2009 10:52:55 GMT -6
This is pretty much where I came in years back, arguing with people nowhere near as good at English as they think they are.
1. I'm totally consistent. Native American cultures were inferior to the Europeans because they could not - among many things - unite and learn to think linear and not cyclical. They conducted their affairs as if everything started again at some point, a Reset button.
People are pretty much the same everywhere.
2. I have no clue what "You're totally mythic brave heart picture of the scotts appeals me" means, because "Braveheart" was absolute fiction, and I abhor the ridiculous Scott and Stevenson portrayal of a heroic Scotland that never existed.
3. Current 'defenders' of Native Americans often have to fabricate a convenient attack to defend against. You do it here. I've never said they were inferior individual warriors, just that they failed as warriors to achieve their (supposed) goals of protecting their people. They lost.
4. Regarding white treachery, etc., no argument in general. But, you know, it happened sequentially for centuries. First time you betray me, shame on you. The 2nd through the 347th time, shame on me.
Even so, you ignore the fact that the whites got 'chiefs' to sign away things and agree. Sometimes they understood and sometimes not. But the chiefs had no authority from their people to do so. Some were bribed (many, actually) because it gave them power and white men's guns and stuff to inflict themselves on tribal rivals, which was the extent of their mental world. Rather than uniting against the white men they tried to use the white man for their own selfish power, not their people's benefit. They were willing, petty, and incompetent in their dealings with the whites often enough.
5. Wolfgang, since the plains Indians could neither read nor write, what great literary cache of their culture have you read? Even so, there is a reason the Coyote was highly regarded, and elevated to near deific status as the Trickster. And what are the qualities of the trickster? The stuff that makes a good thief, especially a horse thief. What highly tinted tales and myths have come down to us are pretty clear. And the tales of plains Indians are full of giggly tales of stealing from each other, with the occassional murder.
6. Indians are no more moral than anyone else. They were just as revolting as the Europeans, as any other people. Saying stuff like "It is easy to win over a MORAL & PHYSICAL SUPERIOR enemy with those evil ways" is pretty silly. It is another key example of the Babylonian Fallacy, pretending to be spiritually superior despite the undenied facts of perpetual and constant defeat due to the mass treachery among the Indians, a near race to betray each other, hardly an example of moral anything. They were physically better than the average white guy at the end of the trail for all the good it did them.
7. "You guys are weird with your superiority." Nobody is claiming superiority as people. But cultures, and the institutions they provide, can be graded. The institutions granted by our historic culture (ruled by and of law, not just the biggest thug) is the reason increasing numbers of Indians are wealthy today and winning in the courts. Those are not Indian institutions. They are Greek, French, English.
8. My confusion of Dewey Beard being younger than he was - I suspect I confused him with Black Elk as I said - did nothing to change my point. It was still decades later he was called upon to ID a photo of Crazy Horse. No matter who it was, highly dubious. In any case, an error, not a myth.
9. If you read English better, you'd have gotten my drift on the Persians and dogs. Because such would be counter Zoroaster's taste (they burn the dead) and certainly the later tastes of Islam, there was doubt in my mind.
10. All warrior societies are sadistic; they have to be. And I said 'just like' the Vikings and EVERYONE when they're nomads. You can't quantify this stuff, because the Indians were illiterate and did not keep records.
11. You don't know what a myth is, and use the word for untruth. Even so, you use it inaccurately. Also, culture is mealy in definition to you.
12. By the standards of the Indians themselves, they FAILED. They could not protect themselves; they showed no interest in learning how to protect themselves as a people because it would demote most warriors as tribes joined, learned to act together. Such a decision was not made based on benefit to the people, but to male vanity. Note: Everyone everywhere went through this, by the way. Nobody goes through it until they have to. "Necessity" - and ONLY necessity -"is the Mother of Invention." The South failed because of it, and the Irish sold each other out to the end.
13. It's difficult to tell if you just cannot read accurately or what. Describing the lot of plains Indian women as virtual slavery is pretty accurate. All through our history, colonial masters worried about men running off to join the tribes because it was a fun and healthy and exciting life. For men. Women generally had to be kidnapped. Indian women had few domestic animals till the horse, and the dogs couldn't carry much. Their day was always full of less than fun activities. They must have loved the horse more than the men.
That white women had a miserable time and were virtual slaves as well (or actual, in that they couldn't own anything like their kids) doesn't alter anything, because women in general everywhere have had a worse time of it till recently.
14. Your visualization of tribal life as an episode of Father Knows Best, only with bison, is touching, and false because that would elevate Indians above all other mortals.
15. Have no clue what the letters are supposed to mean in your last paragraph. In any case, you've clearly misread me on Braveheart.
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