Diversity And The Thorny Legacy Of White Wolf, Bloodiest Indian Chief In American History

Sarah Parker Fields, granddaughter of Quanah Parker, 'White Wolf', Comanche Chief who wrought fear in every Union soldier who crossed his land was proud of her Native American heritage but refused membership in Native Americans For Reparations, a militantly political group demanding restitution for the genocide of her people.

White Wolf was no victim.  In fact he was a true American hero, defending his land against foreign intruders, brilliant chieftain, 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 (12.8.13), 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.

 
So Sarah, now a young adult, fought hard for recognition of Indian valor and the imposition of the insulting claim of victimhood.  Her grandfather and other tribal chieftains were far more deserving of recognition than the black man, servile and complaisant from the very beginning to the end.  Mandingo, Yoruba, and Igbo were taken as slaves by tribal victors, sold to Arab middlemen who in turn sold them to Portuguese and English traders.  Sold on the block in Savannah and Charleston, these Africans were bred for strength and reproductivity, dismissed, and disregarded. 

White Wolf, the Comanche, Apache, and Piute were proud, rebellious, militantly defiant warriors who refused to be subjugated and fought with terrible ferocity against the Union Army, mercenaries, and white settlers.  Although they were outmanned, outgunned, and outmaneuvered by the invading armies of the east, the fought the good fight.  The American Indian was noble, proud, and dignified.  His savagery, condemned by the white soldiers crossing his land, was to him nothing of the sort.  There was no such thing as 'savagery', a term implying amorality, primitivism, and an unevolved cultural core.  Savagery was no more than a legitimate expression of honor. 

Sarah had been approached by many progressive groups anxious to use her in their cause for reparations and most importantly an admission of guilt by the white man for the genocide of Native Americans. Such an admission would lead to similar confessions about his equally amoral, profoundly barbaric role in the slave trade; and by extension his complicity in the subjugation of women, gay men, and the poor.  Coming clean about the Indians would be the first step to cleansing the Augean stables of white supremacy. 

Not only would Sarah's storied heritage make her the ideal spokesperson for deprived Indian rights, she, a stunningly attractive, raven-haired, classically Indian-looking beauty, would be the movement's poster girl.  This is what Indian removal and wanton slaughter of the red man meant - it deprived white Americans of true natural beauty - a beauty borne of the land, the environment, and the big sky. 

The progressive movement for Native Americans was of course lily white.  Most Native Americans wanted nothing to do with the neutering of their ancestors, reducing them to 'people of color' and linking them with black slaves, gay men, and transgender women.  They saw white liberal hysteria as destructive, the last straw, the final burial of the American Indian's storied past.  They were nonplussed at the removal of Indian icons, mascots, and images - another attempt to remove them from sight, to marginalize them in a baldly transparent and politically venal program of 'inclusivity'.  Indians were once again being railroaded by the white man, corralled, and forced into cultural isolation and reservation. 

 

So instead of being the progressive movement's shill, Sarah Fields became its fiercest, most outspoken opponent.  She championed the American Indian for their valor, their courage, and their indomitable, fierce attachment to the land. They were the first American anti-imperialists, the American anti-heroes, the Nietzschean Übermensch.  They in their native patriotism, and all-out defense of their territory, were the forerunners of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, enemy cities leveled to help end the war and as importantly to show all American adversaries that the United States meant business. 

Of course she ran into opposition, for the cult of the oppressed did not account for such unmitigated savagery and conquest.  In order to castrate the white man, a trail of his victims had to be shown.  He was a creature beyond redemption.  His armies rolled over innocent Native Americans, moved them across the Mississippi and into reservations, unmanned them, dismissed and forgot them.  The occupation of native lands could not be cast as struggle between opposing interests and forces - that would simply be a reflection of general imperialism.  This was genocide, pure and simple.  It had to be to fit within the liberal canon. 

