Friday July 8, 1921. Whiskey in some jars but not others. End of the Anglo Irish War, Prohibition, and the formation of Land o Lakes.

On this day in 1921 the Irish Republicans and the British government agreed to a truce in order to commence discussions concerning Irish independence.  The truce was to go into effect on July 11.

De Valera's note to David Lloyd George at the conclusion of the meetings read:

Sir, The desire you express on the part of the British Government to end the centuries of conflict between the peoples of these two islands, and to establish relations of neighbourly harmony, is the genuine desire of the people of Ireland. 

I have consulted with my colleagues and secured the views of the representatives of the minority of our Nation in regard to the invitation you have sent me. 

In reply, I desire to say that I am ready to meet and discuss with you on what bases such a Conference as that proposed can reasonably hope to achieve the object desired. 

I am, Sir, Faithfully yours, Eamon de Valera

With this, a major mental impasse had been reached in the conflict with the British all but agreeing to some form of Irish independence.

Land o Lakes agricultural co op was formed.  We noted their formation date, and the controversy surrounding their former promotional image, here:

Exit Mia.

On July 8, 1921, Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association, a dairy cooperative, formed for the purpose of marketing their products.  They didn't like the name, however, and held a contest that ended up selecting a submission made in 1926, that being Land O Lakes, noting the nature of Minnesota itself, although we don't associate lakes much with dairy.    In 1926 the coop received a painting of an Indian woman holding a carton of their butter, looking forward at the viewer, with lakes and forests in the background.  They liked it so much they adopted it as their label and while they had it stylized by Jess Betlach, an illustrator, the image itself remained remarkably consistent with the original design, which says something as illustrations by Betlach sometimes approached the cheesecake level and depictions of Indian women in the period often strayed into depictions of European American models instead of real Indian women.

For reasons unknown to me, the depiction of the young Indian women acquired the nickname "Mia" over time.

And now she's been removed from the scene, quite literally.

In 1928 the Land O Lakes dairy cooperative hired an advertising agency to come up with a logo for them. The logo that was produced featured an Indian woman kneeling in front of a lake scene, with forests surrounding the lake, and holding a box of Land O Lakes butter in a fashion that basically depicted the woman offering it to the viewer.  From time to time Land O Lakes actually changed the logo on a temporary basis, but it always featured Mia, but not always in the same pose.  On at least one occasion she was shown in profile near a lake and seemingly working (churning) something in a pot.  On another, she was rowing a canoe.

Frederic Remington nocturn, The Luckless Hunter.  This is a fairly realistic depiction of a native hunter in winter, on the typically small range horse of the type actually in use on the Northern Plains.

The adoption of Indian depictions and cultural items as symbols in European American culture goes a long ways back, so Land O Lakes adopting the logo in 1928 was hardly a novelty.  In ways that we can hardly grasp now, European American culture began to admire and adopt Indian symbols and depictions even while the armed struggle between the native peoples and European Americans was still going on.  Frontiers men dating back all the way to the 18th Century adopted items of native clothing, which may be credited to its utility as much as anything else.  In 1826, however, a tribe was romantically treated in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, which virtually defined the "noble" image of the Indian even as the "savage" image simultaneously kept on keeping on.  The popular genre of Western art continued to do the same in the last half of the 19th Century, and often by the same artists (with Russel being an exception, as he always painted natives sympathetically, and Shreyvogel being the counter exception, as always did the opposite).  Cities and towns provided an example of this as their European American settlers used Indian geographic names from fairly early on, after the original bunch of European place names and honorifics ceased to become the absolute rule, with some western towns, such as Cheyenne, being named after Indian tribes that were literally being displaced as the naming occured.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, i.e., Sitting Bull, in 1885, the year he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  Sitting Bull received $50.00 per week, as sum that's equivalent to $1,423.00 in current U.S. Dollars.  He worked for the show for four months, during which time he made money on the side charging for autographs.  This came only nine years after he was present at Little Big Horn and only five years before his death at the hands of Indian Police at age 59, just two weeks before Wounded Knee.

The entire cultural habit took on a new form, however, in the late 19th Century, just as the Frontier closed. Oddly, the blood was hardly frozen at Wounded Knee when a highly romanticized depiction of American Indians began.  Starting perhaps even before the last major bloodletting of the Frontier had occurred, it arguably began with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, which employed Indian warriors who had only lately been engaged in combat with the United States.

