Vandie
@VanDiemen_
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Nationalist Cowboy Aristocracy. Posting about history, geography, religion, architecture. Caribbean Rhythms subscriber.
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Thread on what made the Comanche the most brutal and feared American Indian horse warriors, how they halted European expansion for generations, and how the Anglo-Texans eventually learned to defeat them. 🧵
(Part 1)
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Blood Meridian is based on a first hand account of scalp-hunters found in a book called My Confession by Samuel Chamberlain.
Reading through it highlights for me how little of Blood Meridian was dramatized by McCarthy.
Here are a few excerpts I thought were interesting:
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Part 2 of a thread on the Comanche, their reign as the horse lords of the Southern Plains, and how they were eventually defeated by the Anglo-Texans. 🧵
(Part 1 👇)
Thread on what made the Comanche the most brutal and feared American Indian horse warriors, how they halted European expansion for generations, and how the Anglo-Texans eventually learned to defeat them. 🧵
(Part 1)
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If I wanted to live in Venezuela, I'd just move to Venezuela.
We don't need street vendors hawking oranges when we have normal grocery stores in America.
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In order to understand the history of North America, it's good to review the three very different approaches each of the major colonial powers took with regard to the Indians:
1. French - Trade
2. Spanish - Assimilation
3. English - Land Ownership
Let's go over each:
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Also, the Texans originally fought on foot. There wasn't a strong culture of military horsemanship that had developed yet in America, as it wasn't needed for clearing eastern Indians. Something would need to change to defeat the Comanche.
End of Part 1.
Part 2 coming tomorrow.
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@EndWokeness
Some American environmentalists watched the Euros successfully do this on their highways with non-existent police response, then act surprised when they get a face full of asphalt from rural American cops.
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It's 2023, my white cousins go to high school in Hawaii. They're regularly called colonizers by some of the native kids there.
In 1959, 93% of Hawaiians voted in favor in statehood. It was the greatest voter turnout in state history.
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Many dream of building their own custom home someday, but those who get the opportunity often launch into the endeavor with very little training as to what makes a home beautiful and timeless. I've got three book recommendations that I think every future builder needs to read:
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If North America had a geographical "Womb of Nations", like Mongolia or Scandinavia in the Old World, it would be Wyoming. It was a cold, bitter, liminal place that forged peoples into the hardest forms of homo sapiens. The Comanche are a Shoshone speaking tribe from Wyoming.
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One account speaks of a group of Comanche and Kiowa allies who went so deep into Central America that they brought back tales from the jungles of brightly colored birds and of little people in the trees (monkeys). Some speculate they may have reached as far as Guatemala.
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If you'd like to learn more, most of the reading for these threads came from T. R. Fehrenbach's book Comanches.
Let me know what topics you'd be interested in hearing about in the future.
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The Comanche multiplied and became the undisputed rulers of the American steppe, exactly like the Mongols or Huns or Yamnaya did with their koryos warrior brotherhoods. If given more time, they would have conquered the continent from Alberta to Oaxaca.
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The tribes around them were fair game, and they often fought with the Utes in the mountains of Colorado and the Cheyenne and Crow in the Northern Plains, but their favorite target was Mexicans. They would rampage for thousands of miles through Mexico, nearly reaching Mexico City.
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Somehow the Comanche learned of horses on the southern plains which had come from the Spanish in New Mexico. The Pueblo Indians adjacent to the Spanish were mostly using the horses for agricultural purposes. The Comanche were the first tribe to adopt and master the horse for war.
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Every death in the band was a tragedy. Every birth a celebration. Destroying one enemy warrior under these tenuous conditions would also destroy the entire family group that depended on him for food, and hence the competition. Killing became a necessary part of survival.
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The Kentucky long rifle that was so famously employed in the vast forests of the east was deadly accurate, perfect for firing from cover, but slow to reload. A Comanche could launch 20 arrows in the time it took an American to shoot once with a long rifle.
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So the Comanche migrated southwards to be closer to horseflesh, which they stole and bred and learned to ride on the Great Plains. Pretty soon all the southern plains south of the Arkansas River and east of New Mexico became known as Comanchería by the Spanish.
