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American Renaissance - 1 - July 2010

War With the Comanche

Vol. 21 No. 7

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.— Thomas Jefferson

July 2010

American Renaissance

How a proud people wasnally defeated.

by Duncan Hengest

Fort Sill, north of Lawton, Okla-homa, is home to the Army’sField Artillery School as well as

many eld artillery brigades. Over thedecades, thousands of Americans havelearned how to crew cannon there, andI am one of them. A posting to Fort Sillallowed me to explore what remains of the Wild West when I was off duty. I’dalways been a fan of Westerns and of the real history of America’s pioneer-ing conquest of the continent, and theLawton area was and is the center of Comanche territory.

During the early days of the TexasRepublic, the Comanche were theworld’s best light cavalry. In fact, they

were such fantastic fighters that theSpanish never even tried to subduethem, and the Comanche halted theexpansion of settlements into the pan-handle and northern Texas for nearly50 years. Yet the Comanche today area pitiful group, the defeated remnants of a terrible racial conict.

Everywhere you go in Lawton, yousee obese Indians. In Oklahoma eachtribe has its own license plates, so youcan tell a person’s tribe by watching himget into his car. (I tried to get a licenseplate that said “Comanche” but the DMV

would not give me one.) Sometimes itseems as though all the Comanche areunhealthy; the white man’s diet does notseem suited to a people adapted to livingon game from the North American prai-rie. When the Comanche get sick theygo to the Public Health Service IndianHospital at the eastern end of Lawton. If you drive by you are likely to see ancientIndians—poor and disheveled—holdingout their thumbs for a ride. Their handstremble.

It seems that the Comanche areas badly adapted to the white man’seconomy as to his diet. I once watcheda heavy Comanche woman slowly push-ing pennies towards a white cashier.She carefully slid each coin across the

counter as though it was very difcultto part with.

The Comanche’s misery is the resultof their absolute defeat during a erceconict with whites in the 19th Century.The Comanche War, as that conicthas come to be known, was lengthy

and cruel. This terrible war that cursedboth the Indians and the Americans waslargely inherent in their circumstances;different races and cultures, especiallyaggressive ones, should not try to share

the same territory.

Always against us

The name Comanche is a Spanishcorruption of the Ute word Kohmahts,

meaning enemy, stranger, or those whoare always against us. Like many tribes,the Comanche called themselves simply“the people,” or Numunuh in their ownlanguage. They are an offshoot of theShoshone, who hail from the area of to-day’s southern Idaho. Sometime during

the 1500s, they left the mountain north-west and settled in southwest Oklahoma.There, they acquired horses from theSpanish, and began to dominate the highplains of western Oklahoma, the TexasPanhandle, and Eastern New Mexico.This vast territory was well wateredand its grasslands fed the Comanche’shorses, endless herds of buffalo, andother smaller game. With the horse, theComanche could travel rapidly on the

Continued on page 3

Different races, especiallyaggressive ones, should

not try to share the sameterritory.

A Comanche war party.




Letters from ReadersSir — The June article by Alex

Kurtagic on “Black Metal” musiccontained two very serious omissions.

Varg Vikernes, one of the originators of National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM)music did not receive a long prison sen-tence for “church arson.” He receiveda sentence of 21 years for murderinga business partner. He was also foundguilty of church arson, and not of justany church. Mr. Vikernes burned a 12th-century stave church, a national treasure,clear to the ground. He was also respon-sible for less severe arson damage toseveral other historic stave churches. Noone who cares about preserving historyor culture can look upon the destruction

of a major historical site with anythingbut revulsion. Mr. Vikernes was paroledin 2009, after fewer than 16 years. Hecould have gotten out even earlier if hehad not made an escape attempt.

The German Hendrik Möbus is an-other dastardly character. Mr. Kurtagicadmiringly says that Mr. Möbus waspersecuted and even imprisoned by theGerman authorities for loyalty to hisbeliefs. In fact, he was imprisoned formurder. When Mr. Möbus was a teen-ager, he and some accomplices strangleda 15-year-old classmate with an electric

cord. These thugs were paroled afterfewer than ve years behind bars.Mr. Möbus then immediately got

in trouble by publicly mocking hisvictim and giving a “Hitler salute” ina public place. He ed to the UnitedStates, where he briey irted with theextreme underground music scene herebefore being deported to Germany andagain imprisoned for parole violations.People involved in the “scene” tell methat while he was in the United States he

committed serious crimes in two differ-ent states. He was beaten in a vigilantereprisal after the rst incident, but thevictims never led criminal charges.

The liberal German judicial system

seems more interested in Mr. Möbusfor “speech crimes” than murder, butthat is no reason to pretend he is not avillain. I think both Mr. Vikernes andMr. Möbus should have been executedfor their crimes.

I also disagree with Mr. Kurtagic’sassessment of “black metal.” What hecalls “NSBM” does not have any sig-nicant following and is mostly “garagebands” with tiny press runs on home-based “labels.” The lyrics are all aboutshock value, not meaningful politics.The only band referred to as “NSBM”

that you might actually nd in a recordstore is the Polish band Graveland.While Graveland is explicitly “pro-white,” the front man for the band sayshe does not use the term “NSBM.” Hesays his goal is not politics, but to “ght

the Catholic church in Poland.” Themusic is more about crude shock valuethan anything else.

Kyle Rogers, South Carolina

Sir — As a long-time metal fan Ienjoyed reading your June article aboutnationalist music and political dissent. If you watch musicians on television withthe sound turned off, you could say that

metal music does what other genres onlypretend to do. Music is fantasy, and theelaborate staging of some heavy metalgroups is the most fantastic.

I have watched, however, as metalmusic went from being a major musicpreference, selling out sports arenasaround the country, to relative obscurityas it became more right wing, around thepeak of its popularity in the 1980s. Also,it may be difcult for a novice to enjoysome of the more extreme-soundingbands. Bands like Slayer began to usetoo much dissonance, the so-called“devils chord.” Their music is deliber-ately grating, perhaps in an attempt tobring to life the disharmony youngstersfeel during adolescence. In the famous“mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap,the director notes that musicians don’tseem to want to grow up. Metal seemedto have its last mainstream hurrah with

the sleaze band Guns and Roses, aband some say was a fusion of heavymetal pop and the harder bands of theperiod.

Name withheld

Sir — I want to complement ARon publishing Alex Kurtagic’s article.Even though I am a traditional Catholic(member of the Society of St. Pius X)and found the cover illustration some-what disturbing, I found the article mostinteresting and insightful. The Catholic

Church has been the number-one patronof the arts through the centuries. Andeven profane art—if well done—can bean interesting expression of our humancondition that seeks to know God.

Name withheld

Sir — I read with interest the articleabout the average IQ of Italians in yourMay issue. It said that Richard Lynn hasfound that northern Italians are as smartas any European, but southerners havelower IQs because of admixture with

North Africans. This appears to me tocontradict Prof. Lynn’s earlier ndingsin his 2002 book, IQ and the Wealth of Nations, which he coauthored with TatuVanhanen. At that time, he reported theIQ of Italians as 102, which tied themwith the Germans, Dutch, and Austriansfor the highest in Europe (Sweden andSwitzerland were 101, France was 98).Did Prof. Lynn just discover the NorthAfrican admixture?

Gregory F. Peischl, Austria




planes, and easily kill buffalo.In the mountain Northwest, the Co-

manche had been a poor, foot-boundpeople; with the horse they became lordsof the western plains. Their populationexploded. There was no census, butestimates of their numbers vary from10 to 30 thousand. As they grew morepowerful, they started raiding theirneighbors. They raided the Apache andPueblo in Arizona and New Mexico,and the Pawnee in Eastern Kansas.They traded with the Spaniards aroundSanta Fe but also raided settlementsin Mexico and Texas. They often tookcaptives in Mexico and ransomed them

back to traders in Santa Fe for nishedgoods. Neither the Spanish Empire northe Mexican Republic had the means tostop this well-organized piracy.