The principal Indian performers, if we wish to consider them that, were men, as were most of the performers.  But women had a role in Wild West shows as well,  as did children.  As Cody was not unsympathetic to Indians in general, his portrayals of Indian women and children were not likely to have been too excessive, but this is not true of all wild west shows of the era, some of which grossly exaggerated female Indian dress or which dressed them down for exploitative reasons.

Nonetheless, as this occurred, a real romantic view of Plains Indians arose and white performers affected Indian dress or exaggerated Indian dress and an entire romanticization of a people who were still very much alive and not living in the best of circumstances oddly took off.  White performers made the circuit performing as romantic Indian couples and an adopted romanticized Indian culture seeped into the general American culture in various ways, including in the form of depictions and ritual.

Camp Fire Girls in 1917.  The first half of the 20th Century saw the rise of the scouting movment and in the English speaking world this spread to girls after it has become very successful with boys.  The Boy Scout movement had military scouting and hence military men as the model for its idealized muscular Christianity movement, but no such equivalent existed for girls.  In the US this came to be compensated for, however, by the adoption of the Indian woman as the model, as she was outdoorsy and rugged by default.

This saw its expression in numerous different ways, including in its incorporation into the Boy Scout inspired female scouting organizations and in popular "Indian maiden" literature.  But it also saw the development of the use of depictions of Indians in advertising and popular culture.

Out of uniform Girl Scouts in 1912 in clothing and hair styles that were inspired by presumed native female dress.

In 1901 one of the legendary American motorcycle companies simply named itself "Indian", for example.  Savage Firearms named itself that in 1894, with there being no intent to demean Indians but rather to name itself after Indian warriors.  Cleveland called its baseball team the "Indians".  The NFL being a late comer to American professional sports, the Washington football franchise didn't get around to naming itself the "Redskins" until 1932 in contrast.

The psychology behind this cultural adaption is an interesting one, with a conquering people doing the rare thing of partially co-opting the identify of the conquered people, even as those people remained in a period of trying to adopt to the constantly changing policy of the post frontier American West.  Celebrated in their pre conquest state, and subject to any number of experiments in their day to day lives, it was as if there were two different groups of people being dealt with, the theoretical and the real, with the real not doing so well with the treatment they were receiving.  Indeed, that's still the case.

Following World War Two this began to be reconsidered, with that reconsideration really setting in during the 1970s.  Books and films, and films based on books, that reflected this reconsideration became widely considered. Thomas Berger's brilliant Little Big Man remains in its brilliant and accurate reflection of Plains Indian culture what True Grit is to the culture of the southern American European American West.  Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee destroyed any remaining claim the Army had to the event being a battle definitively.  The 1973 American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee brought the whole thing into sharp focus.  Kids who had gone to school their entire lives with Big Chief writing tablets would finish the decade out with Son Of Big Chief, who looked a lot more like he'd been with AIM at Wounded Knee or maybe even at Woodstock.

American Indian Movement flag.

As this occured, people questioned the old symbols and depictions. But it wasn't really until the late 1990s that the commercial and popular ones began to go.

Slowly, and sometimes controversially, after that time, people began to reconsider the depiction of people it had used in advertising where those people had been minorities.  It didn't just apply to Indians, of course, but too all sorts of things.  Sombrero wearing Mexican cartoon characters and bandits disappeared from Tex-Mex fast food signs.  Quaker Oats' "Aunt Jemima went from being a woman who was clearly associated with Southern household post civil war servants, who had only lately been slaves, in an undoubtedly racist depiction, to being a smiling middle aged African American woman whom Quaker Oats hoped, probably accurately", would cause people to forget what being an "aunt" or "uncle" meant to African Americans.  As late as 1946 Mars Inc. would feel free to do something similar but without the racist depiction and use the "uncle" moniker  and a depiction of  well dressed elderly African American for Uncle Ben's Rice, something they've kept doing as they'd never gone as far as Quaker Oats.  And these are just common well known examples.  There are leagues of others.

But removing labels and depictions has been slow.  The Washington football team remains tagged with the clearly offensive name "the Redskins".  Cleveland finally retired the offensive Chief Wahoo from their uniforms only in 2018.

So what about Mia?

She started leaving, sort of, in 2018 when the logo was redesigned so that the knees of the kneeling woman were no longer visible, in part because in the age of easy computer manipulation she became a target for computer pornification by males with a juvenile mindset. That fact, however probably amplified the criticism of the logo itself, which was changed to being just a head and shoulder depiction.  Now, she's just gone.