Needless to say, Sarah's was a losing battle. Her cohorts were too few and far between to coalesce into an activist movement, and the progressive ethos showed no signs of weakening.  Unless and until a new conservative government took power - an administration which admired and honored native courage, ferocity, and will and applied the ethos to its foreign policy and military strategy. Such a change was on the horizon, and no one was more pleased than Sarah Parker Fields. 

 

Bilking The White Man - Fatima Shabazz, Hero Of The Oppressed

Fatima Shabazz, nee Letisha Davis, was the leader of a Congressional claque of progressive women of color and ethnicity who were the self-appointed watchdogs of America's moral direction.  They were its compass, barometer, and sextant.  They were the keepers of the flame, the guardians of the hearth, the sentinels of justice. 

Now, these women had all been born and raised in the inner city, children of dysfunctional homes and incarcerated fathers, raised by grandmothers, sisters of pimps and pushers, but who had had enough uppity gumption to get out of the ghetto. Letisha had been favored by the Reverend Isaiah Jackson, pastor of the Second AME Zion church of Brentwood, a former colleague of Mayor for Life Leon Derby who did time with him in Stillwater, but since reformed leader of the community.  

His meme was 'White Man Done It', a tag which was his alone although the sentiment in the neighborhoods that the crime, drugs, drive-bys, and lock-ups were due to white supremacy, Jim Crow, and capitalist manipulation added salience and depth to the line. 

In any case, thanks to white liberal generosity, millions of tax dollars got siphoned through the municipality to the ghetto as walkin' around money, entitlement grants, and reparations.  The City Council had voted one of the country's first Black Reparation Laws, and every black man, woman, and child east of the river received a generous 'Racial Bonus'.  Some of this money went to Letisha who, as mistress of the Reverend Jackson, benefitted from his political connections, and thanks to him was put up for Councilmember in the all-black Tenth Ward. 

It didn't take much to become elected. Governance was a weakly understood concept in Ward 10 and as long as 'generosity money' kept flowing, no one cared what the city council was up to; so without much experience or education, Letisha took her seat and did the needful, draining the city treasury for phantom 'enrichment' and 'development' programs.  Thanks to her energy and unwavering loyalty, she was reelected every two years. 

Of course, once she got a taste of the perks and benefits of elected life she set her sights far higher than the City Council, and thanks once again to the Reverend Johnson who was a de facto, honorary member of the Congressional Black Caucus, helped paved the way for Letisha's rise to national prominence. He found her a safe seat in a nearly all-black district of Maryland, poured in plenty to help her campaign, and after a hard election - every candidate knew that the gravy train was just around the bend - she won.

To add cachet and authority she became Muslim, changed her name to Fatima Shabazz, and joined the claque of progressive women of color and ethnicity in the House. 

Her sisters in the group were all like her - daughters of the inner city, ambitious women who knew how to play the race card, who had been the beneficiaries of white liberal guilt, and who were out to get theirs.  There was one legitimate Muslim woman in the claque, an immigrant from Yemen who resented Letisha for her facile, Muslim-in-a-day conversion, but quickly realized that to the white liberal establishment any association with Islam meant immediate inclusion, respect, and support. Conservative Republicans saw right through the scam-sham, but in the minority, they could do nothing to get rid of the con. 

So thanks to Letisha, her crewe, and the progressives who fawned over them, they became perennial thorns in the side of the white establishment and heroes of the progressive Left.  They were representatives of the new, diverse, multi-racial and multi-ethnic Democratic America.  Gone were the old Jewish, Samuel Gompers, Saul Alinsky Upper West Side liberals whose political allegiances were to philosophy - most had never forgotten the halcyon days of Marxist-Leninism and were still championing the lost cause of labor - and in their place were the new, young men and women of color and alternate ethnicity. 

Letisha/Fatima had found her place and her voice and became the face of the group.  A woman of particular eloquence and persuasive, gospel cadence, she was in demand everywhere.  White college students couldn't get enough of her and her finely honed message of The Militancy of the Oppressed.  She was an advocate for very stripe of social victim, beginning with the Palestinians who were suffering genocide at the hand of the Jews, the Muslim immigrants of Europe who, forced into ethnic and religious ghettoes by their white Dutch, French, and German masters, were rallying together as part of the movement for a universal Islamic caliphate. 