Despite constant raiding, some timearound 1790 the Comanche made alasting alliance with the Kiowa. Likethe Comanche, the Kiowa had comefrom the mountain Northwest, movedinto the southern plains, and acquiredthe horse. The Kiowa and Comanchespoke different languages, but lived ina very similar manner. The Kiowa werea much smaller tribe, and perhaps they

tted into a special niche: not worthraiding and too small to be a threat, butuseful allies. This alliance between twoextremely warlike people held year afteryear. The two tribes raided together soconsistently that Comanche raids wereoften Comanche-and-Kiowa raids.

The Comanche came to the attentionof Americans when Texas became freeof Mexico. Shortly after independence,in 1838, the new republic signed its rstpeace treaty with the Comanche—a

treaty that was probably doomed fromthe start. It was made with only oneComanche band, it did not define a

boundary between Texas and Comanchelands, and it was never ratied by theTexas Senate. Essentially it required thatthe Comanche stop attacking whites—a

not unreasonable demand—and someComanche may have intended to abideby it. However, the Republic of Texaswas a young, independent state withrelatively wealthy white newcomersliving in isolated settlements. They wereirresistible targets for raiders, and thetreaty was soon broken.

Comanche raids were striking ex-

amples of military precision and stealth.Raiding parties could number up to1,500, and could move undetected acrossthe grassland. Attacks on this scale hadproven brilliantly successful againsttraditional Comanche targets: largervillages of mostly unarmed Mexicansor other Indians. These villages had noway to ght off the Comanche or pursuethem as they retreated.

Raiders were most active duringthe full moon, when they could see atnight. The waxing of the moon becamea source of dread for Texas whites, whobegan to call the full moon a “Coman-che moon.” When they sacked Texasfarmhouses they usually killed the menand captured the youngsters and women.Comanche women often tortured andmutilated older girls and women tomake them less attractive. The womenalso took the lead in torturing men. They

might cut the skin off their feet, tie themto a horse, and make them walk behinduntil they collapsed and were draggedto death.

By 1840, just two years after thetreaty, relations between whites andComanche were murderous and get-ting worse by the day. In March, theTexas government sent Colonel HenryW. Karnes at the head of a group tomeet a delegation of Comanche chiefsat the San Antonio Council House.Karnes was charged with recoveringTexas captives and trying to improve

relations. The Texans estimated thatthe Comanche held some 200 captives,and promised that their return wouldbe taken as a gesture of goodwill.

The meeting went badly. The Co-manche arrived with only one of thepromised captives, a young girl whosenose had been burned off. She wasbadly bruised from beatings, and saidshe had been repeatedly gang-raped.Texan soldiers, who were alreadyangry over the raids and the brokentreaty, killed the chiefs outright. Otherwhites opened re on the Comanche

who were outside the courthouse.To the Comanche, the CouncilHouse slaughter was treachery of thelowest sort. What the Texans consideredsavagery—raiding, torture, and slaugh-ter of captives—were to them the normalpractices of war. From this mutual in-comprehension, and from the slaughterof the chiefs, the seeds of long-termhatred were planted. The Comanchenever forgave the Texans. Throughoutthe decades they were pillaging Texas,

Continued from page 1

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A brave takes a trophy.




Comanche could have raided Kansas—it was no farther away than many partsof Texas—but they saved their wrathfor Texas.

The Comanche did not wait long forrevenge. In early August they launcheda massive attack on the coastal towns of Victoria and Linnville. In Victoria, thelocal militia, often called “Minutemen,”managed to drive off the attackers.They red from inside buildings, andthe Comanche, unused to city ghting,retreated. At Linnville, the raiders killedsome 20 residents; the others survivedonly by boarding ships and moving just off shore, where they watched asthe Comanche burned the town to theground. Linnville never rebuilt, and thearea is now a residential part of CalhounCounty.

Linnville and Victoria are hundredsof miles from the center of Comanche

territory in Oklahoma, and the attacks

demonstrate the extraordinary reachand mobility the raiders enjoyed. Atthat time, the Comanche often huntedand camped in territory as far south asAustin. The barbed wire fence had yetto be invented, so there was little tostop them. Indeed, Tex-ans had settled only theeastern and coastal partsof the state, so the coastwas well within range of inland tribes.

The warfare that beganwith the council housekillings and the revengeraids on Linnville andVictoria lasted until thelate 1870s, and this nearly40-year war can be di-vided into three stages. Therst, which lasted until Texas joined theUnion in 1845, pitted the Comancheagainst locally-organized whites sup-ported by a Texas government that was

highly sympathetic to them. The second,from 1845 until 1861, was much like theCold War in that the federal governmentcontained the Comanche but did notdestroy their ability to make war. In thelast stage of the conict, after the CivilWar, a vindictive Reconstruction gov-ernment ignored bloody and repeatedComanche attacks on disarmed whitesand supported the Comanche through amyriad of welfare and reform policies.Only after the post-Civil War elite wasdirectly threatened did it take action,permanently ending the Comanchethreat in 1879.

Texans strike back

Immediately after the great raidson Linnville and Victoria, the Texanscalled out the militia and assembledRanger companies, and defeated the

retreating Comanche force at the Battleof Plum Creek on August 14, 1840. TheComanche were slowed by the burden of their loot from Linnville, and also facedan enemy that was better armed andorganized than their earlier Indian andMexican antagonists. Since the 1830s,Texas Rangers had carried six-shooterrevolvers as well as long ries. TheComanche were still mostly armed withbows and arrows as well as lances, andusually retreated on their fast horses inthe face of sustained gunre. When themounted Rangers could catch them, they

would ride next to the Indians and inictterrible losses with their six-shooters.Another important ingredient in sub-

sequent successes against the Comanchewas the leadership of the dynamic andaggressive Texas president, MirabeauBuonaparte Lamar. Lamar was a Geor-gian who had moved to Texas to escape

disappointments in his career and per-sonal life. He fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, where the Mexican Armywas defeated and Texas won indepen-

dence. The Texas constitution allowedfor a single presidential term in ofce,and Lamar was elected to succeed SamHouston. One of the new president’srst challenges was the Comanche. Ashe put it, “The erce and perdious sav-

ages are waging upon our exposed anddefenseless inhabitants, an un-provokedand cruel warfare, masacreing [sic] thewomen and children, and threatening thewhole line of our unprotected borderswith speedy desolation.”

After the victory at Plum Creek, La-mar began a policy of retaliatory raidson villages in the Comanche sanctuaryin the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma.Colonel John H. Moore, accompaniedby Lipan Indian scouts, led the initial

foray. The Rangers moved on an areathat is now Colorado City, Texas, andthe Lipans discovered a village withlittle security. Moore sent a detach-ment to cover a likely escape route, andordered the main body of his commandto attack. He caught the Comanche bysurprise and killed 50 in the village.

The ambush detach-ment killed another80 retreating Indians.The killing was some-what indiscriminateand included women

and children. Moore’stactics of attack andambush were dupli-cated by the Rangers,and later, by the UScavalry.

(Interestingly, thiswas the same basic plan

George Custer used at Little Big Hornin 1876. The difference was that theSioux village was massive. The Indiansalso had lever-action ries and pinned

Texas President Mirabeau Lamar.

Early six-shooter of the kind used by the Rangers.




down the ambush detachment whilesending a larger force to overwhelm the7th Cavalry’s main attack. Custer neverhad a chance.)

Lamar saw the conict as a race war,and made no secret of his desire to ridthe state of all Indian tribes. He probablywould have exterminated the Comancheif he could have, but took differentmeasures against less war-like tribes.His administration pointedly sent no aidwhen diseases swept through Indian ter-ritory. He began the process that movedthe Cherokee, Caddo, and Tonkowa

onto reservations in Oklahoma, but oncethey were settled peacefully, he neverharried them.

