Posted on 03/10/2007 9:52:57 PM PST by Flavius
AN ELITE group of native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan’s borders.
The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units.
In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked drug and people smugglers along the US border with Mexico.
But the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan and the American military’s failure to hunt down Osama Bin Laden — still at large on his 50th birthday yesterday — has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them.
Robert M Gates, the US defence secretary, said last month: “If I were Osama Bin Laden, I’d keep looking over my shoulder.”
The Pentagon has been alarmed at the ease with which Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters have been slipping in and out of Afghanistan. Defence officials are convinced their movements can be curtailed by the Shadow Wolves.
The unit has earned international respect for its tracking skills in the harsh Arizona desert.
It was founded in the early 1970s to curb the flow of marijuana into the US from Mexico and has since tracked people-smugglers across hundreds of square miles of the Tohono O’odham tribal reservation, southwest of Tucson.
Harold Thompson, a Navajo Indian, and Gary Ortega, from the Tohono reservation, are experts at “cutting sign”, the traditional Indian method of finding and following minute clues from a barren landscape. They can detect twigs snapped by passing humans or hair snagged on a branch and tell how long a sliver of food may have lain in the dirt.
Some military experts want the Shadow Wolves to help to track down Bin Laden. Despite a $25m bounty on his head and the use of billions of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment — including pilotless drones, electronic sensors, infrared cameras and satellite surveillance — US forces have so far failed to fulfil President Bush’s promise to capture Bin Laden “dead or alive”.
But a senior US official insisted last week that Bin Laden’s trail had “not gone stone cold”.
Vice-Admiral Mike McConnell, the new US director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee that Bin Laden and his lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were setting up new training camps in northwestern Pakistan.
That's it. Thanks.
It is absurd to think that all Indians needed to be dealt with fairly. We took the world as we found it and made it better. I look at it much the same way I look at the fire bombing of Dresden or Tokyo or the use of the atomic bomb when a demonstration in Tokyo Bay may have sufficed. Taken alone, these actions are morally reprehensible but in context with the depravity and barbarity they stopped, they are understandable and even laudable. At the time they were necessary. We take an action and reflect on it for a century or more. To the Indians depravity and barbarity was the epitome of their warrior society.
Sub-humans? Of course not. But the actions that they engaged in were the cruelest and most heinous assaults on anything decent that I can imagine. Assigning collective guilt to individual actions is a dangerous business but as a society they had accustomed to the barbarity. No government could ignore or whitewash the jaw-dropping torture and mayhem that they produced. Sand Creek and Washita were travesties in that we committed them but even Black Kettle admitted that murderers and rapists were in his camp and that he could not control them. For a settler who had seen his wife and 9 and 12 year-old daughters gang raped (passed on the plains) and then murdered by having their heads bashed in with rocks, I doubt that Sand Creek had any great moral considerations.
The Indians always had sympathetic people and groups speaking for them in Washington (the Indian Lobby). These groups grew stronger as the frontier moved west and the threats and dangers grew more distant. There was outrage at each individual atrocity but the government, in general, attempted to treat the Indians fairly. Circumstances and conditions changed constantly, as could be expected in a growing, developing country, and mistakes were made and policies were tried and abandoned. In this turmoil the one constant was the governments good faith in trying to balance a response to the Indian problem.
Almost from its inception the United States had the power to exterminate the Indians. In a hundred years of warfare the military killed relatively few. Rummel uses an implausible estimate of 3000 for the minimum and the 1890 census uses an equally implausible guess of 40,000. My guess is 15,000 to 25,000 and I am guessing on the high side. That’s 150 to 250 per year. Many, if not most, of those were on punitive missions for atrocities committed. The government may have treated the Indians as a step-child but it did not treat them as an implacable foe.
I meet a lot of European tourists and occasionally one will ask about or impolitely mention what we did with the Indians. If they stick their noses in the air and sniff at our inhumanity I take those same noses and rub it in their own putrid history, There are damn few European countries who can match our record of tolerance. Mistakes, yes. Confusion, yes. Uncertainty, yes. But if we had to do it over again we could do a lot worse that how we did it the first time.
No, thank you. I love reading about this, too.
They still exist. Annual powwow in May in Fredericksburg, TX. They also hold those who have served in the US military in high regard.
Isn't there one university professor in Oklahoma who is a Comanche? He's conservative and likes tweaking liberals. Almost lost his position because he was "off the reservation".
I am 1/4 Mescalero Apache. Those trackers are cracker jack...Some call them ghost hunters.....I wouldn't want them after me. Maybe we'll get lucky...
"In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked drug and people smugglers along the US border with Mexico."
Under terms of the Treaty of Hildalgo we are entitled to ask for compensation from the Mexican Government for every Mexican Citizen held by "hostile natives" and repatriated by the US. I doubt we are doing this, but we ought to term these guys hostiles, start sending bills to Mexico.
Trail of Tears.
The Karankawa
American natives have always served our country. They were magnificent warriors in many of our wars. Don't count them out.
BTTT
I have always been interested as well, in tracing my heritage...I just find it so interesting..I was lucky, in that my dads family, on both his maternal and paternal sides, were great talkers, and much of what I know concerning my heritage has come from them telling the stories that were handed down generation to generation...fortunately, along with that oral tradition, my ancestors were also packrats, and saved all sorts of written materials, such a birth certificates, army discharge papers, and like, which provide a lot of valuable information, that helps in tracing ones family...my dad kept a special folder with all these bits of paper, and they have been handed down to me,and will eventually go to my younger son...along with the bits of paper, we have all my ancestors medals and awards from WW1, and WW11 along with some of their army gear..so that is also interesting...