But did that really make sense, or achieve anything, in context?

A literal association between Native Americans and dairy would be odd and was probably never intended.  While native agriculture varied widely, no Indian kept cattle until after they'd been introduced by European Americans and cattle are, of course, not native to North America.  Indians did adapt to ranching in the West, something that's rarely noted for some reason, and indeed the entire Mexican ranching industry is a mestizo one and therefore a blending of two cultures by definition.  On the northern plains some Indians were working as cowboy and even ranchers by the early 20th Century and Southwestern tribes had adopted livestock in the form of sheep by the mid 19th.

But dairy cattle are a different deal and there's no, in so far as I'm aware, Native American association with it.  Indeed, 74% of Native Americans are lactose intolerant.*  This isn't surprising as its fairly well established that lactose tolerance is a product of evolutionary biology.  By and large, the vast majority of cultures have had no reason over time to consume the milk of cattle they were keeping, which were kept first for food, and then for labor, and then as things developed, for labor until they could not, at which time they became food.  Milk wasn't high on the list.  And for Native Americans, being one of the three inhabited continents in which cattle were not native, it was obviously off the list.**

Some critics have called the imagery racist. North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, says it goes “hand-in-hand with with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls, by depicting Native women as sex objects".  But that comment seems misplaced with this logo. She's definitely not the odd blue eyed "Navajo" woman wearing blue beads that still appears on the doors of the semi tractors of Navajo Express.

Indeed, the irony of Mia is that in her last depictions she was illustrated by Patrick DesJarlait, who was a Red Lakes Ojibwe from Minnesota.  He not only painted her, but he painted her wearing an Ojibwe dress.  So she was depicted as an Indian woman, by an Indian artist.

It's hard to see a man panting a woman of his own tribe, fully and appropriately dressed, as being a racist or exploitative act.

Indeed, the opposite really seems true.  The original dairy co-op was really trying to honor their state in the name and they went the next step and acknowledged the original owners.  Mia was the symbol of the original occupants.

And now she's gone, and with that, the acknowledgment of who was there first.

Which doesn't seem like a triumph for Native acknowledgment.

________________________________________________________________________________

*As are 70% of African Americans and 15% of European Americans. Surprisingly 53% of Mexican Americans are, in spite of dairy products being common to the Mexican dietary culture.  A whopping 95% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant.

Just recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm somewhat lactose intolerant myself, something I seem to be growing into in old age.  Only mildly so, and I've only noticed it recently.  My children, however, have problems with dairy.  My wife does not. So they must get that via me.

***Cattle are not native to the new world or Australia, but are found just about everywhere else.

Prohibition raids were going on in the Washington D. C. era on this day a century ago.

Pouring whiskey into a sewer

In legal proceedings elsewhere, French observers at German warc rime trials departed after declaring the German proceedings "a farce".

May 27, 1921. Horrors in Oklahoma and Futile Acts in Russia.

The body of Anna Brown, an Osage Indian woman, in Osage County, Oklahoma led to an investigation which which ultimately determined that a large number of Osage women were killed over a period of years, but the reasons and perpetrators, and even if they were related, were largely never determined, although there white men were convicted of murders.  It is thought that the killings may have been done to effectuate inheritance to non Indians, as at the time the Osage were the wealthiest people in the world due to oil production.  As a result of that suspicion, Congress ultimately passed a bill prohibiting the inheritance rights to pass to non tribal members.

Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in Osage County, Oklahoma.

Mensheviks seized control of Vladivostok from Bolsheviks.  

The Mensheviks were a  more numerous Socialist group than the Bolsheviks, and less radical, which doesn't mean they were not radical.  They failed in their contest with the Bolsheviks and, by this time, they'd actually been outlawed due to the Kronstadt Rebellion.

May 21, 1941. SS Robin Moor Sunk, O'ooham Resist

The SS Robin Moor was sunk by the German submarine U-69 even though German U-boats at the time had been instructed not to sink ships in certain areas in order not to provoke the United States into entering the war prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union.  The Robin Moor was flying U.S. colors and was identified as a neutral ship prior to being sunk.  The Germans allowed the crew of the unescorted ship, on its way to Mozambique, to evacuate before it was sunk.  The ships departure had been apparently revealed to the Germans by a U.S. spy in the United States.  The motivation of the U-boat's commander has been questioned, given as he was operating contrary to orders.

The sinking resulted in some controversy, but the materials it was carrying could have been regarded as war materials even though the ship itself was not engaged in supplying the British forces.