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The plains tribes universally had a very different approach to war than the Europeans. Because they were extremely casualty averse, the concepts of standing and fighting pitched battles, glorious last stands, pressing an enemy who was retreating, were very foreign to them.
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The Comanche became expert horsemen and hunters of buffalo. Rather than relying on the old methods of stampeding the herds into traps on foot, the Comanche would gallop alongside the bison and shoot arrows straight into the sides, which would go clean through.
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Settled agriculturalists farmed in the valleys of the tributaries of the Missouri. The Shoshone were the outcasts who couldn't compete with these tribes because of calorie differences. They scratched life out of high deserts and mountains, living constantly on a knife's edge.
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The Spanish in New Spain sent out numerous expeditions into Comanchería to try to crush the Indians. One army that was sent had more soldiers and Indian allies than Cortez had when we conquered the Aztecs, and it was defeated out on the high plains.
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So the Comanche, even more so than other Indian tribes, developed an extreme love of violence, torture, and war.
Scalping sacred hair was destroying the soul. Captives were taken back to camp so that the women could torture and wring every ounce of pain out of the body.
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The Indian method of warfare was stealth, ambush, surprise, and massacre. They sought out soft spots, such as unprotected villages or lonely travellers, and massacre anyone they could find. If any resistance was encountered, they would usually retreat.
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And when ultra-violent bands of young men have prosperity and crave prestige, they look around and redirect their energy outwards to anyone they could find that would fight them. The Comanche soon became known for being the longest travelling raiders in North America.
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In a successful tribe or society there comes a time when prosperity and security is totally achieved. The Comanche reached it. Individuals warriors owned hundreds of horses. Chiefs - thousands. They had all the food they needed from the buffalo. But they still craved prestige.
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The Comanche brought this style to their cavalry. Rather than using heavy horses in a disciplined mass to charge infantry, they instinctively swirled and churned like a murmuration of sparrows on the battlefield, with no obvious rhyme or reason to their enemy.
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There was no Comanche taboo against killing any human outside the tribe, in fact it was glorified. Infants were bashed on rocks. Women were gang-raped. Corpses were mutilated. Captives skinned alive and burned in sensitive places. Sometimes kids were kept in order to be adopted.
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But the Comanche, like all Indians, preferred massacre to battle. A surprise early morning raid into an enemy camp was the best case scenario, with warriors galloping through the lodges lanceing and shooting anything that moved, setting fires, and stealing whatever they could.
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The Spanish Empire reached its zenith against the Comanche in Texas, and they help turn it back. The Spanish in the long run never had the birthrates, money, organization, or competence to compete with the Comanche. Nor did the Mexican government after independence.
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They would stay out of range, pick off outliers, attempt penetrations and sneak attacks, feint flight then fire Parthian style at pursuers. It was all classic steppe horse tactics.
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What the Comanche saw in war as a normal and vital part of life, the Anglo-Texan called "murder raids" and it enraged them. And initially they were completely at a loss about what to do about it. The Americans that moved into Texas were used to fighting Indians in the woods.
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Indian battles amongst warriors were more like quiet, long-running skirmishes. Sneaking through undergrowth. Outflanking maneuvers. Arrows darting out from behind trees. Single combat. Sometimes melees would form around fallen bodies to prevent mutilation.
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In order to understand the history of the American West, you need to understand South Pass.
The entire geography of the continental United States funnels into this choke point in Wyoming about 30 miles across. (1/8):
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Ukrainian language and culture was intentionally fabricated by academics in the early 1800s for explicitly anti-Russian political reasons. They took the vernacular accent of the peasants in the area and called it "Ukrainian" in order to produce a Ukrainian national consciousness.
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One famous fight occurred in the Indian Territory with a chief called Iron Jacket, named because he wore an old Spanish cuirass into battle.
When the Texan leader was chastised for crossing the Red River, he said "My job was to kill Indians, not learn geography."
