Vandie
@VanDiemen_
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Americana. Cowboys. Outlaws. Aristocracy. Posts about history, geography, religion, architecture.
United States
Joined April 2022
Thread on what made the Comanche the most brutal and feared American Indian horse warriors, how they halted European expansion for generations, and how the Anglo-Texans eventually learned to defeat them. 🧵. (Part 1)
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In 1908 Teddy Roosevelt noticed that the US military was getting flabby and he issued an executive order that all officers needed to be able to march 50 miles in less than 20 hours 🧵
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If you loved your middle school vice principal then boy do I have a candidate for you.
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Despite being fully integrated as a state in the USA, Hawaii suffers from a set of intractable problems that I don't think will ever be solved due to its geography and isolation. And this manifests itself in actually very bad local governance and real pain for the population.
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Blood Meridian is based on a first hand account of scalp-hunters found in a book called My Confession by Samuel Chamberlain. Reading through it highlights for me how little of Blood Meridian was dramatized by McCarthy. Here are a few excerpts I thought were interesting:
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Part 2 of a thread on the Comanche, their reign as the horse lords of the Southern Plains, and how they were eventually defeated by the Anglo-Texans. 🧵. (Part 1 👇).
Thread on what made the Comanche the most brutal and feared American Indian horse warriors, how they halted European expansion for generations, and how the Anglo-Texans eventually learned to defeat them. 🧵. (Part 1)
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Also, the Texans originally fought on foot. There wasn't a strong culture of military horsemanship that had developed yet in America, as it wasn't needed for clearing eastern Indians. Something would need to change to defeat the Comanche. End of Part 1. Part 2 coming tomorrow.
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In order to understand the history of North America, it's good to review the three very different approaches each of the major colonial powers took with regard to the Indians: . 1. French - Trade.2. Spanish - Assimilation .3. English - Land Ownership. Let's go over each:
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If I wanted to live in Venezuela, I'd just move to Venezuela. We don't need street vendors hawking oranges when we have normal grocery stores in America.
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You can find exactly which refugee resettlement orgs are operating in your city with the link below. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for awarding grant money to NGOs that resettle refugees in cities around the country. (Wyoming is the only state with none.)
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Utah might have the most hostile American geography outside of Alaska. For most of its history, the geography of North America pushed people north and south of Utah as they headed east and west, leaving it relatively isolated, an effect which persists to this day. 🧵
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@EndWokeness Some American environmentalists watched the Euros successfully do this on their highways with non-existent police response, then act surprised when they get a face full of asphalt from rural American cops.
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It's 2023, my white cousins go to high school in Hawaii. They're regularly called colonizers by some of the native kids there. In 1959, 93% of Hawaiians voted in favor in statehood. It was the greatest voter turnout in state history.
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The order was forgotten until JFK rediscovered it in 1962-1963 and made it a part of his presidential physical fitness initiative. It set off a craze of civilians who were walking through all hours of the night to try to complete JFK's 50 Miles in 20 hours challenge.
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I found an atlas from 1933 in a thrift store and it had some of the most beautiful maps I've even seen. I scanned the best ones in hi-res, here's a thread: . 1. Central America, showing the Panama Canal Zone as US Territory.
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Many dream of building their own custom home someday, but those who get the opportunity often launch into the endeavor with very little training as to what makes a home beautiful and timeless. I've got three book recommendations that I think every future builder needs to read:
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Thread on how the Lakota Sioux created an empire on the northern Great Plains, attained a nearly mythological status in American history, inflicted a string of stunning victories on the US Army, and how they were eventually defeated. 🧵. (Part I)
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Though a work of fiction, Blood Meridian is meticulously rooted in real geography and accurate history. I've put together a list of a few of the real life places that you can visit today if you'd like to follow in the footsteps of the Glanton Gang: 🧵
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Guys like Mitt Romney will say things like "There only three things to do about the national debt: raise taxes, cut spending, or borrow more" not realizing that there is a totally viable fourth option on the table - seizing foreign assets.