The black man was not only to be paid reparations and restored to full citizenship, but raised to the pinnacle of the social pyramid where he belonged.  The African American, child of the forest, inheritor of the greatness of the Ghanian, Malian, and Nigerian Empires, innately superior to the white man with a higher consciousness, genetic history, and a highly evolved tribal culture, was atop all others. 

What a great ride, chuckled Letisha and her sisters, as the donations to the charities they set up reached unexpected levels as the coffers filled to overflowing.  Thanks to some creative accounting - here the women broke ranks and hired the best Jewish CPA firm in Washington - and thanks to some very sophisticated schemes reminiscent of Enron and Bernie Madoff,  they became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. 

The demand for their invective was insatiable.  The more they howled and attacked the white man and the 'international cabal' (read Israel and its supporters); and the more they called for the demise of white supremacy, the more donations poured in. 

They whipped the crowds to a frenzy, hopped them up, turned them from nice liberal white folk to foaming radicals.  'Hate has no home here' say the signs in liberal neighborhoods of Washington, but hate was the women's stock in trade.  The more bile, venom, and vitriol they spewed, the more the cash registers rang.  It was Christmas every day. 

Nothing in politics is without consequence, and sooner or later the radical progressive color-minded juggernaut was stopped.  Donald Trump kept rising in the polls, and conservative candidates who called out the corruption and animus of racial/ethnic hatred got more visibility. Ordinary Americans formerly intimidated by the thought of being branded racist began to shed their timidity and speak out for justice, temperance, and respect. Enough black this, black that; back to basics, Jefferson, Hamilton et al. 

It is hard to remove incumbents in American politics, so Letisha and her crewe, although increasingly marginalized by both Republicans and especially Democrats who had wised up to their shenanigans and worried about scandal and exposure, kept up the drumbeat.  They were all from secure districts, so the only hope was for them to shut up, and restive members on both sides of the aisle did due diligence; and before long the Progressive Women Of Color shut their charities, kept their own counsel, and like everyone else in Congress had to be content with bringing home the bacon.

Whose Democracy Matters? America The Banana Republic

The lawns of Baldwin Park, a leafy neighborhood of Washington, are festooned with signs - Hate Has No Home Here, Black Lives Matter, and especially Democracy Matters.  

To whom?" I asked and got a nonplussed, quizzical look, for the sign was a coded anti-Trump message which the neighbor who planted it assumed was common knowledge - Trump the insurrectionist, the arrogant, deep-state manipulator, the misogynist, etc. etc., the political anti-Christ, ad infinitum ad nauseam. 

The question implied division in the ranks, a break in the wall, so no wonder the reply was curt - "To everybody", the neighbor huffed and went back to his garden.. 

Baldwin Park is a lockstep neighborhood, tightly wound, impervious, and of universal liberal credentials.  The environment, women, gays, the border, Wall Street - all verses from the same hymns, hymns from the same hymnal.  Received wisdom, absolute commitment, defiance, and persistence are  universal, accepted truths.

 

Their democracy was not everyone's yet.  "Takes time", said another neighbor referring to those who had not subscribed to the agenda and who had obstructed justice, social reform and progress.  They were deliberately ignored and dismissed as political supernumeraries - crackers and rednecks whose contribution to the commonweal was insignificant at best and dangerous at worst. 

Democracy not only doesn't matter to them, say progressives, but they have no clue what it's about - no sense of the reformed principles of liberalism, the new perspective of race-gender-ethnicity, the new revisionism, and the new dynamic of aggressive integration. 

Of course Hamilton would be appalled at the progressive take on democracy - that highly evolved amalgamated product of the Enlightenment, Augustine, Aquinas, and Aristotle of the new Republic. Even Jefferson, a man for the people and the inherent wisdom of the majority would be taken aback at the ruthlessness of the deformation and the dangerous arrogance of American progressives.