Against the Comanche, Lamar de-veloped both defensive and offensivestrategies. The Rangers’ ability todefeat large groups prevented the Co-

manche from forming large raidingparties, and the Minutemen in the Texassettlements—almost like local crimewatches—defended against smallerraids. The system was not perfect, butthe raids became smaller and less fre-quent. Rangers also continued to maulComanche villages. As T. R. Fehren-bach wrote in his denitive Comanche: A History of a People, there were manyretaliatory actions “no one bothered toreport.”

Part of the tragedy of the war is thatalthough the Comanche had raided for

generations, they had never faced anopponent like the Texans and did not un-derstand them. Spaniards and Mexicanswere disorganized prey, and could notmount a full-scale defense. Nor did theyhave a militia to call out. The Coman-che assumed that white men were like

themselves, loosely organized bandsfor whom an offence against one wasnot an insult to all. Texans saw thingsdifferently, and united against what theyconsidered a threat to the entire state.

Until they took on the Texans,the Comanche had always been safefrom reprisal raids, so for them, thewar was over when the raiding partycame home. The Texans were differ-ent. Months after a raid, they wouldsurprise an offending—or completelyinnocent—Comanche village and putit to the torch. Also, Comanche move-ments were limited by the seasons andbuffalo hunts, whereas the Texans couldcampaign any time of year. By the endof Lamar’s administration a generationof Comanche warriors was dead. T.R.Fehrenbach estimates that from 1838 to1840, a quarter of the braves had beenkilled, most of them in the actions fol-

lowing the Council House ght.What saved the Comanche and keptthe war alive were larger questions of geopolitics. The Texans were goingbroke. The country’s finances wereunsound, and the Comanche campaignwas just one of several conicts Lamarhad to finance. There were constantMexican incursions, and Lamar evensent troops into Mexico at great ex-pense. The United States was receptiveto annexation, so Texas joined theUnion in 1845. The expensive Rangercompanies were cut back and federal

troops took over their job. At rst, theArmy sent only infantry to forts alongthe frontier, and they could not stop theComanche from moving freely overthe prairies. Secretary of War JeffersonDavis formed a cavalry regiment to sendto Texas, which managed to preventsome raiding. Its efforts were helped bya cholera epidemic the “Forty-niners”brought when they crossed the plainsduring the Gold Rush. It is estimated thatthe Comanche population dropped from20,000 to 12,000 during this time.

Whites began to push the internal

Texas frontier forward. The east andsouth were settled by then, but thenorth and west—where Wichita Fallsand Amarillo are today—were still rawfrontier. With the Comanche more orless under control, white settlers beganto ll the empty parts of the state.

By 1860, the Comanche were onthe defensive—reduced by plague andharried by the US Cavalry. Their naldefeat would have been just a matterof time, but the Civil War changed the




Stand Watie.

balance of power. The federal troopsleft, and Confederate forces went East.The pressure lifted, and midway throughthe war the Comanche started raidingagain. They went back to their old waysof rape, plunder, and torture, but with anew twist. They soon found they couldsteal Texas cattle and trade them withComancheros—Hispanic traders in theRio Grande Valley—for lever-actionries. The Texans lost the advantage inrepower they had always enjoyed. TheComanche had always been able to geta few modern weapons, but massive in-dustrial production and increasing trademade them much easier to get.

The Texas Reconstruction govern-ment therefore inherited a new Coman-che war that was blowing with a terrible

fury, but did not take it seriously. Thecarpetbag elite was less interested inghting Indians than in enriching itself at local expense and supporting thenewly freed blacks. Things only gotworse as the 1860s wore on, and T.R.Fehrenbach writes that by 1870, “long-settled regions were regressing towarddepopulation. Only hundreds of set-tlers were being killed, but meanwhile

thousands were deserting the frontier.The panic was very real.” The fron-tier retreated—an early form of whiteight—as farmers left their propertiesfor safer areas. Those who stayed behindturned their haciendas into fortresses.The effect was to hold back growth; thepanhandle could not be settled until the1880s. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ances-tors were among those the Comancheharried.

Even as the Comanche were murder-

ing white homesteaders, the governmentattempted a sanctuary, welfare buy-off,faith-based assimilation program thatis reminiscent of modern times. Dur-ing the nal Comanche War from 1865to 1879, Texas whites were disarmedby the Reconstruction government,and prevented by law from retaliatoryraiding into Comanche territory. Theycould do little more than lobby a hostileoccupation government for aid—notalways to much effect. Pro-Indian liber-als in government as well as East Coastsentimentalists even prevented severalmurderous Indian chiefs from beinghanged. Ironically, the attack thosechiefs led was the very incident thatcaused the Army and federal govern-ment nally to act decisively.

More humane policy

One of the causes of federal inac-tion was a genuine desire to handleIndian troubles in a humane way. Eastof the Mississippi, Indian wars had beenbloody affairs that ended with the Indi-ans absolutely destroyed or conned.If anything, Northerners were slightlymore violent than Southerners. Yankeestended to wipe out Indians and removeany survivors to small, out of-the-wayreservations. In upstate New York, theContinental Army destroyed more than40 Iroquois villages and left survivorsto starve or seek aid from the British.

In 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers,American troops defeated an Indianforce and then removed all remainingIndians from Ohio. After victories inthe Midwest, whites paid the surviv-ing Indians paltry sums for their landand sent them West with essentially nosupport. Abraham Lincoln’s sole experi-ence as a soldier was a brief period of garrison duty with the Illinois Militia inthe otherwise bloody Blackhawk War,in which the Sac and Fox Indians weredestroyed and forced out of Illinois andWisconsin.

In the South, the Cherokee were thesource of the longest-running conict,and held lands in Georgia long afterthe northeastern states had destroyedtheir Indians. As tensions with whitesmounted, relocation became the fa-vored solution rather than war and ad hoc expulsion, and was carried outmainly though an admittedly one-sidedlegal process. Cherokee removal was arelatively peaceful and fair solution totwo incompatible peoples living close

to each other with a long history of violence. Stand Watie, a Cherokee chief who later became a Confederate general,supported the move from Georgia toOklahoma, and brought his band Westwell before the now-notorious “Trailof Tears.”

In that context it is understandablethat after the Civil War, many pressuregroups in the East, no longer threatenedby Indians, pushed for more peacefulmeasures. Also backing the changeswas the Ofce of Indian Affairs, whichwanted more control over Indians at theexpense of the Army. President Granttherefore tried to treat Indians as wardsof government rather than independentnations, and to assimilate and civilizethem rather than destroy them.

In the past, Indian wars were oftensparked when a dishonest Indian Agentstole government aid to the Indians

for his own prot, so in 1869, Grantcharged religious groups with carryingout his new policy of turning Indiansinto peaceful farmers. The denomina-tion that got the Comanche assignmentwas the Society of Friends, or Quakers.Quakers are one of America’s oldestand most inuential founding groups.They live a life of piety and thrift, anddisavow fancy dress and military action,

but it may have been a mistake to picka group religiously opposed to war inany form.

President Grant’s agent to the Co-manche was Lawrie Tatum of Iowa, whohad probably never seen an Indian be-fore he answered his Church’s call andheaded West. Tatum arrived at Fort Sill

Quaker Tatum with some of his charges.




Big Tree: sentenced to deathbut not executed.

in 1869 and enacted a sort of Great So-ciety program. He started schools, gavedeeds of farmland to the Comanche withinstructions for farming, and establisheda mill for grinding grain. The Comanchealso got free coffee, sugar, and blankets,and lived in safety. Soldiers secured FortSill and the agent’s supplies, but did notinterfere with Comanche activity or taketo the eld. Quakers would not use themilitary to keep the Comanche on theirreservation and avoid war.