Trump campaigning on conquering North America would change the conversation. “Dems want to control prices & raise taxes? Cute. We’re busy mapping luxury resorts on Baja California because Mexico doesn’t deserve it. We’re just gonna take it. America is going back to Lindy Mode.”
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One officer wrote "It eliminated a number of the wholly unfit; it taught officers to walk; it forced them to learn the care of their feet and that of their men; and it improved their general health and was rapidly forming a taste for physical exercise.”
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"Many of the older officers were so unfit physically that their condition would have excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they belonged to the military arm of the Government."
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If North America had a geographical "Womb of Nations", like Mongolia or Scandinavia in the Old World, it would be Wyoming. It was a cold, bitter, liminal place that forged peoples into the hardest forms of homo sapiens. The Comanche are a Shoshone speaking tribe from Wyoming.
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The order was received and thousands of officers trained to complete the new requirement. The Marines laughed at the idea that 50 miles was considered too strenuous a hurdle by some. TR himself joked that a middle aged woman should be able to do it.
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RFK completed the challenge in loafers in the snow as he walked from the White House to Camp David. US military officers all took it up again and made sure their men could finish. Boy Scout groups as young as 13-15 were completing it together.
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One account speaks of a group of Comanche and Kiowa allies who went so deep into Central America that they brought back tales from the jungles of brightly colored birds and of little people in the trees (monkeys). Some speculate they may have reached as far as Guatemala.
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Aristo is absolutely correct in noticing that none of this is happening organically. Here's a very high-level summary of the mechanics of how money flows through the Immigration Industrial Complex, and perhaps a partial answer to the very relevant question - who benefits? 🧵.
Has anyone else noticed just massively illogical demographic change in their own neighborhoods and adjacent areas in just the last 2 years in particular?. I'm trying to imagine the mechanics of how that even works, and the only way this feels possible is if blackrock et al going.
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If you'd like to learn more, most of the reading for these threads came from T. R. Fehrenbach's book Comanches. Let me know what topics you'd be interested in hearing about in the future.
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The Comanche multiplied and became the undisputed rulers of the American steppe, exactly like the Mongols or Huns or Yamnaya did with their koryos warrior brotherhoods. If given more time, they would have conquered the continent from Alberta to Oaxaca.
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The tribes around them were fair game, and they often fought with the Utes in the mountains of Colorado and the Cheyenne and Crow in the Northern Plains, but their favorite target was Mexicans. They would rampage for thousands of miles through Mexico, nearly reaching Mexico City.
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Somehow the Comanche learned of horses on the southern plains which had come from the Spanish in New Mexico. The Pueblo Indians adjacent to the Spanish were mostly using the horses for agricultural purposes. The Comanche were the first tribe to adopt and master the horse for war.
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New construction colonial in my neighborhood. Narrow and deep lot forced the garage to the back, which is critical for getting a timeless facade. Stone cladding looks amazing. Very well done.
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Every death in the band was a tragedy. Every birth a celebration. Destroying one enemy warrior under these tenuous conditions would also destroy the entire family group that depended on him for food, and hence the competition. Killing became a necessary part of survival.
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The Kentucky long rifle that was so famously employed in the vast forests of the east was deadly accurate, perfect for firing from cover, but slow to reload. A Comanche could launch 20 arrows in the time it took an American to shoot once with a long rifle.
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So the Comanche migrated southwards to be closer to horseflesh, which they stole and bred and learned to ride on the Great Plains. Pretty soon all the southern plains south of the Arkansas River and east of New Mexico became known as Comanchería by the Spanish.
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The plains tribes universally had a very different approach to war than the Europeans. Because they were extremely casualty averse, the concepts of standing and fighting pitched battles, glorious last stands, pressing an enemy who was retreating, were very foreign to them.
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The Comanche became expert horsemen and hunters of buffalo. Rather than relying on the old methods of stampeding the herds into traps on foot, the Comanche would gallop alongside the bison and shoot arrows straight into the sides, which would go clean through.
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The Spanish in New Spain sent out numerous expeditions into Comanchería to try to crush the Indians. One army that was sent had more soldiers and Indian allies than Cortez had when we conquered the Aztecs, and it was defeated out on the high plains.
