The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality

[Frenchie]

The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality

[Tascosa Joe]

Ah yes revsionist history by the bleeding heart do gooder!

[Mako]

Ah yes revsionist history by the bleeding heart do gooder!

I don't know Joe... The author has a point.  It was after all the U.S. Army that was the source of all violence in the American West.  In fact I believe it was the Field Artillery Branch that was the source of most if not all the ills of the 19th century West.

I must say I have to agree, no matter where you go there seems to be crunchies at the root of our problems.

~Mako

[Stillwater]

Ah yes revsionist history by the bleeding heart do gooder!

Agreed revisionist history at it's worst. Anything with Dee Brown in it will be history from the limp-wristed-Leftist-Liberal  view point.


Bill

[Tascosa Joe]

Mako:
You may be right.  i suppose it all started with Jackson, the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears.  My wife was doing family history and discovered my GGG grandmother's family made that march from North Carolina to IT.

I have seen the article that is the subject of this thread in a Brady Anti gun pamplet about 5 years ago.   I took it with a grain of salt.

T-Joe

[Mako]

Mako:
You may be right.  i suppose it all started with Jackson, the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears.  My wife was doing family history and discovered my GGG grandmother's family made that march from North Carolina to IT.

I have seen the article that is the subject of this thread in a Brady Anti gun pamplet about 5 years ago.   I took it with a grain of salt.

T-Joe

JOE....
Come on, at least put up a fight.  That was so tongue in cheek I almost licked the back of my head.  You've totally disarmed me, or maybe...hmmm, you are a shrewd one Mr. Tascosa.

~Mako (who didn't punch no doggies...)

[Tascosa Joe]

Mako:

I know, I spent alot of time in an 8" Battery.  I think back to my history and the Gratten Masacre in the 1850's which really started the Indian Wars.  A dumb ass LT, with a cannon starting a fight over a dead milk cow.  So, there you go I will concede you are right about DA Lt's with cannons.

Joe

[Mako]

Mako:

I know, I spent alot of time in an 8" Battery.  I think back to my history and the Gratten Masacre in the 1850's which really started the Indian Wars.  A dumb ass LT, with a cannon starting a fight over a dead milk cow.  So, there you go I will concede you are right about DA Lt's with cannons.

Joe

I think several of us have been dumb Lieutenants at one time, isn't it amazing our NCOs didn't drown us as our mothers probably should have?  

I actually read the12 pages of the book that was placed online.  If you read beginning on page 228 he is trying to make it seem that we were all happy families of self directing communities and expeditions, each with their own constitutions, by laws and contracts of conduct.  This is his primary premise in this area supported by a work from P.J. Hill, "[t]he West . . . is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life," their research "indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved"

Then he goes on to explain what these organizations were, "What were these private protective agencies? They were not governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on keeping order. Instead, they included such organizations as land clubs, cattlemen's associations, mining camps, and wagon trains."

Other authors have characterized, or should I say "caricaturized" those same organizations as greedy, manipulative capitalistic ventures that raped the land, displaced the native populations and took advantage of the common man.  So if you have embraced those groups who will be the villains?   It can't be the noble savages, so it must be the military, yeah... they are the evil ones.  I am very critical of many of the actions of the U.S. Army and the Dept. of the Interior and the Dept. of Indian affairs especially during the reconstruction era of the United States.  Many of the ills that remain with us today are a result of that heavy handed administration of the South and land to the West.

I'll not even go into the tactics of the invading armies of the Union after they obviously had won the war.  You and I both know that armed conflict is just the continuation of politics with force and that the ultimate goal of a force is not to destroy the enemy, but to have them cease fighting.

DiLorenzo is pushing two concepts, the first is that small groups of people existing in a communal environment are all sunshine and cooperation.  The second is that the violence that existed post the War between the States was almost entirely fomented by the policies of the U.S. Army towards the Plains Indians and the historians of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries have distorted the nature of the "civilized" West from 1865 to 1900.

There was a lot of bad done in the treatment of the Native Americans, I don't know if there was a Treaty ever executed by the U.S. government with them pre 1890 that was ever kept.  But, that still isn't his basic point, he wants to erase the "stereotype" of the American West we have all grown up with.

Speaking of 8" field guns, some of the M201 tubes from M110s you may have manned have a new lease on life as penetrator casings for aerial bombs .  I saw the first one in '91 in an ordnance ready bunker at Aviano and I thought they were currently making purpose built casings until I saw the current administration sold 55 of them with the original configuration to Israel a couple of months ago.  Just goes to show if you can't hit anything with them you can always throw them...

~Mako

[Tascosa Joe]

Yeah, you take the trunion pins off, put tail fins and a guidance system you have a 5 Ton bunker buster without the explosives. With explosives who hoo.