Tatum worked hard to teach theComanche to be civilized farmers butwas defeated by circumstances. TheComanche culture’s central focus wason warfare and raiding. Wealth and sta-tus could only be acquired through war,and Quaker pacism was too foreign tograft onto their way of life. Also, wel-fare handouts are always unsatisfying.The Comanche were not happy with

reservation rations and it was far morerewarding to plunder Texans. The FortSill Reservation became a sanctuaryfrom which they could wage war. In1871 there were even scalpings withina short distance of Army posts. Whiteshad sent a capable and honest agent to

deal with the Comanche and bring aboutpeace, but the Comanche were not will-ing to be peaceful.

Sherman and the Comanche

Just as it is today, it was whites wholived furthest from the menace who wereconvinced they knew best how to handleit. In Philadelphia or New York it waseasy to talk about humane Indian poli-cies, but on the frontier, whether in Con-

federate or Yankee territory, sentimentswere different. In Minnesota in 1862,Sioux Indians attacked whites, killinghundreds. Many whites were fresh fromnorthern Europe or descended from thevery liberal Puritan and Quaker colo-nists. Yet they rallied and pushed theSioux out of the state.

In Colorado in 1864, Methodist min-ister and volunteer army ofcer JohnChivington, a fervent abolitionist, leda force of mostly settler militia againsta group of Cheyenne after a series of murderous raids. His militia massacredIndians without compunction but hisforce also included a few regulars fromthe East who were appalled by thekilling and raised a stink. Chivingtonalso made a bad mistake: He attacked apeaceful band of Indians, not the hostileDog Soldiers, an out-of-control offshootof the Cheyenne, who were actually do-

ing the raiding.Also in 1864 an Army unit underKit Carson fought the Comanche at theBattle of Adobe Walls, in HutchinsonCounty, Texas. The Indians surroundedthe force but were held off with twomountain howitzers. The cannon weredecisive. Carson’s men were outnum-bered nearly ten to one, but killed nearly100 Indians for a loss of six whites.

Texans therefore eventually got helpfrom people who knew Indians firsthand. Help arrived, ironically, in theform of William T. Sherman, who never

had much faith in Grant’s Indian policy.In 1871 he toured Texas to inspectdamage from Comanche raids, and hada near encounter with Indians that hadan effect on policy. A group of bravesled by Set-tainte, Set-tank, and Big Treeattacked a wagon convoy of Army sup-plies that passed just minutes behindSherman’s lightly guarded inspectiontour. The dozen men on the convoyfought back, but seven were killed,scalped, and mutilated. One man diedafter being tied upside down to a wagonwheel with a re set under his head.

Sherman was shaken by this closecall, and sent out the cavalry underColonel Ranald S. Mackenzie to inves-tigate. With information from AgentTatum, Mackenzie cornered the threeringleaders. Set-tank died resisting ar-rest, but the other two were sent backto Texas for trial.

Set-tainte and Big Tree were sen-tenced to death, but not executed. Thetrial became a circus, with the two In-dians at the center of a political struggle

they must have found bewildering.As T.R Fehrenbach explains, “Therewas much popular sentiment in theEast against hanging the aborigines;more important, the Indian Bureau andDepartment of the Interior strongly re-

sented the army’s interference in Indianaffairs.” President Grant wired the Re-construction governor Edmond J. Davisand asked him to commute the sentencesto life in prison. Davis did so. Eventu-ally the two were released after servingless than a year. Texans were outraged.Even Quaker Tatum, who by this timewas thoroughly disillusioned with thepeace policy, was indignant.

Although President Grant had pushed

for a pardon, he reconsidered the peacepolicy and quietly let Colonel Macken-zie take the eld. Mackenzie broughtalong Gatling guns, which gave his men

a real edge over larger forces. (Rapid-re weapons were rarely used againstmass charges of Indians—they weretoo smart to try that—but having themmeant Mackenzie’s men rarely had to face such charges. Things might have

Ranald Mackenzie, scourge of the Comanche.

Comanche knew better than to charge these.




Quanah Parker, one of the last Comanchewar chiefs.

turned out differently for Custer if hehad taken Gatling guns.)

Mackenzie drove ruthlessly into Co-manche territory. He was a hard man,who pursued Indians wherever theyed—even into Mexico—and his mencertainly killed women and children.One of his harshest tactics was to captureany Indians he could—women, children,elders—and hold them hostage. Thismeant Comanche war parties wereforced to move with their entire villages,lest their families wind up in prisoncamp or dead from a trigger-happytrooper. The Comanche had even moreto fear from the militia. Local men whomay have known people killed in raidswere invariably more vengeful than

professional soldiers.This policy of interning non-com-

batant Indians was part of one of thelast full-scale campaigns against the

Comanche, starting in August 1874,when Mackenzie pursued a force led by Chief Quanah Parker into the Llano

Estacado of the Southern Plains. In lateSeptember, Mackenzie’s men captureda New Mexican Comanchero trader

and made him talk by stretching himover a wagon wheel. He revealed thelocation of a large Comanche villagein a canyon. Mackenzie’s men rode allnight and stormed the canyon, captur-ing the horses, food stores, and teepees.The braves, always excellent ghters,held off the army until the women andchildren climbed out of the canyon, butMackenzie burned their supplies andkilled their horses. Over the next severaldays, he pursued and defeated the hun-

gry, foot-bound Coman-che. Many braves sur-rendered and returned

to the reservation.These tactics great-ly reduced the Indianmenace by the end of 1875, but the Coman-che faced yet another threat. The expandingrailroads brought whitesarmed with new buffaloguns onto the prairieto hunt the buffalo fortheir skins. The result

Many people think Shermansaid that “the only goodIndian is a dead Indian,”

but he always denied it. It may wellbe that the phrase expressed his

true sentiments, however, since hewaged harsh war on Indians, alloweddiseases to take their course amongthem, and encouraged the slaughterof the buffalo on which the Indiansdepended.

The originatorof the phrase seemsto have been Mon-tana Congress-man James Mi-chael Cavanaugh(1823-1879), whoopposed Grant’s

Indian policy. Hewas original lyfrom Massachu-setts, but made acareer as a lawyer/

pioneer in Minne-sota, Colorado, andMontana at the height of the Indiantroubles. He made the following re-marks during a debate on an IndianAppropriation Bill that took placeon May 28, 1868, in the House of Representatives:

“I will say frankly that, in my judgment, the entire Indian policy of the country is wrong from its veryinception. In the rst place you offer a premium for rascality by payinga beggarly pittance to your Indianagents. The gentleman from Mas-sachusetts [Congressman and former General Ben Butler] may denouncethe sentiment as atrocious, but I will

say that I like an Indian better deadthan living. I have never in my lifeseen a good Indian (and I have seenthousands) except when I have seena dead Indian. I believe in the Indian

policy pursued by New England inyears long gone. I believe in theIndian policy which was taught bythe great chieftain of Massachusetts,Miles Standish [who was criticized

by contemporariesfor harsh treatmentof Indians]. I be-lieve in the policythat exterminatesthe Indians, drivesthem outside the

boundaries of civi-lization, because

you cannot civilizethem. Gentlemenmay call this veryharsh language,

but perhaps theywould not think

so if they had hadmy experience in Minnesota andColorado. . . .

“My friend from Massachusettshas never passed the barrier of thefrontier. All he knows about Indians(the gentleman will pardon me for saying it) may have been gatheredI presume from the brilliant pagesof the author of The Last of theMohicans or from the lines of the

poet Longfellow in “Hiawatha.” Thegentleman has never yet seen the In-dian upon the war-path. He has never

been chased, as I have been, by thesered devils—who seem to be the petsof Eastern philanthropists.”

The Only Good Indian . . .

Congressman Cavanaugh.