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Settled agriculturalists farmed in the valleys of the tributaries of the Missouri. The Shoshone were the outcasts who couldn't compete with these tribes because of calorie differences. They scratched life out of high deserts and mountains, living constantly on a knife's edge.
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So the Comanche, even more so than other Indian tribes, developed an extreme love of violence, torture, and war. Scalping sacred hair was destroying the soul. Captives were taken back to camp so that the women could torture and wring every ounce of pain out of the body.
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The Indian method of warfare was stealth, ambush, surprise, and massacre. They sought out soft spots, such as unprotected villages or lonely travellers, and massacre anyone they could find. If any resistance was encountered, they would usually retreat.
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And when ultra-violent bands of young men have prosperity and crave prestige, they look around and redirect their energy outwards to anyone they could find that would fight them. The Comanche soon became known for being the longest travelling raiders in North America.
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In a successful tribe or society there comes a time when prosperity and security is totally achieved. The Comanche reached it. Individuals warriors owned hundreds of horses. Chiefs - thousands. They had all the food they needed from the buffalo. But they still craved prestige.
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Tech billionaires are turning the islands into their private fiefdoms. Zuck owns a lot of Kauai. Benioff is buying up the Big Island. Larry Ellison owns Lanai. You might think what I meant to say was that Larry owns a lot of land on Lanai. No, he owns literally 98% of Lanai.
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The Comanche brought this style to their cavalry. Rather than using heavy horses in a disciplined mass to charge infantry, they instinctively swirled and churned like a murmuration of sparrows on the battlefield, with no obvious rhyme or reason to their enemy.
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There was no Comanche taboo against killing any human outside the tribe, in fact it was glorified. Infants were bashed on rocks. Women were gang-raped. Corpses were mutilated. Captives skinned alive and burned in sensitive places. Sometimes kids were kept in order to be adopted.
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But the Comanche, like all Indians, preferred massacre to battle. A surprise early morning raid into an enemy camp was the best case scenario, with warriors galloping through the lodges lanceing and shooting anything that moved, setting fires, and stealing whatever they could.
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The Spanish Empire reached its zenith against the Comanche in Texas, and they help turn it back. The Spanish in the long run never had the birthrates, money, organization, or competence to compete with the Comanche. Nor did the Mexican government after independence.
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They would stay out of range, pick off outliers, attempt penetrations and sneak attacks, feint flight then fire Parthian style at pursuers. It was all classic steppe horse tactics.
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What the Comanche saw in war as a normal and vital part of life, the Anglo-Texan called "murder raids" and it enraged them. And initially they were completely at a loss about what to do about it. The Americans that moved into Texas were used to fighting Indians in the woods.
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In order to understand the history of the American West, you need to understand South Pass. The entire geography of the continental United States funnels into this choke point in Wyoming about 30 miles across. (1/8):
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Indian battles amongst warriors were more like quiet, long-running skirmishes. Sneaking through undergrowth. Outflanking maneuvers. Arrows darting out from behind trees. Single combat. Sometimes melees would form around fallen bodies to prevent mutilation.
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Powell's 1869 expedition down the Colorado isn't remembered in the American Pantheon of Exploration because of the distance travelled, or hardships survived, or Indians fought. It's remembered because of the sheer amount of balls it took to pull it off. I'll try to explain: 🧵
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Ukrainian language and culture was intentionally fabricated by academics in the early 1800s for explicitly anti-Russian political reasons. They took the vernacular accent of the peasants in the area and called it "Ukrainian" in order to produce a Ukrainian national consciousness.
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How obtuse and out-of-touch do you have to be as the biggest real estate investing podcast in the world and this week invite a landlord who specializes in Section 8 rentals in small-town Ohio, and publicly brag about how the government pays $200 over market rate for them.
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The entire local voting base has been house-poor for generations. Median house price to annual income ratio is approaching 10. Anything above 5 is generally considered "severely unaffordable". All sorts of distortions to normal, healthy society happen under these conditions.