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But they had delayed the westward expansion of the Americans for 40 years, the best record of any Indian tribe, when most were lucky to delay encroachment for 10. They built a reputation as the fiercest of the Indian tribes, and were widely respected by those that fought them.
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The Rangers deservedly achieved a mythological status in American history. They showed a remarkable frontier adaptability, of necessity adopting many of the same characteristics as their Indian enemies. Speed, stealth, and a capacity for the cold-blooded execution of Indians.
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Two big things happened in the 1830s
1. Texas Rangers
2. The introduction of the Colt 5-shot revolver.
Although ranging companies had been informally used in the 1820s, the Texas Rangers were formally created by the Texas legislature to be highly mobile Indian fighters.
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Taking the fight deep into the home country and not distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants, really the only effective anti-guerilla strategy, is what broke the back of the Comanche. By the 1860s most of the Comanche had been reduced by war and disease.
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But the Rangers practiced reloading from horseback, carried extra loaded chambers with them, or learned to carry two revolvers. The Rangers advised Samuel Colt on design improvements, and by the 1850s the much improved 6-shot Navy revolvers were in standard use.
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When large bands of warriors were encountered, no matter how outnumbered the Rangers were they were the aggressors. They would ride straight into the mass of Indian warriors, ride alongside them stirrup to stirrup, and blow them out of their saddles with their revolvers.
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The Comanches had lived unmolested deep in the high plains for generations, so their perpetual weakness was lax camp security. The Texans would surprise the camps Indian-style at night, and rarely spared anyone when on campaign, killing both sexes of all ages.
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Armed with the right weapons and horses, the Texan companies took the fight deep into Comanchería, ranging far and wide looking for Indiansign. They learned to search the skies for vultures circling buffalo kills. If they crossed a trail, they immediately took up brisk pursuit.
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The push to make a Hawaii a state was mostly led by Democrats, who accused Republicans of slow-walking the process because of the significant non-white populations in Hawaii.
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The Paterson Colt 5-shot Revolver quintupled the firepower of the Rangers and gave them the offensive capability they needed. A rider could now gallop right up to the enemy and shoot him point blank, with the confidence of extra shots ready to go if needed.
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Families were murdered, horses stolen, homes burned, women/children kidnapped. There isn't a recorded instance of a white woman who was kidnapped by Comanches who wasn't gang-raped. Men would be tortured, sometimes staked to the ground facing the sun with their eyelids cut off.
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The Comanche never understood why the whites seemed to take this all so personally. War and brutalization was part of life, and they expected to receive the same. But it caused fury and consternation among the Texans who were at a loss as to how to mount an effective response.
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The rangers would move lightly and quietly, no bugles or shouting, with wide screens of Indian allies as scouts. Once a camp of lodges was located, an attack was planned. Routes of escape were cut off, and the rangers would sneak in at night for the massacre.
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@DeidreHenderson
Ladies and gentlemen - a Republican Lt. Governor openly celebrating the rise of bolshevism.
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The southern edge of Comanchería was the Balcones Escarpment, or what Texans today generally call the Hill Country, which ran in an arc from roughly Dallas to Austin to San Antonio, and is the point at which the Great Plains fall down into the more fertile Coastal Plains.
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American horses were too delicate for hard riding on the plains so the Texans began selectively breeding horses for durability using the Spanish breeds that were on the Plains mixed with their finest horses out of the Kentucky horse country.
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Texans also eventually learned to ride with multiple mounts and were better able to catch up with the Comanche. If the Indians could be engaged then the preferred tactic was to dismount, take cover and fire. All Indian fighters knew about the Indian reluctance to charge.
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The torture they devised was cruel in the extreme. They cut off the soles of the feet of one man, made him run for miles tied to a horse, then killed him. White girls would have their noses cut off to the bone, scarred with flames, then made to be slaves in camp.
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But in Texas the homesteads could be up to 50 miles apart, with some isolated ones up to 100 miles from the nearest neighbor. No amount of militia organization or fort building could stop the Comanche from penetrating deep into the Coastal Plains, which they often did.