Buffalo hunters: another deadly enemy of the Comanche.




was a slaughter that nearly wiped outthe great herds on which the Coman-che had depended for generations. Thehunters themselves were dangerous;one group defeated a larger force of Comanche with their excellent riesin 1874, at the Second Battle of AdobeWalls. Constantly pursued by the Army,starving for want of game, by 1879 theComanche were a beaten people andnever again threatened Texas. From apossible high of 30,000 at the start of the 19th century, the Comanche were

reduced to roughly 1,500 by 1878. Aonce-proud people nally submittedpermanently to the reservation.

The Comanche War is now history,its many tales preserved in moviesand books. No Texan now living everfeared a Comanche moon. Today,tribal conict takes different forms,and it is incursions from the South thatare pushing back the white frontier.Clashes are not so sharp as those inthe 19th century, but the outcome isno different. The destiny of Texas is

being decided through immigration anddemographics rather than armed con-ict, but the questions remain the same:who will populate and who will rule?Earlier Americans understood what wasat stake; today’s Americans have beennumbed into acquiescence.

Duncan Hengest served as a com- pany-grade eld artillery ofcer in theUnited States, Korea, and Iraq. He canbe reached at [email protected].

A black woman tells uswhat we must think.

by John Harrison Sims

Nell Painter, a professor of Ameri-can history at Princeton, haswritten something she calls The

History of White People, but it is notreally history. The Greek word historia means an inquiry or narrative into theevents of the past. Instead, Prof. Painterhas written a deconstruction of whatshe considers the false and oppressive“social construct” of race, which wasinvented “by dominant peoples to jus-

tify their domination of others.” Shestarts with ancient Europe, where sheasserts there was no such thing as whitepeople because no one thought in termsof race. She admits that some peoplehad lighter skin than others, but that noone attached any meaning to it. Thenshe skips to the Enlightenment, where,she claims, race and whiteness wereinvented, and devotes most of the bookto what she considers the crackpot sci-ence of race that ourished from about1780 to 1930.

Professor Painter also denies that

there is any such thing as white history,white culture, or white civilization.“Whiteness,” she tells us, “is merelya “category of non-blackness,” “theleavings of what is not black”—in otherwords, pure negation. Prof. Painter’sgoal is to make whites a non-peopleby denying their existence and erasingtheir history. Needless to say, The His-tory of White People has been respect-fully reviewed rather than denouncedas a breathtaking dismissal of an entire

people.Prof. Painter writes that her book be-

longs to the new eld of “white studies,”

which was established in the 1990s. Itis more cult than academic discipline,and is based on denial of the obvious.“Today,” Prof. Painter announces,“biologists and geneticists . . . no lon-ger believe in the physical existenceof races—though they recognize the

continuing power of racism (the belief that races exist, and that some are betterthan others).” She also writes that “eachperson shares 99.9 percent of the geneticmaterial of every other human being,”and dismisses skin color as a supercialadaptation to the strength of the sun (for

a more sensible view see, for example,“Race is a Myth?” AR, Dec. 2000 and“How Myths are Maintained,” AR, Jan.2004). Having disposed of both scienceand common sense in just a few sen-tences, she warns that we must retain the

“category” of race only long enough “tostrike down patterns of discrimination.”Race is a myth but “racism” is real.

The ancients

Prof. Painter begins her “history”with the ancient world, “thousands of years before the invention of the con-cept of race.” “Ancient Greeks did notthink in terms of race,” she says withauthority. Nor did the Romans. Theycould not have been white because“neither the idea of race nor the idea of ‘white’ people had been invented.” Shecomplains that “not a few Westernershave attempted to racialize antiquity,

making ancient history into white racehistory.”Prof. Painter is wrong; the concept

of race is of ancient lineage. Boththe Greeks and Romans had severalwords equivalent to our word, “race.”The word “ethnic,” meaning origin bybirth or descent rather than by presentnationality, is derived from the ancientGreek ethnos, which meant the samething in ancient times. If she read an-cient literature Prof. Painter would ndthat classical scholars translate ethnos as people, nation, or race, depending

on context.Nationality in the ancient world wasdefined by birth and descent. Thus,when the Hellenic historian Herodotus,the father of history, wrote of the El-lenikon (Hellenic) ethnos, acceptabletranslations would be Greek people,Greek nation, or Greek race. Duringthe Persian invasion of 480-479 BC,the Athenians assured their Spartanallies that they would not betray fellowGreeks: “we are one in blood and one

Whiting Out White PeopleNell Irvin Painter, The History of White People, W.W. Norton, 2010, 496 pp., $27.95.

“Whiteness is merely acategory of non-black-

ness, the leavings of whatis not black.”




A dramatic performance depicted on a Grecian urn.

in language, and we worship the samegods.” Plato observed that “the Hellenicrace is united by ties of bloodand friendship.”

The Greeks were not uni-ed politically until the timeof Alexander (356-323 BC).Before that, their city statesoften fought each other, butthey always recognized that,whatever their city or tribe,they belonged to the samenation or race. They callednon-Greeks barbaroi, andresident foreigners metics.The latter were not normallyeligible for citizenship. WhenPericles (495-429 BC), theAthenian statesman and dem-ocrat, proposed a law to denycitizenship to anyone not bornof both an Athenian mother

and father it easily passed theassembly and became law.The Greeks also drew clear

ethnic distinctions betweenpeoples. Homer used thegurative phrase “sun-burntraces” for brown-skinnedAsiatics [and Africans] becauseGreeks and Europeans were lighter-skinned. Aristotle believed that “bar-barians were more servile in characterthan Hellenes, and Asiatics more so thanEuropeans, for Asiatics submit withoutmurmuring to despotic government.”

Aristotle urged his pupil Alexander tomaintain sharp distinctions betweenGreeks and their eastern enemies, andto treat conquered peoples “like plantsand animals.” Prof. Painter quotes theGreek physician Hippocrates, whonoted of the Scythians that “it is the coldwhich burns their white skin and turns itruddy.” Prof. Painter does not seem tohave noticed the words “white skin” inthis passage.

As for the Romans, there is evenclearer evidence that they thought interms of common descent and physi-

cal differences. Their words genus andgeneris were almost an exact equivalentto our word “race.” Cassell’s LatinDictionary defines them as meaning“race, stock, family,” also “birth, de-scent, origin,” and in its broadest sense,“kind.” Our word genocide comes fromit. Romans had a related word, gens,gentis, which meant “clan,” but moregenerally, “people, tribe, nation.” It wasderived from the verb gigno or geno,meaning “to beget, bear, bring forth.”

The words natio and nationis meant“being born, birth,” but could also mean

“tribe, race, or people.” Natio was theRoman goddess of birth, and our wordnation comes from her name.

Clearly the Romans, like theGreeks, regarded a nation as a groupwith a common ancestry, in other

words an ethnic group or race. TheRoman historian Suetonius recordedthat “[Emperor] Augustus thought itvery important not to let the nativeRoman stock be tainted with foreignor servile blood, and was thereforeunwilling to create new Romancitizens, or permit the manumis-sion of more than a limited numberof slaves.” The poet Juvenal railedagainst “Easterners” (Egyptians,Syrians, Jews) who were flood-ing into Rome, complaining thatthe Orontes, a river in Syria, “has

poured its sewage into our nativeTiber.” He called one upstart Egyp-tian “silt washed down by the Nile.”Romans never spoke of fellowEuropeans—Thracians, Germans,Gauls, Iberians—in such insultingterms, except for the Greeks, forwhom they appear to have held somespecial enmity. Juvenal even warned oneRoman administrator that while it wassafe to plunder the eastern provinces,not so the western: “But steer clear of

rugged Spain, give a very wide berth toGaul and the coast of Illyria.”