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While Trump dismantles DEI at the federal level, it's important to remember that many states, including red states, still have their own DEI offices in place and these need to be shut down as well. For example, Utah's is branded the "Division of Multicultural Affairs". 🧵:
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One famous fight occurred in the Indian Territory with a chief called Iron Jacket, named because he wore an old Spanish cuirass into battle. When the Texan leader was chastised for crossing the Red River, he said "My job was to kill Indians, not learn geography."
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But they had delayed the westward expansion of the Americans for 40 years, the best record of any Indian tribe, when most were lucky to delay encroachment for 10. They built a reputation as the fiercest of the Indian tribes, and were widely respected by those that fought them.
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The Rangers deservedly achieved a mythological status in American history. They showed a remarkable frontier adaptability, of necessity adopting many of the same characteristics as their Indian enemies. Speed, stealth, and a capacity for the cold-blooded execution of Indians.
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Two big things happened in the 1830s. 1. Texas Rangers.2. The introduction of the Colt 5-shot revolver. Although ranging companies had been informally used in the 1820s, the Texas Rangers were formally created by the Texas legislature to be highly mobile Indian fighters.
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The Arizona Strip (defined as the part of Arizona that is north of the Colorado) feels out of place, orphaned from Arizona by the Grand Canyon, covered in shocking green pine forests, historically and culturally more oriented towards Utah. It's a unique corner of the US:
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The push to make a Hawaii a state was mostly led by Democrats, who accused Republicans of slow-walking the process because of the significant non-white populations in Hawaii.
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Taking the fight deep into the home country and not distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants, really the only effective anti-guerilla strategy, is what broke the back of the Comanche. By the 1860s most of the Comanche had been reduced by war and disease.
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The reason for these home prices is that the post-war real estate boom on Oahu showed Hawaiians the ugly face of urban sprawl as some of the most beautiful places on the planet were eaten up by new development. The backlash in the 70s and 80s shut the door on large new projects.
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But the Rangers practiced reloading from horseback, carried extra loaded chambers with them, or learned to carry two revolvers. The Rangers advised Samuel Colt on design improvements, and by the 1850s the much improved 6-shot Navy revolvers were in standard use.
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The Comanches had lived unmolested deep in the high plains for generations, so their perpetual weakness was lax camp security. The Texans would surprise the camps Indian-style at night, and rarely spared anyone when on campaign, killing both sexes of all ages.
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When large bands of warriors were encountered, no matter how outnumbered the Rangers were they were the aggressors. They would ride straight into the mass of Indian warriors, ride alongside them stirrup to stirrup, and blow them out of their saddles with their revolvers.
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Armed with the right weapons and horses, the Texan companies took the fight deep into Comanchería, ranging far and wide looking for Indiansign. They learned to search the skies for vultures circling buffalo kills. If they crossed a trail, they immediately took up brisk pursuit.
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The Paterson Colt 5-shot Revolver quintupled the firepower of the Rangers and gave them the offensive capability they needed. A rider could now gallop right up to the enemy and shoot him point blank, with the confidence of extra shots ready to go if needed.
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Families were murdered, horses stolen, homes burned, women/children kidnapped. There isn't a recorded instance of a white woman who was kidnapped by Comanches who wasn't gang-raped. Men would be tortured, sometimes staked to the ground facing the sun with their eyelids cut off.
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The Comanche never understood why the whites seemed to take this all so personally. War and brutalization was part of life, and they expected to receive the same. But it caused fury and consternation among the Texans who were at a loss as to how to mount an effective response.
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The rangers would move lightly and quietly, no bugles or shouting, with wide screens of Indian allies as scouts. Once a camp of lodges was located, an attack was planned. Routes of escape were cut off, and the rangers would sneak in at night for the massacre.
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American horses were too delicate for hard riding on the plains so the Texans began selectively breeding horses for durability using the Spanish breeds that were on the Plains mixed with their finest horses out of the Kentucky horse country.
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The southern edge of Comanchería was the Balcones Escarpment, or what Texans today generally call the Hill Country, which ran in an arc from roughly Dallas to Austin to San Antonio, and is the point at which the Great Plains fall down into the more fertile Coastal Plains.