There was never a his-and-her democracy, a special needs democracy, a democracy of political purpose.  God-given rights were the way Jefferson had expressed his commitment to the new constitutional rules.  Nothing was up for grabs - there was no give in a democracy established on the basis of divinity and the supreme tests of human intelligence. 

So the automatic exclusion of large segments of American society would be anathema to America's forefathers; and the radical, deliberate divisionism seen as the worst kind of foul enterprise.  It is this political absolutism which gives rise to the fringe Left and Right - the racist Black Lives Matter white haters and the wild bunch of frat boy drunks who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. 

Conservative heirs of the Founding Fathers are tarred and feathered by progressives who, in their desire to reformulate governance dismiss them out of hand, spawning a cycle of resentment and hatred.  There is no need for the Constitution, they say, old parchment drafted by old men, ignorant of life's real lessons; no need for the organs of justice, designed to serve the privileged.  

The Year Zero proclaimed the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot at the beginning of his program to establish a Maoist regime, and in so doing killing of millions of 'apostates' and forcing millions more into re-education camps.  Progressives claim the same notions - not only an exclusive democracy, not even a  democracy for whom, but no democracy at all. 

Which is why the whoops and hollers over the supposed insurrection of January 6th, the storming of the Capitol, and the terrorization of the House is so ironic.  This, progressives say is the beginning of the end of democracy; but in reality it was nothing more than than a ragtag bunch of carnival misfits, a rolling freak show of crazies that had come out of every crack in the woodwork. Mardi Gras float-riders in fright wigs, Viking horns, crinoline,  stage prop boots, and linked-chain faux mail armor.  A legion of losers wound up, spun, and let loose with some cockamamie idea of 'democracy'

The real revolutions had happened in Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Salvador; were happening in Yemen and the Malian Sahara - bloody, nasty affairs.  Thousands of heads rolled during Robespierre's bloody Reign of Terror, and the Russian Revolution was no pretty sight.  History is nothing but a chronical of bloody uprisings, vengeance, and sadistic violence.  Ever since once Paleolithic tribe battered another with clubs and jawbones, men have slaughtered each other in the name of territorial right. 

So it is with some confoundment that the modern observer sees the events of January 6th cast in a revolutionary light. How could this ragtag group of good ol' boys, crackers, hopped up meth freaks, and dropouts be anything but white, credulous homeboys with nothing better to do?

In all this America resembles a banana republic where the concept of sane governance has never taken hold, and where political chaos is the perennial normal.  In those nations coup follows  coup, putsch after putsch, one venal, self-absorbed power-greedy autocrat after another.  

Bangladesh has elections, but the party that loses refuses to take their seats in Parliament and government is disabled.  Central America is an isthmus of misrule and oppression. Africa, from top to bottom, side to side, is a mess - a desperately poor, mismanaged, shithole of economic ruin and political asymmetry. 

Oh

Some observers say that America, for all its chaotic governance is what Churchill meant when he said that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the rests.  Chaos is the rule, not the exception.  Democracy is a reflection of human nature - aggressive, territorial, and self-interested.  Darwinian evolution cannot happen without competition, the victory of the strong over the weak, the endless, progressive changes which result in better adaptation of the species.  A government that mulls is not a government of reach and authority. 

America is exactly what Darwin would have imagined as an organic political unit.  Its culture and its government are perfectly matched - both have the same contentious, impatient, confrontational side.  Gunfights are the meme, not coffee klatches; brawls, bar fights, and donnybrooks not tea parties and reasoning together.  

 

America is unmatched for economic vitality, entrepreneurial genius, and international influence because of this easy confluence of culture and governance.  Everyone wants to come here, and only the politically irritable want to leave.  'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen' said Harry Truman, expressing a pride in the American blast furnace.  We are meant to blaze away at OK corral, have beefs and playground fights.  Bullies are to be faced down.  America is still a raw, inchoate country, still trying to fit the barroom ethos into English order.  It will never happen. 

Whose democracy? Everyone's.  Pretty? No.