The Romans were clearlystruck by the physical ap-pearance of the Celtic andGermanic tribes to their north.Prof. Painter does not includea single physical descriptionof the Gauls by a Roman, butthere are many. Diodorus Sici-lus (1st century BC) described“the Gauls as tall of body, withrippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond . . ..” Ammianus Marcellinus, thelate imperial Roman historian(4th century AD), wrote that“almost all Gauls are tall andfair-skinned with reddish hair.”Virgil described the Gauls whosacked Rome in 390 BC ashaving “golden hair, striped

cloaks, white necks entwinedwith gold.” The Roman histo-rian Cassius Dio (c. 150-c. 230AD) described Queen Boud-icca, who led the Gallic revoltagainst Roman rule in 61 AD,as being tall with long-owing

“tawny hair.” Prof. Painter doesmanage to quote Tacitus, who describedthe Germans as “tall” with “erce blueeyes and red hair.” (Tacitus used the

word rutilus, which meant “red, golden,auburn.”)

It is clear, therefore, that even if they did not use the word, the Romans

Augustus wanted no foreign or servile blood totaint the people of Rome.




His wife wore a blond wig.

thought of their northern neighbors aswhite, and some suffered from whatmight be called “blond envy.” Havinglost some of the fair features of theirancestors, later Romans wanted to lookmore like the Gauls and Germans. TheChristian author Tertullian (160-225AD) complained that “some women dyetheir hair blond by using saffron. Theyare even ashamed of their country, sorrythat they were not born in Germany orin Gaul.” Juvenal records that the Em-

peror Claudius’ wife Messalina kept her“black hair hidden under an ash-blondewig.” Prof. Painter claims that the idealof white beauty arose as part of theEastern European slave trade. She is off by about 1,500 years.

The Romans not only noticed physi-cal differences, they thought of them in

racial terms. When Tacitus found thesame physical features (“red hair and tallstature”) among the people of Caledonia(Scotland), he assumed that they wereof “Germanic origin,” meaning thatthey belonged to the same race. Whenhe noticed that the Silures living nearbyhad “swarthy faces and curly hair,” heassumed they were of Iberian origin.Iberians had the same features andcould have sailed from Spain to Britain.Tacitus was not sure whether heredityor climate was the stronger inuence onphysical appearance, but Prof. Painter

assures us that the ancients thought itwas all due to climate.Prof. Painter mentions the peoples of

northern and western Europe—whomthe Greeks knew as Keltoi and Skythaiand the Romans as Celtae, Galli, andGermani—only to tell us that theydid not think of themselves as white.“Rather than as ‘white’ people, north-ern Europeans were known by vaguetribal names: Scythians and Celts, thenGauls and Germani.” Prof. Painter is

wrong. Those were national, not tribalnames. The Germans knew themselvesby such tribal names as Marsi, Suebi,or Alemanni. It was the Gauls, and thenthe Romans, who gave them the nationalname Germani. Likewise, the Celtscalled themselves by their tribal names,such as the Helvetii of what is now Swit-zerland, and the Iceni of eastern Britain,but they were aware that they belongedto a family of tribes related by kinship,religion, language, and mores.

Like all good anti-racists, Prof.Painter thinks “pure racial ancestry”is “nonsense.” Yet how do we explainthe close resemblance between Gaulsand Germans, on the one hand, andtheir descendants in those places thathave seen little non-white immigration:Iceland, Scandinavia, Scotland, NovaScotia, New Zealand? These peoplekept their physical characteristics be-

cause generations of whites marriedother whites. Even the Romans assumedthat Nordics could not mix with darkerpeople without losing their fair features.Tacitus concluded that the blond peopleof Germania were “a pure race unmixedby intermarriage with other races,”partly because of their northern isolationbut also because they looked so similarto each other. Adamantius, the Alex-andrian physician (4th century AD),made the same point about the Greeksof his time: wherever the Hellenic race“has been kept pure” it retained the light

features of its ancestors.Prof. Painter confuses the recessivetraits of whites with some kind of naturalvariability. “Anyone in a mixed-racefamily knows of the impermanence of parental skin color, for the sex act imme-diately affects the very next generation.”That simply proves what she denies:features that have persisted for millen-nia can disappear in a single generationwhen whites marry outside their race.Whites—but apparently only whites—are evil if they take pride in their appear-ance and want to perpetuate it in future

generations: “Nowadays, only whitesupremacists and Nazis fetishize whiteracial purity.”

The modern era

Prof. Painter devotes many chaptersto “scientic racism,” the systematicstudy of anthropological differencesthat began in the late 18th century. “Sci-entific racism” in this context is ananachronism because the word “racism”

did not appear until the 1930s and hadno ancient, medieval, or early moderncounterpart. The concept behind it—thatit is morally wrong to discriminate onthe basis of race—is a mid-20th centuryinvention.

Because she has decreed that thereis no such thing as race, Prof. Painterregards any attempt to study it aspseudo-science. She explains that 19th-century “European anthropologists weretypically both provincial and arrogant.They operated from two basic assump-tions: the natural superiority of whitepeoples and the infallibility of modernscience.” It is she, however, who isguided by unproven articles of faith:the non-existence of race, the equalityof all people, and the decisive powerof environment. Her sole criterion for judging earlier anthropologists is theextent to which they anticipate her glo-

balist views.The modern use of the word “race”to describe the divisions of mankind

dates to about 1775, with the publica-tion of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’sOn the Natural Variety of Mankind .Blumenbach, a German anthropologist,was the rst to classify whites as Cau-

casian. In the 1795 edition of his book,he proposed ve racial types: Caucasian(white); Malayan (brown); Mongolian(yellow); Negro (black); American(red). Prof. Painter likes him becausehe believed that climate determinedskin color, and because he classied somany non-Europeans—North Africans,Middle Easterners, South Asians—asCaucasian and therefore white. Blumen-bach’s expansive classication of white-ness was never generally accepted; most

Franz Boaz, a good “white” man.




Emerson, a bad “white” man.

people simply do not think of Tunisiansand Frenchmen as the same race.

Prof. Painter also likes Franz Boas(1858-1942), the inuential Columbiaanthropologist who believed that envi-ronment, not genes, “shaped people’sbodies and psyches.” He claimed tohave conducted an inter-generationalstudy that found that the longer east-ern and southern European immigrantwomen lived in America, the moretheir children’s head shapes came toresemble those of the northern Europeanfounding stock. “These ndings werenothing short of revolutionary,” writesProf. Painter. In fact, a reexamination of the data found they were nothing shortof bogus.

Prof. Painter devotes three chaptersto Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom shedespises for the pride he had in his ownpeople. Emerson was “the most presti-

gious intellectual in the United States,”and thus gave further respectabilityand weight to the racialism of his time.Emerson may have been a progressive,a pantheist, and an antislavery man, buthe also believed in the reality of race, thehierarchy of race, and the superiority of Anglo-Saxons.

Emerson believed that race wasdestiny. In other words, that the ge-netic endowments of a people largelydetermined their fate. Some races werecapable of great things, others (Africans,for instance) were not. Environment, he

thought, had little inuence. “If the raceis good, so is the place.” In his view, norace was greater than the English, andhe considered his fellow New England-ers to be of pure English descent. Inhis widely read and celebrated English

Traits (1856), he argued that the Eng-

lish were derived from the Celts, theSaxons, and the Northmen. All threewere great races, and this union had cre-ated a people of genius, unsurpassed inbeauty, valor, energy, and intellect. Howelse had this island nation conquered orsettled most of the world, contributed somuch to science, and produced so muchgreat literature? The Saxons he consid-ered to belong to the southern, Germanicbranch of the formidable “Scandinavianrace,” the Northmen (Norwegians,

Swedes, Danes) to the northern branch.“Both branches … are distinguished forbeauty.” It is easy to see why ProfessorPainter thinks Emerson was a danger-ous gure.

As for Alexis de Tocqueville, Prof.Painter approvingly summarizes hiscritical comments about Americanslavery, but claims that he “minimizesone of the core issues in American poli-tics and culture.” Not so. Tocquevilledevoted a chapter of Democracy in America to race. Far from minimizing ithe speculated that “the most formidableevil threatening the future of the UnitedStates is the presence of the blacks ontheir soil.” Tocqueville realized thateven if slavery were abolished, racialdifferences that were “physical and

permanent” would remain. Freed blackswould be jealous and resentful of theirformer masters and ashamed of their ser-vile past. “Memories of slavery disgracethe race, and race perpetuates memoriesof slavery.”