The German government ordered the United States to remove its diplomats from Paris by June 10.  The French government at the time was of course headquartered in Vichy.

On the same day the Royal Navy prevented seaborne German forces from landing on Crete, but the destroyer HMS Juno was sunk by the Italian air force.

The Soviet Union's Central Committee War Section met, resulting in an argument between Stalin and the head of Soviet intelligence, the latter who maintained the Germans were about to invade the USSR.  The argument resulted in that latter figure being arrested and shot.  Amazingly Stalin didn't suffer the same fate when it was soon learned how wrong he was.

A theater strike commenced in Norway over the revocation of working permits for six actors who refused to perform in German controlled radio.  The strike was not a success and ultimately ended with the Germans taking full control of Norwegian theaters.

A dispute with Native American O'ooham leader Pia Machita ended in Arizona with his arrest for inciting his people to avoid conscription.  He and his followers had been on the run since the prior October for resisting the draft, at which time they had been raided by Federal authorities.

The O'ooham band that Pia Machita was part of was very small but was uniquely active in its views on the authority of  the United States.  He did not recognize the Gadsen Purchase and his band refused to assimilate.  While they were small in numbers, the US government feared that their resistance to conscription would spread to other tribes.

 

A Proclamation on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, 2021

MAY 04, 2021 • PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

Today, thousands of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native Americans continue to cry out for justice and healing.  On Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, we remember the Indigenous people who we have lost to murder and those who remain missing and commit to working with Tribal Nations to ensure any instance of a missing or murdered person is met with swift and effective action. 

Our failure to allocate the necessary resources and muster the necessary commitment to addressing and preventing this ongoing tragedy not only demeans the dignity and humanity of each person who goes missing or is murdered, it sends pain and shockwaves across our Tribal communities.  Our treaty and trust responsibilities to Tribal Nations require our best efforts, and our concern for the well-being of these fellow citizens require us to act with urgency.  To this end, our Government must strengthen its support and collaboration with Tribal communities.

My Administration is fully committed to working with Tribal Nations to address the disproportionately high number of missing or murdered Indigenous people, as well as increasing coordination to investigate and resolve these cases and ensure accountability.  I am further committed to addressing the underlying causes behind those numbers, including — among others — sexual violence, human trafficking, domestic violence, violent crime, systemic racism, economic disparities, and substance use and addiction.  Federal partnerships to address the number of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples will be governed by the Nation-to-Nation foundation of our relationship with Tribal governments and respect for Tribal sovereignty and self-determination.  The challenges in Tribal communities are best met by solutions that are informed and shaped by Tribal leaders and Tribal governments. 

Tribes across the United States have long worked to provide solutions for their communities.  In April, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana, and the FBI announced the Nation’s first Tribal Community Response Plan, part of a Department of Justice pilot project to address emergent missing person cases in their community.  When someone goes missing, it is often an urgent and time-sensitive situation.  The Tribal community response plan lays out a blueprint for how Tribal law enforcement; local, State, and Federal law enforcement; and community members can respond when someone goes missing from a Tribal community — resolving important issues of jurisdictional overlap and gaps in order to respond swiftly and effectively.  Other Tribes and Native villages such as the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma, Native Village of Unalakleet in Alaska, and the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan, are working with Federal partners on their own community response plans. 

My Administration has made a priority of helping to solve the issues surrounding Native Americans who go missing and those who are murdered across the United States — including high rates of Native women and girls, including transgender women and girls.  We recognize there is a level of mistrust of the United States Government in many Native communities, stemming from a long history of broken promises, oppression, and trauma. That is why we are pursuing ways to build trust in our Government and the systems designed to provide support to families in need.  We must bridge the gap for families in crisis, provide necessary support services, and support opportunities for healing through holistic community-driven approaches.

I am committed to building on the successes of the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by supporting the passage of the VAWA Reauthorization of 2021. Among other protections, this bill reaffirms inherent Tribal authority to prosecute certain non-Indian offenders — extending protections from domestic violence and dating violence to Native American victims of sexual violence, stalking, trafficking, child abuse, elder abuse, and assault against law enforcement or justice personnel when crimes are committed on Tribal territory.  Additionally, through the American Rescue Plan we provided an additional $35 million in grants for Tribes to provide temporary housing, assistance, and supportive services to victims of domestic and dating violence, as well as supplemental funding for the StrongHearts Native Helpline, and additional funding for services for sexual assault survivors.

