William Black Eagle Hawkins was a direct descendant of White Wolf, the Comanche Chief of an earlier generation who was known for his bravery, his butchery, and his savagery all in the name of defending Indian lands from white settlements.
White Wolf was the most savage, bloody, brutal killer of whites the Union Army had ever seen. His approach was simple - rape, slaughter, behead, eviscerate any white settlers that squatted on Indian land, and no more would follow.
Defending his land against foreign intruders, and as bloody a warrior as Genghis Khan, White Wolf knew that a purposeful barbarity would intimidate the enemy. Just as Genghis Khan posted severed heads on roads leading to conquered villages, gruesome warnings to the next settlements in his sights, so did White Wolf use unconscionable savagery as a tool of war. He knew that the Christian soldiers would see his tribal, animist, ferocity, understand that they were up against a frightening, unfathomable enemy with no moral restraint and would turn tail.
Jonathan Foreman, writing in The Daily Mail said:
S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’
He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.
‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’
‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonized bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’
Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’. They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.
When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apache, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.
'I want to be President of the United States', said Billy Hawkins one day. His mother smiled, looked out over the trailer park to the hills beyond, past the scrub grass and litter, broken bottles of Old Crow splits and rotting chamois, to the pie dogs snuffling in the trash heap, to the naked child of Annie Five Arrows pissing in the ditch, and said, 'You will someday, my darling, you will'.
Of course she knew differently. An Indian, let alone one scrounging for a living on welfare and food stamps had about as much chance of becoming president as....here her imagination failed her, so remote was the possibility.
They had been living in this same trailer park for two generations, a nasty corner of the emptiest place on earth, not a reservation - the Comanche had never been penned up by the white man - but something as poor and forgotten as Pine Ridge. Their forbear, Black Bear Hawkins - hobo, vagabond, tramp - had wandered for years before anteing up the first month's rent at Happy Homes Village. As desperate and benighted as the place was, he never forgot his patrimony and White Wolf's buffalo hunts and his bloody, victorious battles with the Apache and the Union soldiers.
Billy's mother - his father was long gone, some said to the Idaho panhandle with some renegade Oglala Sioux squaw - had raised him the best she knew how, wanted nothing but a promising future for him, but felt that their lot had been cast - Indian, poor, wampum, beads, feathers, and not much more.
It is not uncommon in America for a childhood in poverty to bring out the most unquenchable ambitions not only to simply rise up out of poverty but rise to the top. One had only to look at Bill Clinton, Arkansas hillbilly, trailer trash no better off than Black Bear Hawkins, who became President of the United States. Yes, Clinton was a white boy, and any Indian already had two strikes against him, but this was America, reservations and cheap turquoise jewelry notwithstanding.
Now, Billy Black Eagle was not one for toadying. The blood of White Wolf flowed more thickly through his veins than in any other of the great man's descendants, and he wanted to take scalps on his way. He not only resented the miserable, plains poverty around him, he hated it. How had the noble Comanche fallen so far?
A stray dog trotted up as he and his mother sat enjoying the last warmth of the afternoon sun. Mangy, scabrous, missing a leg, pitiful. Billy's mother gave him a kick and the dog yelped and limped away. Never more would he live with dogs, thought the young Billy.
And so it was that his remarkable ride began. He cadged favors where he could, took odd jobs for important men, washed their cars, took out their trash, and read at night - volumes of history about the settlement of the West, Manifest Destiny, Lewis and Clark, and the great westward migration of the Indian.
Yet along the way he learned about the Republic, the Founding Fathers, the principles of the Enlightenment, the genius cluster of Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, and Adams. His chats with his employers was not desultory but substantive, and they took a shine to him.
He hated every minute of it. His Yes, Massa obeisance to the white man made him think of White Wolf who refused any accommodation to the white settlers squatting on Comanche land. He slaughtered them, men, women, and children and left their corpses rotting in the son for Union soldiers to see.
Yet this was not the Old West, and he took advantage of his patronage - sponsorship to a community college, financial support for university, and promises of employment thereafter. He was accepted to a prominent school in the East, and despite the distractions and blandishments of white students who wanted an Indian as part of their rainbow coalition, stayed the course, graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
An Op Ed piece he wrote for the New York Times on nativism, the wooly assumptions of racial identity, and the foundational logic of conservatism caught the eye of a well-known politician in Washington who was looking for just this type of conservative - young, outspoken, and defiant. Although Billy's words were couched in the most temperate language, their virulent hatred of progressivism was clear.
Lyndon Johnson, another poor boy President, took many scalps on his way to political importance. Robert Caro's multi-volume biography chronicled the do-whatever-it-takes ambition of the young Texan, leaving bodies strewn on the West Texas plains; and it was with the same resonant, absolute conviction that Billy Black Eagle made his way forward.
He was as smart as Johnson and just as ambitious. He was just as canny as LBJ and knew a man's weakness and buried a blade in it before he could raise his hands to protect himself. He left many an opponent swinging in the breeze, left on the curb, or lying eviscerated in a ditch on his way to political renown.
He never once played the race card, the progressive identity card, the Indian/Native American card; but because of his political savagery, he became known as a tribal warrior, lord of the plains to be as feared as his heroic ancestor, White Wolf.
He got ahead in Washington not because of affirmative action or any petty gay presumptions of victimhood. Without trying, he became as feared and respected as his ancestor.
As soon as he stepped on deck, the deck was cleared. His captaincy was by now innate, unchallenged, and absolute. He had either eliminated his opponents or collected so much damaging information about him that they kept silent. He could write his own ticket and would rule like his ancestor all that he surveyed.
This, of course, was the way American politics has been played since George Washington - a game of intimidation, information, will, and the amoral use of power. Yet William Black Eagle took it to a different level, one of unmitigated, vengeful, annihilating power. He was the Genghis Khan of Washington on his way to the Presidency, a brutal Machiavellian, a Mongol genius.
Not only did he settle some Indian scores, he settled all of them. He wanted to put on his Indian headdress made of eagle feathers, bear claws, and cougar teeth. He wanted to dance around the ceremonial fire, summoning Comanche gods and praying for courage in battle. He wanted butchery, compliance, and respect.
American progressives treated Indians as victims needing protection, kindness, and care; and as such they didn't know what to do with William Black Eagle. Indians weren't supposed to be like this, savage disemboweling riders on horseback, slaughtering long knives and their families; but there he was standing before them, proud, defiant, and untouchable.
His run for President was surprising to everyone but him. He knew it from the beginning, the moment that mangy, scrofulous pie dog snuffled at his feet by the trailer. An American success story.
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