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Hawaii gets about 50% of its GDP directly from tourism and 25% from US military spending. If it wasn't for these two massive inflows of money from the mainland, Hawaii would be a third-world country. The previously dominant ag sector is down to about 5% of GDP.
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A multi-day whitewater rafting trip down the Grand Canyon is a highly sought after experience, with only 27,000 people allowed down the canyon each season, a number that has stayed mostly constant for over 50 years. A few pictures and thoughts from my week on the Colorado:
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@DeidreHenderson Ladies and gentlemen - a Republican Lt. Governor openly celebrating the rise of bolshevism.
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It's not uncommon to find out people have been to all 50 states. I've done it myself. But there is a community online whose members have the goal of visiting all 3,144 counties in the United States called the Extra Miler Club. Only 71 people have ever completed it.
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Texans also eventually learned to ride with multiple mounts and were better able to catch up with the Comanche. If the Indians could be engaged then the preferred tactic was to dismount, take cover and fire. All Indian fighters knew about the Indian reluctance to charge.
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Part II - Lakota vs United States. Having become the undisputed masters of the Northern Plains, the Lakota were confident in their position going into the 1850s. We'll go over the US-Sioux Wars up to 1876 in this thread. (Part I can be found here 👇).
Thread on how the Lakota Sioux created an empire on the northern Great Plains, attained a nearly mythological status in American history, inflicted a string of stunning victories on the US Army, and how they were eventually defeated. 🧵. (Part I)
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I heard about this from @surfbortcowboy so give him a follow. I'm going to keep training and try to do this myself. I need to know what my body is capable of and keep it peak condition.
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Hawaiians pack their together into the few existing homes. Garages are turned into bedrooms. Unpermitted construction is common. The only hope for many is to inherit the family home from grandma. Many leave for the mainland. Homelessness is very common.
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The torture they devised was cruel in the extreme. They cut off the soles of the feet of one man, made him run for miles tied to a horse, then killed him. White girls would have their noses cut off to the bone, scarred with flames, then made to be slaves in camp.
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But in Texas the homesteads could be up to 50 miles apart, with some isolated ones up to 100 miles from the nearest neighbor. No amount of militia organization or fort building could stop the Comanche from penetrating deep into the Coastal Plains, which they often did.
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The first thing that needed to be fixed was the horse situation. At the time it was standard for mounted American troops to travel 30 miles/day, with each man riding one horse. Reports that the Comanche could ride 100 miles/day were dismissed as lies by the authorities.
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It's nearly impossible to get anything built in Hawaii. Permits for a new single family home on the Big Island, the most builder friendly island, will take a year. In some places you're not allowed to demolish old homes to make place for new ones. Endless rounds of.
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As settlers moved into this area in the 1830s, it would become the frontline in the Comanche wars. As we discussed in Part 1, the Comanche for cultural reasons couldn't help but raid the isolated farmsteads that began popping up.
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In the US eastern forests, settlers tended to be more clustered together. It was common in Kentucky for a few families to occupy the same holler. So militiamen on foot could fairly quickly be gathered. Abundant lumber also made building strong points easy and cost effective.
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The Paterson revolver needed to be completely disassembled to reload, with each chamber filled with powder by hand. So the first engagements with revolvers usually involved a cavalry charge with each rider firing 5 shots, before retreating to dismount and reload.
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HOW TO ROB A TRAIN IN THE OLD WEST. If you're a bored cowboy earning a couple of dollars a day looking for a way to score $50,000 quick, but don't quite understand the mechanics of how to pull it off, then bookmark this thread: 🧵
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The intent of all this is to conserve the natural beauty of Hawaii, to preserve its open space, to keep it unspoiled for future generations. To be clear, I think this correct. We should want to preserve open space and ag land. But the costs have been absolutely brutal.
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@LindseyGrahamSC Whether Russia or Ukraine controls the Donbass isn't in our interest. Stop sending our money to Ukraine.
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This day-to-day hardship opens the door to corruption. Like actual Sopranos style bribe-taking and racketeering. I have family on Oahu and many professional connections in Hawaii. Talk to anyone who has been there awhile and they'll confirm it, it's a real problem.
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