Whites, on the other hand, wouldwant nothing to do with former slaves.Tocqueville noticed that “race prejudiceseems stronger in those states that haveabolished slavery than in those whereit still exists,” and thought one reasonwas the fear of miscegenation. “Of allEuropeans,” he wrote, “the English have

least mingled their blood with that of theNegroes.” Why not? “The white man inthe United States is proud of his race andproud of himself.” As a result, “the freerthe whites in America are, the more theywill seek to isolate themselves.” Only a“despot subjecting the Americans andtheir former slaves beneath the sameyoke” could “force the races to mingle,”Tocqueville wrote, but “while Americandemocracy remains at the head of af-fairs, no one would dare any such thing.”

Perhaps Tocqueville was too prescientfor Prof. Painter’s liking.

Prof. Painter points out that manyof the most important American ra-cialist thinkers of the late 19th andearly 20th centuries were from old anddistinguished New England families.Thus, American Nordicist MadisonGrant was a “quintessential patricianracist.” Grant wrote the bestselling andwidely inuential The Passing of theGreat Race (1916). He was a leadingconservationist and was friends withTheodore Roosevelt, who read andpraised his work. Prof. Painter nds thisquite shocking.

Another important racial thinker,whose work Prof. Painter dismisses asa “frenzied contribution to white racetheory,” was Lothrop Stoddard (1883-1950). Stoddard, who was a protégéof Grant, had a Ph.D. in history from

Harvard, and wroteThe Rising Tide of

Color in 1920. It sold well and even hada cover blurb from Warren G. Harding,who was elected President of the UnitedStates that fall. Prof. Painter does notdiscuss the contents of the book—again,it was perhaps too prescient. Stoddardwarned his white brethren of the dangersof racial inghting (he opposed bothworld wars), and predicted the breakup

of the European colonial empires. Heforesaw the rise of fundamentalist Islam,the emergence of brown nationalism, aswell as mass migration of non-whitesinto white homelands.

Of course, for Prof. Painter, anyonepast or present who thinks whites areworth preserving as a distinct peoplewith a distinct destiny is a vicious bigot,and if she has her way, whites will bedisplaced and outbred. The preposterousidea that race does not exist is only the

Madison Grant, a very bad “white” man.

Emerson believed thatrace was destiny: “If the

race is good, so is theplace.”




From an 1859 abolitionist tract for children called The Child’s Anti-Slavery Book.

most recent argument meant to over-come what faint resistance whites mayyet have to oblivion. After all, if thereis no such thing as race and we are 99.9percent identical, we are only beingreplaced by ourselves.

Prof. Painter is black, and it is rarefor blacks to claim to believe that raceis a myth. Most blacks have such a vividsense of race that they see this whites-only-believe-it foolishness for what it is.Everybody knows races exist, that theyhave distinct features, and that whenmembers of different races mate theyproduce hybrids. What else is there toknow? There is very little prattle fromblacks about race as a “social construct,”so perhaps it is tting that Prof. Painter,who claims she wants to obliterate race,mouths trendy nonsense that usuallyfools only whites.

Blacks will largely ignore her book,

butThe History of White People

wasthe subject of the main review in the New York Times Book Review of March28, 2010, and it was treated respect-fully in The New Yorker of April 12,2010. However, even The New Yorker found “something reductive” in Prof.Painter’s insistence “that whiteness . .. isn’t real.” “Perhaps it’s time we start

viewing it,” the article went on, “as theslow birth of a people.” Substitute re-birth for birth and The New Yorker is onto something. As for “white studies,” itis a redundant eld. We already have it.

It’s called European history and WesternCivilization.

Mr. Sims is an historian and a nativeof Kentucky.

O Tempora, O Mores!

White-Hispanic DivideAccording to a recent NBC/MSNBC/

Telemundo poll, Arizona’s new lawcracking down on illegal immigrantsenjoys the support of 61 percent of Americans. Among whites, however, 70percent support the law. Most Hispan-

ics—58 percent—oppose it, with onlyabout one third in favor.

The Arizona law is just one issuethat divides whites and Hispanics.Sixty-eight percent of Hispanics thinkimmigration strengthens America, whileonly 43 percent of whites do. President

Obama’s job approval rating amongwhites has dropped to 38 percent, whilemost Hispanics—68 percent—supporthim. A narrow majority of whites preferthe Republican Party over the Demo-cratic Party (37 percent vs. 34 percent),while Hispanics favor the Democratsover the GOP (54 percent vs. 22 per-cent). Hispanics also think Democratsare better than Republicans at protectingthe interests of minorities (58 percentvs. 11 percent), boosting the economy(46 percent vs. 20 percent), dealing withimmigration (37 percent vs.12 percent),

and promoting strong moral values (33percent vs. 23 percent). The only thingHispanics think Republicans do betterthan Democrats is patrol the US-Mexicoborder (31 vs. 20 percent).

Bill McInturff, one of the pollsterswho ran the survey, has noticed theobvious: “The gap between whites andHispanic Americans is substantial.”[Mark Murray, On Immigration, RacialDivide Runs Deep, MSNBC, May 26,2010.]

Californians vs. ArizonaManuel Lozano, mayor of Baldwin

Park, California, doesn’t like the newArizona law. He calls it “racial prol-ing,” and urged his city council to gettough on Arizona. In May, the councilpassed an ordinance boycotting Arizonanancially (although it isn’t known howmuch business, if any, the Los Angelessuburb does with the neighboring state),and Mr. Lozano organized a pro-immi-gration rally on a Saturday morning in adowntown park. The city paid for a stage

and a sound system, but the mayor can-celed the rally just a few minutes after itwas supposed to start—because no oneshowed up. Mr. Lozano says he pulledthe plug when he realized there weretoo many other activities scheduled forthat day. He insists that the absence of supporters does not mean residents don’tlike the Arizona boycott, and promisesto reschedule. [Maria Ines Zamudio,Baldwin Park Pro-immigration RallyCanceled after No One Showed Up,




No more Arizona electricity for Los Angeles?

Whittier Daily News, May 22, 2010.]A recent poll by the Los Angeles

Times and the University of SouthernCalifornia found that 50 percent of Cali-fornians support the Arizona law, while43 percent oppose it. National pollsnd that 60 to 70 percent of Americanssupport the law. What accountsfor California’s tepid numbers?The large number of Hispanics.Majorities of California whites(58 percent) and residents over45 (57 percent) support the law,while Hispanics (71 percent)and younger Californians (58percent) strongly oppose it.

Two typical views: GinaBonecutter, 39, of Laguna Hills,favors the Arizona law. “WhatI’m seeing today is immigrantscoming here, wanting us tobecome like Mexico, instead of

wanting to become American,”she says. Daisy Vidal of Banning,a 23-year-old college student and childof immigrants, thinks “there should besome type of pathway to citizenship,”adding that “this whole country wasstarted by immigrants.” [Seema Mehta,Californians Split on Arizona’s IllegalImmigration Crackdown, Los AngelesTimes, May 31, 2010.]

On June 1, Los Angeles County joined San Francisco, Oakland, LosAngeles, San Diego and several otherCalifornia cities in an economic boycott

of the Grand Canyon State. The countywill review the $26 million in contractsit has with Arizona companies, andcancel as many as it can. The Boardof Supervisors voted 3 to 2 in favorof the measure. [LA County BoycottsArizona over Immigration Law, AP,June 1, 2010.]

Arizonans vs. California

After the San Diego city council vot-ed in May to boycott Arizona, Arizonansstarted canceling trips and vacations to

the city. With an average of two millionArizonans visiting San Diego each year,tourism industry ofcials are worried.“We’re in a very tough environmentalready because of everything else goingon, and we don’t need another negativeimpact to our industry,” says tourismofcial Joe Terzi. Hotel managers areurging angry Arizonans to consider theboycott a “symbolic” matter of localpolitics.