My Administration has also committed to effectively implement the requirements of Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act, legislation focused on combating the issues surrounding missing or murdered Indigenous persons.  The Presidential Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives continues to convene the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to address the issues from a combined public health–public safety partnership.  Furthering the efforts of the task force, the White House Council on Native American Affairs will bring together all relevant Federal agencies to work with Tribal Nations on exploring additional ways to enhance prevention efforts and improve access to safety and justice. 

Furthermore, informed by Tribal input, the Department of the Interior recently established the Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services to provide leadership and direction for cross-departmental and interagency work involving missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives.  The MMU will help bring the weight of the Federal Government to bear when investigating these cases and marshal law enforcement resources across Federal agencies and throughout Indian country. 

Our commitment to addressing these issues and to strengthening these critical partnerships is unwavering.  For too long, there has been too much sorrow and worry.  United by our mutual investment in healthy, safe communities, we will work together to achieve lasting progress.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 5, 2021, as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day.  I call on all Americans and ask all levels of government to support Tribal governments and Tribal communities’ efforts to increase awareness of the issue of missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives through appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.

Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.: 

Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.

Sgt. Toy receiving the Medal of Honor in 1891.  Sgt. Toy was cited for "bravery while shooting Indians" at Wounded Knee.  He is known to have shot two during the engagement, which is about all that his citations and the supporting material relates.

 Tribes Want Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Revoked.

While this isn't a Wyoming item per se, the Battle of Wounded Knee has been noted here before, as its a regional one.

It would likely surprise most readers here that twenty Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who participated in the actions at Wounded Knee.  The odd thing is that I was under the impression that the Army had rescinded these medals long ago, and I'm not completely certain that they haven't.  Having said that, I can't find that they were, so my presumption must have been in error.

To put this in context, the medals that were rescinded, if any were, weren't rescinded because Wounded Knee was a massacre.  They were rescinded because they didn't meet the post April 1917 criteria for receiving the award.

The Medal of Honor was first authorized in 1861 by the Navy, not the Army, following the retirement of Gen. Winfield Scott, who was adamantly opposed to the awarding of medals to servicemen, which he regarded as a European practice, not an American one.  The award was authorized by Congress that year, at the Navy's request.  The Army followed in 1862 in the same fashion.  The medals actually vary by appearance, to this day, depending upon which service issues them, and they've varied somewhat in design over time.

During the Civil War the award was generally issued for extraordinary heroism, but not necessarily of the same degree for which it is today.  Because of this, a fairly large number of Medals of Honor were conferred after the Civil War to servicemen who retroactively sought them, so awards continued for Civil War service for decades following the war.  New awards were also issued, of course, for acts of heroism in the remaining decades of the 19th Century, with Army awards usually being related to service in the Indian Wars.  Navy awards, in contrast, tended to be issued for heroic acts in lifesaving, a non combat issuance of the award that could not occur today.  Indeed, a fairly large number were issued to sailors who went over the sides of ships to save the lives, or attempt to, of drowning individuals, often with tragic results to the sailors.

At any rate, the period following the war and the method by which it was retroactively issued may have acclimated the Army to issuing awards as there are a surprising number of them that were issued for frontier battles.  This does not mean that there were not genuine acts of heroism that took place in those battles, it's just surprising how many there were and its clear that the criteria was substantially lower than that which would apply for most of the 20th Century.

Indeed, in the 20th Century the Army began to significantly tighten up requirements to hold the medal. This came into full fruition during World War One during which the Army made it plain that it was only a combat medal, while the Navy continued to issue the medal for peacetime heroism.  In 1917 the Army took the position that the medal could only be issued for combat acts of heroism at the risk of life to the recipient, and in 1918 that change became official.  Prior to the 1918 change the Army commissioned a review board on past issuance of the medal and struck 911 instances of them having been issued.  I'd thought the Wounded Knee medals had been stricken, but my presumption must be in error.

Frontier era Medals of Honor, as well as those issued to Civil War era soldiers after the Civil War, tend to be remarkably lacking in information as to why they were conferred.  This has presented a problem for the Army looking back on them in general.

Indeed, the Wounded Knee medals have this character.  They don't say much, and what they do say isn't all that useful to really know much about what lead them to be awarded.  There is a peculiar aspect to them, however, in that they don't reflect what we generally know about the battle historically.  