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The first thing that needed to be fixed was the horse situation. At the time it was standard for mounted American troops to travel 30 miles/day, with each man riding one horse. Reports that the Comanche could ride 100 miles/day were dismissed as lies by the authorities.
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As settlers moved into this area in the 1830s, it would become the frontline in the Comanche wars.
As we discussed in Part 1, the Comanche for cultural reasons couldn't help but raid the isolated farmsteads that began popping up.
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In the US eastern forests, settlers tended to be more clustered together. It was common in Kentucky for a few families to occupy the same holler. So militiamen on foot could fairly quickly be gathered. Abundant lumber also made building strong points easy and cost effective.
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The Paterson revolver needed to be completely disassembled to reload, with each chamber filled with powder by hand. So the first engagements with revolvers usually involved a cavalry charge with each rider firing 5 shots, before retreating to dismount and reload.
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@LindseyGrahamSC
Whether Russia or Ukraine controls the Donbass isn't in our interest. Stop sending our money to Ukraine.
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Some examples of the statues that we'll be tearing down once we seize power from the gay race communists.
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But this also meant that the French typically enjoyed the best relations with the Indians. French trappers were the most welcome in Indian villages continent-wide and our best ethnographic accounts of first contacts usually come from French sources.
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Samuel Chamberlain was a young man from Boston who ended up riding with the Glanton Gang. Some think that the Kid in Blood Meridian is loosely based on him. Here he is meeting Glanton for the first time.
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The Judge was just as intelligent and rationally evil in real life as in the book. The perfect villain.
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If you liked this thread, go read Follow Me to Hell: McNelly's Texas Rangers by Tom Clavin. Fun short book about the Texas Rangers in the 1800s.
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They loved him for his natural leadership abilities, clear competence, and cool-headedness.
He told his men "Boys, I may lead you into hell, but I'll get you out if you do exactly as I say. I'll never send you into battle, I'll lead you. All I ask any man to do is follow me."
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It wasn't a coincidence that Lewis and Clark found Charbonneau at the Mandan villages on the Missouri.
Osborne Russell wintered with a Frenchman at a Shoshone camp at present day Ogden, Utah in 1840.
French names all over North America attest to their roaming.
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Part 2 here 👇
Part 2 of a thread on the Comanche, their reign as the horse lords of the Southern Plains, and how they were eventually defeated by the Anglo-Texans. 🧵
(Part 1 👇)
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1. French
The French were the greatest traders with the natives. Obviously they envisioned the fleur-de-lis flying over all of North America, but this was to support their primary interest which was mercantile. French trappers and traders wandered the furthest as a result.
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This incident, called the Las Cuevas War, would make McNelly a household name. Northerners hated him for his flouting of the law and risking a war with Mexico, but in Texas he was revered as a hero. He would die two years later aged only 33.
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French weapons dealing caused ceaseless consternation to the English and Spanish, who more tightly regulated trade and had to deal with the result of heavily armed tribes. Many conflicts between the French and their neighbors in the New World could be traced back to this.
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These guys were insane.
I think how casual the violence is in Blood Meridian is what shocks readers today, but in all my reading on the American West that's exactly how it was. Violence and death were casually encountered everywhere.
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John Glanton was a real person who shows up in the historical record in several places.
Apparently the reason he hates Indians so much is because they massacred his fiancee after he built her a cabin by a river so they could build a life together in Texas.
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2. The Spanish were famously interested in the New World because of the three Gs - God, Gold, Glory. What this meant in practice was a cultural policy of assimilating with the native Indians. The new mestizo race of Latin Americans was born of this widespread mixing.
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1. Start with A Field Guide to American Housing. You'll learn the vocabulary of single family architecture and how to differentiate the architectural genres of homes. Lots of details means this book alone will get you most of the way there. Most useful for exteriors.
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The Spanish crown regularly chastised and punished Spaniards who were too cruel to natives. A Dominican friar named Bartolome de las Casas was a social activist in the 1500s who agitated for humane treatment of the conquered peoples, and was influential at court.
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He ordered the ranger to "return at once to Texas."
McNelly's reply has become Texas Ranger legend.
