Posted on 11/21/2005 9:47:06 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Was Texas built on ethnic cleansing?
Assertions in book by an Oklahoma history professor might rile proud Texans.
By Mike Cox
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Last summer, while I was visiting my bookseller friend Felton Cochran in his San Angelo bookstore, he picked up a copy of the fall University of Oklahoma Press catalog and with clear disdain showed me a blood red photograph of a Comanche chief wearing a U.S. Cavalry hat with a star on its crown. The "X" in the word "Texas" had been superimposed over the Indian's face in red ink.
"Have you seen this?" Cochran asked. "They're putting out a book called 'The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing....' I called 'em and told 'em to cancel all my orders."
Cochran made some other comments about the book, but you get the point. He didn't care for yet another revisionist history portraying early Texans as land-hungry, wanton exterminators of American Indians and Mexicans.
Indeed, Gary Clayton Anderson's book — the complete subtitle is "Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875" ($29.95) — might ignite the literary equivalent of the century-old Texas-Oklahoma football war. Defenders of the Texas myth doubtless are tightening their figurative saddle cinches and oiling their verbal Winchesters in anticipation of a raid on Oklahoma's well-respected press.
As a news release puts it, "This is not your grandfather's history of Texas."
Anderson, an Oklahoma history professor who also wrote the award-winning "The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention," gets to the point quickly in his introduction. After correctly pointing out that Texas saw nearly a half-century of bloody cultural war during the 19th century, Anderson spits out his theme: "Although the following statement may seem 'presentistic' to some, in hindsight the conflict can be seen for what it was: an Anglo-Texas strategy and a policy (at first haphazard, debated, and even at times abandoned) that gradually led to the deliberate ethnic cleansing of a host of people, especially people of color."
At least he isn't accusing our Texas forebears of practicing genocide, a charge even he believes too broad. Nineteenth-century Texas, in Anderson's view, was more like 20th-century Yugoslavia than 20th-century Nazi Germany.
For proud Texans, the news in Anderson's book gets worse: "Recent studies of Yugoslavia and elsewhere reveal that political elites often direct the actions of paramilitary groups involved in ethnic cleansing. The situation was similar in Texas, where politicians supported Texas Ranger units that became the agents of ethnic cleansing."
Many Texans will find Anderson's thesis offensive. Even a quick perusal of the Internet shows that ethnic cleansing claimed tens of thousands of lives in Bosnia, with instances in other countries going into the hundreds of thousands or millions. In Texas, as Anderson points out, the death toll on either side stayed in the hundreds.
No one familiar with Texas history can deny that violence occurred at the hands of all parties involved in Texas' cultural warfare (a much more reasonable term than ethnic cleansing). But most historians see what happened as a struggle for control, not systemic elimination. The history of the world is the series of stories of one people conquering another. It might not be pretty, but it's why this column is written in English instead of Spanish.
The likely prospect that many Texans will not agree with Anderson's conclusion does not detract from the quality of his research. Anderson has clearly dug deep. His bibliography lists a considerable amount of primary material, and he certainly read the mail of key figures in the Texas government, the military and federal agencies that handled Indian affairs.
Three things would have improved this book. First, better editing to eliminate sentences like this: "Ford agreed, inspecting the well-made bison-skin tepees before he departed, with their hair turned inside for warmth, and noting the dozen hides that graced the floors of each lodge." On another page, the date 1841 is misprinted as 1941.
Second, Anderson's subjectivity robs the book of much of its persuasive power. Sentences such as "Some Texans began to see rangers for what they really were — an embarrassment and a threat to law and order" are certainly open to argument. Not every ranger shot first and asked questions later, but this book does.
In another passage, Anderson suggests that Sam Houston, while governor of the state on the eve of the Civil War, "buried" an exculpatory letter in his state papers. The organization of those papers would have happened long after Houston's death. Where the letter ended up was likely the handiwork of some clerk or latter-day archivist.
Finally, the book would have benefited from more use of the actual words of the people Anderson sees as murderous villains. If they were guilty, we need to see smoking guns, in their writing or that of some other contemporary figure.
Though I do not think Anderson has proved his case, his book offers new information on this bloody period of Texas history. For instance, a large number of white and mixed-race renegades, apparently believing that it made for good cover, posed as American Indians and stole livestock, raped and murdered. This aspect of frontier history has not been well-explored.
Anderson concedes that the Texas myth "will always live on in John Wayne films and the distorted history created by Anglo Founding Fathers....But let us remember that the conqueror first tells the tale of his successes. In its retelling, heroism and myth soon dominate. But the truth's reemergence is always in the offing."
True enough. But the horses those pioneer Texans rode were not all black and not all white. Neither is the truth Anderson has strived for.
Texana columnist Mike Cox is the author of 12 books about Texas history and culture.
PING!
Only the euros have the sack/ taint of immorality needed to engage in absolute genocide to make room for their families. Argentina anyone?
Yep. now give your house to some indian. give him the keys to your car also, and everything you own. Until you, dear enlightened writer, are willing to do this- -- STFU
Apparently that is the book cover.
HISTORY was built on "Ethnic Cleansing".
I'm sure that before this is over, it will somehow turn out to be Bush's fault.
And the Indians "Ethnically Cleansed" other Indian tribes before whites even came on the scene.
Was Haliburton involved?
I would say Texas was built by tough pioneers, in harsh conditions. If the natives attacked, kidnaped, tortured and killed the newcomers, well, the newcomers fought back. People with these soft hearts should watch the animal world and even better biology, now there is some rough play.
Hey it's alright! The English stole it from the Spanish who stole it from the aborigines. Remember the Alamo? P.S. ask the border patrol or the vigilantes or Tancredo:'Who owns it now?'. Those paths across desert have been documented to have probably been in use for tens of thousands of years. No harm , no foul. Grin and Bear it. Dale.
They tried at the Alamo.
Figures this book came from a bunch of jealous land thieves... you do know where "Sooner" came from, right?
Hook-em, Ted
Texas ping
There was extreme violence on both sides.
I will assume it's BS.
The Comanche were foes that wouldn't quit until their tribes were decimated and their horse herds destroyed, limiting their war-making ability, mostly by the US Army under McKenzie.
While the Rangers took no prisoners, their operations against the Comanche were mere pinpricks comparted to the sustained operations of the US Army after the Civil War.
I'll have to get the book.
I think the feds are holding some 'indian money', but they can't find it to count or return?
Ding, ding! We have a winner! What these professors conveniently forget is that tribal wars over hunting grounds were the natives' version of ethnic cleansing. After the white man came, rights to be the trading middlemen were another factor.
Anyway, what the Hell did the Indians do with the land when THEY had it? These Stone Age people were ripe for a takeover by any technologically advanced society, whether they were white, brown, black or polka-dotted. Evidently it's Whitey's fault that he got here first.
Bush's fault. No doubt about it.
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