Was Texas built on ethnic cleansing?

Austin American-Statesman ^ | November 20, 2005 | Mike Cox

[Fishrrman]

Jeff Head writes:
Let the Oklahoma Professor experience one serious Commanche raid, and the horrible mutilations and desecrations associated with it...and if he were to survive, and if kept his sanity afterwards...then perhaps he would be in a position to talk about it. Adn I bet he would sing a different tune if it was his wife and daughter's private parts hung our along a fence post, or their unborn babies cut out of the wound and bashed against rocks.
Fact is, it was a violent clash of cultures...both incompatable with the other...and it was a fight to the death. In such a scenario, all of the niceties that we typically associated with our refined way of thinking go out the window in the effort to survive. In this case, survival meant we had to win...and win hard.

...And now, in the twenty-first century, we of The West are engaged in another struggle to the death with a culture that is violently opposed to our own.

And the ultimate survival of The West can be won _only_ by the terms Jeff has stated above. A struggle in which we _must_ [at least temporarily] surrender our "refined ways of thinking" in order to win, and win hard.

If we are unwilling to do so, I fear it is the _other side_ that will triumph over us.

How long until The West understands?

- John

[claudiustg]

For a perspective on Texas I would suggest James Mitchner's "Texas".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0292780710/104-8212303-4474303?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance

[Jeff Head]

See MY POST 32.

Comments? Similarities to todays circumstances?

[Great Caesars Ghost]

Well, for the most part that's true, isn't it? There are a couple of tiny reservations, but for the most part there are no indians in Texas. The wars were much more notorious further North on the plains though weren't they? The Comanche were just very difficult to deal with as enemies, and when an enemy commits an atrocity, one naturally tends to dish out what one has received. The way of Our People was to move onto their turf, so what we thought was a peaceful migration was like setting up a crack distribution operation on a block owned by the Crips in South Central. I mean, it's that simple and we don't have to look at it through the gauzy lens of history to understand the tensions.

Or look at the Viet Cong, or the "insurgents" in Iraq. There was nothing particularly unique about it except that I was surprised to read that the body count was so low given as much as has been made out of it, especially compared to the War of Northern Aggression.

[ßuddaßudd]

Fact is, it was a violent clash of cultures...both incompatable with the other...and it was a fight to the death. In such a scenario, all of the niceties that we typically associated with our refined way of thinking go out the window in the effort to survive. In this case, survival meant we had to win...and win hard.

Good words my friend. As a freeper said in another post today, "If they want to rock, it's time to roll."

[Calusa]

About 2000 years ago the Utes originally from around Salt Lake City crossed this part of the desert on their way south to become the Aztec peoples of Mexico. I think by our own admission we (the U.S.) no longer control that border. We are forced by our own lawyers and town councils to render homage and tribute to the invaders. They might not be able to'Come and Take it', but we as a nation have lost our will to do anything about it. See Jimmy Carter and the Panama Canal. BTW I wonder what todays press would'a said about the annexation of Texas.

[rustbucket]

I wonder what todays press would'a said about the annexation of Texas.

Well, here is what the Massachusetts legislature thought the annexation of Texas at the time (from The Daily Picayune newspaper of New Orleans, December 2, 1860):

The New York Express has the following:

The Republicans and others in the North who denounce Southern secession, forget that the records of the Massachusetts legislation have them in resolutions to the following effect:

"Resolved, That the annexation of Texas is, ipse facto, a dissolution of the Union."

"Resolved, That Texas being annexed, Massachusetts is out of the Union"

These resolutions, we are told, stand unrepealed. With the personal liberty bill, these resolutions embody nullification in a two-fold form. Supposing now that Massachusetts repeals her "out of the Union act," and with it her personal liberty bill, and thus restores herself to the Union under the constitution.

[Calusa]

Good Call, Rusty.

[add925]

Another CNN "bug"

[add925]

CNN's ethnic cleansing suggestion?

[Racehorse]

 FWIW:  Thanks to interlibrary loan, I'm presently reading Anderson's book.

Any interest in further discussing his . . . subject?  I imagine it will be a rather long discussion.

Later, I intend to add a review to the Texian Web Consortium thread at Was Texas Built on Ethnic Cleansing?

If you have an interest in pre-Civil War Texas, the two month old TWC's forum would surely welcome posters.

[wildbill]

The Comanches were an offshoot of the Shoshone--and their oral history says they were either kicked out of the Shoshone lands or chose to leave.

They drifted out of the Rockies onto the edges of the Great Plains and were hardly a power until they were introduced to the horse sometime around 1703 according to Spanish histories where they are mentioned for the first time.

After they became mounted, they took control of the Plains from Kansas to South Texas and raided freely deep into Mexico in the 1800s. In the process, they kicked the other tribes such as the Lipan Apaches off their ancestral homelands. I guess that would qualify as ethnic cleansing according to the good professor.

[Bender2]

Re: "...Anderson, an Oklahoma history professor..."

Yes, those Okies were ever so kind to their Native Americans... Until they found oil on the Reservations! Hook 'em Horns!

BTW... I'd like to see how 'Anderson' would have reacted to a Comanche war party back in the 1870s... Always consider history within its own time frame!