San Diego school board president

Sheila Jackson, whose group also votedto boycott Arizona, says its tough luckfor the tourism industry. “It’s sad thatpeople would cancel their plans to comehere in reaction to that, but I still thinkwe did the right thing.” [San DiegoFaces Own Medicine as Arizona Resi-

dents Cancel Travel Following Boycottof State, Fox News, May 17, 2010.]

After Los Angeles Mayor AntonioVillaraigosa announced his city wouldboycott Arizona, Arizona CorporationCommissioner Gary Pierce, who sitson the board that regulates Arizona’selectricity generating plants, sent hima letter reminding him that Arizonasupplies a quarter of LA’s electricity.“If an economic boycott is truly what

you desire, I will be happy to encour-age Arizona utilities to renegotiateyour power agreements so Los Angelesno longer receives any power fromArizona-based generation,” he wrote,adding that if the LA city council “lacksthe strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycottArizona power, please reconsider thewisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’seconomy.” [Ryan Randazzo, ArizonaElectricity Regulator Pokes Los AngelesOver Boycott Call, Arizona Republic,May 20, 2010.]

Sign of the Times

In the interest of “fairness” and “self-esteem,” a children’s soccer league inOttawa, Canada has decided that anyteam that wins a game by more than vepoints will automatically lose by default.The league used to operate under a ve-point “mercy rule” that did not countmore than a ve-point score difference,so the most a team could lose by was ve

points. Bruce Cappon, whose 17-year-old son plays in the league, calls the newrule “ludicrous.” “Heaven forbid whenthese kids get into the real world,” hesays. “They won’t be prepared to dealwith the competition out there.”

League director Sean Cale defendsthe rule, which he says wassuggested by “involved par-ents” to ensure “sportsmanship”and make games more “fair.”He blames the controversy ona small number of trouble-making parents. “The registra-tion fee does not give a parentthe right to insult or belittlethe organization,” he huffs. “Itgives you a uniform, it givesyou a team.” [Terrine Friday,Win a Soccer Game by MoreThan Five Points and You Lose,Ottawa League Says, National

Post, June 1, 2010.]

For Blacks Only

Black Georgia congressman HankJohnson, notorious for suggesting dur-ing a congressional hearing that theisland of Guam could “tip over andcapsize” if too many troops were sta-tioned there, is facing stiff competitionfor his seat. On June 2, he and threeopponents took part in a debate spon-sored by Newsmakers Live, a black

media organization claiming to have a“global urbane perspective.” Several of Mr. Johnson’s opponents are white, butthey are apparently not urbane enough;Newsmakers Live did not invite them.When white Republican Liz Cartercalled to get an invitation, the forum’smoderator, Maynard Eaton, told her it

Congressman Hank Johnson.




This year’s winner.

was for black candidates only. He saidshe was welcome to sit in the audience,but not participate. “What happened todiversity?” she asks.

Miss Carter’s chances of winning the4th district seat are slim. The electorateis overwhelmingly black, and the seatwas previously held by the conspiracy-minded Cynthia McKinney. [AlexPappas, White Congressional CandidateWants to Participate in Forum, Butis Told She Can’t Because She’s NotBlack, Daily Caller, June 2, 2010.]

Not Safe Anymore

Atlanta’s Piedmont Park used tobe a safe place for whites to take theirfamilies for summer entertainment.Not anymore. On June 3, a large crowdof mostly young people gathered for“Screen on the Green,” to watch the

movie “Transformers: Revenge of theFallen.” The screening was stopped 20minutes early, ostensibly for “techni-cal reasons.” The real reason was thatblacks got so violent sponsors and policedecided to send the crowd home.

First, a ght broke out among a groupof girls, and before long, boys beganghting. “Just as things started to settleback down, a few gunshots rang out andthe crowd started trampling the area try-ing to ee the scene,” recalls Ron Sweat-land, who was at the park with his wife.“It was an absolute mob scene,” says

another man who was at the park, “fromthe Chick-l-A girls getting mobbed try-ing to hand out free sandwiches to thecomplete lack of respect for the peoplewatching the movie.”

As he was leaving, Mr. Sweatlandsaw teenagers throwing rocks at cars,some of which broke windows. Chil-dren in the crowd were frightened andcrying. “I can remember a time whenScreen on the Green was great familyfun and we always looked forward togoing,” he says. “I think this will beour last time.”

Many blacks attacked whites. Twen-ty-six-year-old Josh Hice was drivingby the park in an open-top Jeep. “Therewas a car stopped in front of me and acar stopped behind me, and there wasthis crowd of about 30 high school kidsparading down the street,” he explains.A girl came spat in his face and a teen-aged boy punched him. “It split my lip,then they start climbing all over myJeep, and I turn around and my buddyis getting punched in the face and has

blood pouring out of his nose. It wasridiculous. We were denitely victimsof a hate crime.”

Atlanta city councilman Alex Wan,who represents the area, says thetroubles were “not the norm,” and were“caused by a small group of young kidslooking to cause trouble. . . . I hope wecan make a few adjustments and comeback to having great events in this partof town, because it is so popular withthe neighborhood and the city.” [MikeMorris, Police Reviewing Security atScreen on the Green, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 4, 2010.]

Owning the Bee

The National Spelling Bee has comea long way from its origins in 1925.The rst was organized by the Lou-isville Courier-Journal and featured

nine contestants. The 83rd took placein Washington, DC, June 2 through 4and featured 274 contestants, ranging inage from eight to fteen. The bee wasbroadcast on live national television,with the championship nals in primetime on ABC.

This year’s winner was a 14-year-oldgirl from North Royalton, Ohio, namedAnamika Veeramani. Miss Veeramani,who won by spelling the medical term“stromuhr”(an instrument used to mea-

sure the amount and speed of bloodflow through an artery), is of AsianIndian descent, as was the runner-up,13-year-old Shantanu Srivatsa of WestFargo, North Dakota. In fact, Indians,who make up less than 1 percent of theUS population, have won three straightNational Spelling Bee titles, and eightof the past twelve. The first Indianwinner, Nupur Lala, took the title in1999, and was featured in an AcademyAward-nominated documentary, “Spell-

bound.” No one knows why Indians areso good at spelling. Many, such as 2008champion Kavya Shivashankar, say theywere inspired by the rst Indian to winthe title.

The father of this year’s championthinks it has more to do with discipline.“This has been her dream for a very,very long time. It’s been a family dream,too,” he says, adding that his daughterstudied as many as 16 hours on somedays. “I think it has to do with an empha-sis on education.” Miss Veeramani, whowon $40,000, hopes to go to Harvardand become a cardiovascular surgeon.[Lauren Sausser, Spelling Bee WinnerPart of Indian-American Streak, AP,June 5, 2010.]

Fined in France

Brice Hortefeux is the interior min-

ister of France, a senior member of President Nicholas Sarkozy’s governingUMP party, and a personal friend andcondant of the president. Last Septem-ber, Mr. Hortefeux was joking with asmall group of party activists, includingone of Arab descent. The banter wasrecorded, and an activist can be heardsaying of the Arab, “Amin is a Catholic.He eats pork and drinks alcohol,” towhich Mr. Hortefeux replies, “Ah, wellthat won’t do at all. He doesn’t match theprototype.” A woman then says, “He isone of us . . . he is our little Arab.” Then

Mr. Hortefeux says, “We always needone. It’s when there are lots of them thatthere are problems.”

When the tape became public, themedia called Mr. Hortefeux a “racist.”The opposition Social Democrats saidhis remarks were “shameful and un-speakable,” and demanded his resigna-tion. Although the Arab defended him,prosecutors still charged Mr. Hortefeux

Convicted “racist.”

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