"I shall remain in Mexico with my rangers and cross back at my discretion. Give my compliments to the Secretary of War and tell him and his US soldiers to go to hell."
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This is only the most cursory summary of North American colonial history, and certainly exceptions are widespread, but I think it's helpful to understand the broad strokes as we examine how these peoples clashed and moved about North America during the Age of Exploration.
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The most religiously devout of the three, the Spanish sent many missionaries who genuinely wished to convert the natives and improve their lives. These Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans worked to spread Catholicism and European culture and practices throughout New Spain.
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3. The Anglo interactions with the indians were primarily centered on land use issues. Coming from a strong tradition of English common law which emphasized the property rights of landowners, this English worldview of exclusionary land use was antithetical to the native one.
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However, the Japanese, who fought both the English and Americans in the Pacific theater of World War 2 often remarked at the differences in fighting styles of the two races. They attributed a certain ferocity and stubbornness to the presence of Indian blood in the Americans.
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Sunday whitepill: We often forget there's an entire continent's worth of rural America. The most beautiful countryside in the world, tended by some of the most beautiful, good-hearted people anywhere.
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When the Spanish moved into New Mexico in the early 1600s, they brought Aztec and Tlaxcalan families from central Mexico, and the leader of the expedition was married to a great-granddaughter of Montezuma himself.
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The pre-Columbian populations of Mesoamerica were orders of magnitude larger than the populations north of the Rio Grande. Even after multiple waves of epidemics killed off 90% of the population, there were still many millions of Indians who remained.
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The man sent to stop the lawlessness in South Texas was Leander McNelly, a confederate Civil War veteran, who was placed by the governor at the head of a "Special Force" of Texas Rangers. He was short at 5'3", 31 years old, and his men were fanatically loyal to him.
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There is an entire civilization mostly unknown to science currently being discovered in the Amazon Basin. The Beni savanna in Bolivia is covered in ancient mound cities, causeways, canals, and raised farmland, which must have been built by a people numbering in the millions.
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English settlers were primarily motivated by land ownership, as opposed to trading, proselytizing, or commodity extraction. Obviously this meant that they had the most intractable conflict with the Indians. The conflict ended only with complete subjugation of the indians.
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2. A Pattern Language. Over 200 examples of the little details that make a home functional, beautiful, and timeless. The entire book asks the question "Is this lindy?" and answers in great depth. Most useful for the interior.
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What this meant was that there was always going to be a massive population of natives who couldn't possibly be ethnically cleansed or exterminated without great cost to the new Spanish rulers.
Intermarrying happend almost immediately between the Spanish and Aztec elite.
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3. 6,000 Years of Housing illustrates why the traditional ways of building things are the way they are. Useful to know how we evolved to the forms and patterns we have today.
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In June 1875, McNelly, who was a master of intelligence, got word of where a group of Cortina's rustlers with 300 head would cross back to Mexico. He ambushed them in the salt marshes near Boca Chica, killing 16 Mexicans and dumping their bodies in the Brownsville plaza.
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The Nueces Strip is the part of Texas between The Rio Grande and the Nueces River. After the Civil War Anglo-Texans had moved into the area to take advantage one history's great arbitrage opportunities - local longhorn worth $2 could be sold up north for $40.
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One of these warlords was a wealthy Mexican named Juan Cortina who had up to 2,000 gunmen at his command. His family had lost land north of the Rio Grande when the Nueces Strip was ceded to the US and he had no qualms about stealing as many cattle as he could from Anglo-Texans.
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The Anglo did intermarry with Indians to some degree, but the intensity of violence and the small numbers of natives relative to New Spain meant that it never manifested very strongly racially.
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Whether they were fighting Comanches or Mexicans, Rangers were usually outnumbered and experience had taught them that the best defense was a good offense.
So they furiously attacked the gang, unloading death into the Mexicans with their deadly accurate Sharps Rifles.
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Cortina would send groups of twenty bandits into Texas who would rustle as many cattle as they could, grabbing 50 here and 75 there, accumulating herds of 200-400, which they would drive back across the Rio Grande. Cortina would ship the cattle to Cuba for enormous profits.
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