And then luckily for me, I was making some searches on the internet, when I just happened upon someone who was also making some familial searches, and come to find out, we were related, as we can both trace our families back to a common ancestor who died in 1791...it was quite an exciting moment, when we realized this...
Often tracing ones family can get complicated and difficult, and sometimes leads wind up as being dead ends..but for those of us who are interested in this type of thing, its really an exciting endeavor...
I dont know what to tell you, or what help I could offer you, in tracing your family line...all I can tell you is, try to get as much info as you can from your family members, see what sorts of memorabilia they may have of family significance, and then jump in...
I believe that the Mormons, do some geneological searches, but since I have never used them, I dont how they go about things...but maybe you could contact them for some pointers on how and where to begin your search...there are also several different websites on the net, that deal with this sort of thing...
Best of luck to you, in tracing your heritage...it can be fun, educational, and exciting..
I wans't really "counting them out" per se. The point is it is sort of fascinating how native americans felt genuine loyalty to our country, a need to put their lives on the line to defend a nation ultimately did encroach upon and overrun their ancestral homeland.
It's more fascinating in light of the problems America and western europe are facing from illegal immigrants, especially from but not limited to the islamic countries. How is it that native americans, constantly at odds with invading european colonials, manage to obtain some sense of loyalty to america as was built by the descendents of euorpean invaders, let the new generations of illegals feel none, demanding more welfare, more jobs, more handouts, more damn near everything, offering in return nothing except increased crime rates, nonstop hostility and symapthy to terrorists who are trying to wipe us out.
The conception of the Indian Removal Act was in response to the depredations of the Warrior Tribes. There were a lot of twists and turns and political maneuverings for decades as the idea gained and lost justifications. Monroe, an early supporter, turned and recanted as the ramifications became clear. President Jackson, a creation of the Indian Wars and dependent on the frontier vote for his political existence was willing to sacrifice the Cherokee to the mob. He convinced himself that it was an act of compassion.
The Republic functioned as it was designed. Henry Clay and Daniel Webster thundered against the violation of an entire people from the Senate floor. The enabling treaty, the Treaty of New Echota, was ratified by a single vote. That one single pandering vote decided the fate of a People. David Crockett, Congressman from Tennessee, lost his seat for his opposition. The Supreme Court declared the application unconstitutional. Jackson brushed it aside saying’ “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” General Wool, a military man if there ever was one, resigned his command rather than have a part in the sordid mess.
So a Democratic President, acting in violation of the Constitution, committed a breach of civilized behavior that forever sullied his reputation and, unfortunately, that of the country as well. Had the Cherokee been anything other, history may have been forgiving but the Cherokee had little of the individual or collective guilt to justify a forced removal. The Cherokee, a progressive and peaceful people, were wronged.
If the Cherokee had been Cheyenne sending dog soldiers to raid up and down the Eastern Seaboard there would have been no prohibition, constitutional or otherwise, to prevent their removal. It is wrong to paint the Cherokee the same as the Cheyenne and it is wrong to paint the Cheyenne the same as the Cherokee. Jackson gave modern revisionists room to lump actions that were proper and necessary together with actions that were completely unjustified,
If an enemy had a beard or even chest hair Commanches often skinned out the whole "pelt" for a trophy.
It was an abomination and a travesty, and the discovery of gold in north Georgia helped give it momentum.
I don't know the guys going over. I assume that they are very good.
Many moons ago I knew a lot of the Indian trackers. They were good but usually not great. There were a lot of White trackers that were as good, if not better. There were just more of the Indians because they lived on the reservations.
When people ascribe near mystical powers to Indian trackers I am reminded of a scene in Crocodile Dundee . In order to impress the “sheela” Crocodile surreptitiously looks at his watch and then makes a big show of telling the time from the position of the sun. When she confirms his “guess” to the minute with her watch, she is awestruck.
One friend who was a guide ran hunts that were almost entirely scripted. He would lead clients to “the best hunting grounds” which just happened to be not too far and not too near and always close to a road. He would make a big production of predicting the weather by movement of the wildlife (actually from the Weather Service) and finding “sign” in meaningless indications. He would lead them in circular “stalks” that always had them back at camp a bit early. He would make up ancient rituals and speak in solemn “Indian” hunting terms that matched what they clients wanted to hear. After several days (not too many - he hated to camp) the hunting gods would smile on them and game would be discovered just over the hill (secretly baited of course).
He would collect his $10,000 a pop and go home to drink beer and watch TV. The clients would rush home and tell their friends all about the great Indian guide. Even if they suspected what was really going on, the rule on hunting tales is to exaggerate on the he-man side and they would never, ever, admit that they had been conned and fed a package. In truth, most of them had the adventure of a lifetime, fake or not. My buddy never had a lack of applications for his services and could pick and choose when and how much he wanted to work.
Artifact storyline ping, sort of.
I'm trying not to see this as an act of desperation. We have tens of thousands of the best trained forces in the world, satellites, unmanned drones, and air superiority. Yet we are rounding up some Native Americans to go over there to track the terrorist leaders.
They should send whatever tribe of indians was on the TV show "F-Troop"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.