Cowboys And Indians - White Wolf, White Massacre, And Manifest Destiny

White Wolf was a Comanche chief whose savage, bloody massacres of white settlers on Indian land were legendary and feared.  Union troops ordered by the government to pacify the region hesitated.  Entering Comanche land regardless of strength of arms would be suicide.  The Army had seen nothing like it.  

White Wolf was as brilliant and 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.

In an ironic article in the Rocky Mountain Times Gazette written when the Washington Redskins were choosing a new name for the team, staff writer Hardy Lane wrote:

The Redskins front office should consider changing the team name to White Wolves in honor of the brave Native American who valiantly defended his land from opportunistic, territorial, white invaders.  He embodied the best of American courage, patriotism, pride, and valor. He took scalps not as a matter of barbarity - how white America saw the Indian - but as a matter of defiance.  His savagery - the disemboweling, raping, decapitating, and dismembering of white settlers - was a matter of legacy, honor, and rectitude.  He was truly American in spirit, energy, and devotion to tribal integrity. His name on the burgundy and gold and his image displayed prominently would be a fitting tribute to a great American. 

 

Harold Jacobsen, a prominent Democrat and tireless promoter of the progressive canon of Diversity Equity Inclusivity, when asked about the Gazette article completely missed the point, hemmed and hawed, and babbled on about Native American rights, the unholy genocide of the Indian by white oppressors, and the like.  When pressed about the article's suggestion that the Redskins should be named for White Wolf, he said, 'A fitting choice of an honorable American'. 

When the New York Times picked up the exchange on the wire services, its editors also so blindered and captivated by the progressive meme of Native American inclusion, noted that finally the Indian would get his due. 

Journalist Lane didn't stop there.  From the Boulder, Colorado Archives of the American Indian, he found early photographs of White Wolf's massacres and after editing out the worst bits - e.g. the bloody entrails of disemboweled women being picked over by prairie dogs and crows - printed them in a follow up piece called, 'White Wolf, Champion of the World' in which he lobbied even more strongly for the renaming of the Redskins. 

When the Times editorial board realized their mistake - yes, they were for the Native American, and yes they honored his courage and defiance of the white man, but they never realized how absolutely barbaric, and unconscionably 'primitive' White Wolf and his Comanches were, and said so. 

Which of course got the paper into hot water.  No one was to speak of the Native American as 'primitive', a harshly ignorant, demeaning term.  In other references in the paper the Indian was described as 'a sentient traveler of the Plains...a personage of dignity and respect...a soul in tune with the environment...' and so on. 

The Redskins ownership dodged the issue and renamed the team the Commanders, a name without history, relevance, significance, or pride. Although the choice of White Wolves was obviously made tongue-in-cheek by the Western journalist - no self-respecting owner would ever dare to claim allegiance to a rapist and baby killer - the idea of a heroic Native American enshrined on the national team might be a good idea.  Ownership bailed, however, capitulated, and ended up with the most trite and indifferent name possible

 

The American Left has always been in tears about Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, President James Polk's ambitious program to extend America's borders from east to west - an initiative that was nothing less than genocide, said progressives, a heinous, unconscionable assault on the indigenous population of the land. 

Of course, this was all nonsense, a canonical ignorance of history, and ex post facto political hysteria. Expansionism, territorialism, and occupation were the sine qua non of empire.  When Pope Urban II send the Crusades across Europe to Jerusalem, the purpose was to kill Muslims, slaughter them, eliminate them, and return the Holy Land to its rightful owners.  

Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who led 50,000 troops from the steppes across Europe and Asia to establish the biggest empire the world had ever or would ever see, was no more genocidal than White Wolf or James Polk.  He had his own version of Manifest Destiny. 

The Persians, the Ottomans, Muhammed's Islamic colonialism, and a hundred lesser but no less determined territorial regimes were no different. If you got in the way, that was your problem. 

The ranchers of the Southwest killed any Indians who threatened their sovereignty. It was cowboys and Indians until every Indian was either eliminated, pacified, or removed to a reservation. Genocide? Hardly, just the give and take of human nature, and not without a fight.  There were plenty of White Wolves among the Indians who defied the cowboy ranchers who had taken their land. 

The Indians of the Plains were so ferocious, tenacious, and warlike that in modern times their names and images were adopted by American sports teams, symbols of courage, manhood, dignity, and valor.  Only in the recent years have the heroics of this noble people been erased in a self-righteous, revisionist view of history.  Instead of fortitude, patriotism, and honor, Indians became victims - colored people alienated and murdered by the white oppressor. 

The whole Redskins flap and the selection of an uninspiring, unimaginative, and spiritless name illustrates the ignorance of the Left. In forcing the Redskins renaming and putting every other Indian-inspired sports team in their sights, progressives have done their best to remove every semblance of the courage, valor, tenacity, and heroism of Native Americans.  They thought they were doing them a favor, and instead further consigned them to the reservation. 

Were Native Americans killed by white settlers, ranchers, and the Union Army during Westward Expansion? Yes.  Was this territorial expansion any different from any other in recorded history? No.