A lot of people could learn a lot from the Comanches. From T.L. Davis at tldavis.substack.com:
Very little is understood about Indian tribes, especially the Comanche, though one wonders why. The Comanche were first noted by Spanish officials as wandering, starving, bands hardly worth mentioning. They were a splinter of a fractured larger Shoshone tribe driven east and south by the beginning of the small ice-age. At this time, 1706, the French and British claimed the eastern American continent, with the Spaniards claiming the vast south from Florida to California. I say “claimed” because they controlled nothing but a few small forts and towns in the vast areas occupied by numerous tribes of many different dialects and languages, though presumably most originated in Asia and Mongolia.
In this way, the Comanche almost mirror the Americans, a splinter off a much larger group with whom they could not get along. Starting in the early Seventeenth Century with a foothold into the continent amid hostile surroundings, who, through trade and skill at warfare came to occupy a great deal of the American interior. Unless one has read The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen, they do not quite understand the immense territory the Comanche controlled, how or why they were so successful in pushing back against Spanish, French and British empires’ attempts to undermine their domination.
The same way the Americans were able to hold off all three major political and military powers of the day, the Comanche did so in the Southwest by trade agreements with other tribes, even those suddenly pushed among them by the Americans from the east. The Comanche, known for their fierce military capability, were much more interested in trade, expanding their territory and providing for their people. It was war and their masterful horsemanship that built their empire.
But, but, but, it was rainbow lollipops and chocolate fountains until Christopher Columbus came along and ruined it?
My purple haired gender studies professor told me. (s/)
Don’t forget the Iroquois Confederacy that inspired muh constatooshun. (H/T-Savage)
Got one of those quarters with Aztec deity on it said WTF is this, you can tell fourth world turd when the currency looks like it.
Breaking from Electric Wizard:
I, The Witchfinder
“No one headman could force his warriors to go to war and no theoretical leader of the whole tribe could force any headman to provide men and materiel for his ambitions.”
The first thing that occurred to me when President Trump commented on the failure of Neocon Liz to ever present herself for front line service, while advocating for everyone else to kneel before her own demands for war / conflict, was how accurately this describes the 180 that we have pulled from the traditions and norms once expected of leaders.
I think that if you look at designating the MVP’s – if you will – of the Revolutionary War, the award winners would have to be William Washington, Henry Lee (Lee’s Legion) with at least a close runner-up Bronze medal going to Daniel Morgan. Like the Comanche you refer to, these men are leading forces that they recruited voluntarily, often paid for out of their own assets in the case of Washington and Lee, (Lee eventually ends up in debtors prison, which he likely could have avoided if he had all the funds back that he used to equip and provision his ‘legion’) and most importantly – led themselves in combat – from the front.
Lee and Washington, in particular, were of a status which only would have required them to defer to the King, and to be left alone enjoying an elite position in their home state. They had no personal benefit in going to war, let alone leading front-line military units facing off against larger and better equipped opponents.
“In the winter of 1778, fewer than a dozen American soldiers, entrenched in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, repulsed a British force of over 100. The skirmish, known as Scott’s Farm, was tactically insignificant. But the daring do of the rebels and their leader provided a jolt of adrenaline to the army languishing at Valley Forge.”
“Their leader was Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee III, a young captain of Virginia dragoons who had defeated a Hessian regiment at the Battle of Edgar’s Lane and who later won a gold medal from Congress for his actions during the Battle of Paulus Hook.”
“[By the time of his death] The one-time hero was transformed into a frightening apparition. His final years spent wandering the West Indies, he died in destitution off the coast of Georgia in 1818.”
https://www.americanheritage.com/light-horse-harrys-tragic-fight-freedom-press
If you go back to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Lee was harangued by Continental General Greene for ‘abandoning’ the field during the final critical stage of the fight, when Greene had wanted to use him to achieve a decisive defeat of Cornwallis. What Gen. Greene totally failed to understand was that Lee had led his legion to the defense of the Virginia volunteer militia (Campbell) fighting on the left-wing, who had been pushed into the tree line by combined Highlander, Hessian and Tarelton’s Cavalry legion. This small force of approx 300-400 militia men, was tying up 30%, almost 1/3, of all British forces on that battlefield, including some of the most capable forces that the British had available to them..
So, in fact, it was not Gen. Greene’s regular forces or drilled continentals who had saved the day for him, it was men who had made the trek to the battlefield from Virginia without pay or financial gain, and who were assisted under a mass attack by Lee’s Legion, which Lee himself created and financed.
If not for Henry Lee, as well as Miltia Col. Campbell, all the subsequent history of that day would have been different. Instead of ruining the ability of the British forces to operate and forcing them toward surrender at Yorktown, that additional 30% of manpower would have been used to flank/overwhelm General Greene’s continentals, who likely would have fallen or been taken as captive along with the rest of his forces.
Henry Lee was the father of Robert E Lee, a man who owned no slaves personally, and who came to the aid of his state when it needed him, even thought his own father had been totally ruined despite all he had done at his own expense during the Revolutionary War.
Probably the best indication of character is whether you actually do what you counsel others to do, and if you are the one actually willing to personally pay the cost of what you champion. You don’t have to be a Rothbard-quoting Libertarian to oppose the concept of a military draft, because the best evidence that there is a public support or genuine need for armed conflict is that, like Lee’s across multiple generations, people follow them because they want to, not because they have to.