Wikipedia has summarized the twenty awards and what they were awarded for, and this illustrates this problem.  The Wounded Knee Wikipedia page summarizes this as follows

·         Sergeant William Austin, cavalry, directed fire at Indians in ravine at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Mosheim Feaster, cavalry, extraordinary gallantry at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Mathew Hamilton, cavalry, bravery in action at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Joshua Hartzog, artillery, rescuing commanding officer who was wounded and carried him out of range of hostile guns at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Marvin Hillock, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant Bernhard Jetter, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee for "killing an Indian who was in the act of killing a wounded man of B Troop."

·         Sergeant George Loyd, cavalry, bravery, especially after having been severely wounded through the lung at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant Albert McMillain, cavalry, while engaged with Indians concealed in a ravine, he assisted the men on the skirmish line, directed their fire, encouraged them by example, and used every effort to dislodge the enemy at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Thomas Sullivan, cavalry, conspicuous bravery in action against Indians concealed in a ravine at Wounded Knee;

·         First Sergeant Jacob Trautman, cavalry, killed a hostile Indian at close quarters, and, although entitled to retirement from service, remained to close of the campaign at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant James Ward, cavalry, continued to fight after being severely wounded at Wounded Knee;

·         Corporal William Wilson, cavalry, bravery in Sioux Campaign, 1890;

·         Private Hermann Ziegner, cavalry, conspicuous bravery at Wounded Knee;

·         Musician John Clancy, artillery, twice voluntarily rescued wounded comrades under fire of the enemy;

·         Lieutenant Ernest Garlington, cavalry, distinguished gallantry;

·         First Lieutenant John Chowning Gresham, cavalry, voluntarily led a party into a ravine to dislodge Sioux Indians concealed therein. He was wounded during this action.

·         Second Lieutenant Harry Hawthorne, artillery, distinguished conduct in battle with hostile Indians;

·         Private George Hobday, cavalry, conspicuous and gallant conduct in battle;

·         First Sergeant Frederick Toy, cavalry, bravery;

·         Corporal Paul Weinert, artillery, taking the place of his commanding officer who had fallen severely wounded, he gallantly served his piece, after each fire advancing it to a better position

For quite a few of these, we're left without a clue as to what the basis of the award was, at least based on this summation. But for some, it would suggest a pitched real battle.  A couple of the awards are for rescuing wounded comrades under fire.  Others are for combat actions that we can recognize.

Indeed, one historian that I know, and probably only because I know him, has noted the citations in support for "it was a real battle", taking the controversial, albeit private, position that Wounded Knee was a real, pitched, engagement, not simply a slaughter.  This isn't the popular view at all, of course, and its frankly not all that well supported by the evidence either.  But what of that evidence.

A popular thesis that's sometimes presented is that Wounded Knee was the 7th Cavalry's revenge for the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Perhaps this is so, but if it is so, it's would be somewhat odd in that it would presume an institutional desire for revenge rather than a personal one, for the most part.  Wounded Knee was twenty four years after Little Big Horn and most of the men who had served at Little Big Horn were long since out of the service.  Indeed, some of the men who received awards would have been two young for service in 1890, and while I haven't looked up all of their biographies, some of them were not likely to have even been born at the time.  Maybe revenge was it, but if that's the case, it would demonstrate a 19th Century retention of institutional memories that vastly exceed the 20th and 21st Century ones.  Of course, the 7th Cavalry remains famous to this day for Little Big Horn, so perhaps that indeed is it.

Or perhaps what it reflects is that things went badly wrong at Wounded Knee and the massacre became a massively one sided battle featuring a slaughter, something that the Sioux on location would have been well within their rights to engage in. That is, once the things went wrong and the Army overreacted, as it certainly is well established that it did, the Sioux with recourse to arms would have been justified in acting in self defense.  That there were some actions in self defense which would have had the character of combat doesn't mean it wasn't combat.

And that raises the sticky moral issues of the Congressional efforts to rescind the medals.  Some of these medals are so poorly supported that the Army could likely simply rescind them on their own, as they have many others, and indeed, I thought they had.  Some seem quite unlikely to meet the modern criteria for the medal no matter what, and therefore under the practices established in 1917, they could be rescinded even if they were regarded as heroic at the time.  Cpl. Weinert's for example, unless there was more to it, would probably just merit a letter of commendation today.

Indeed, save for two examples that reference rescuing wounded comrades, I don't know that any of these would meet the modern criteria. They don't appear to.  So once again, most of these would appear to be subject to proper unilateral Army downgrading or rescission all on their own with no Congressional action.

But what of Congressional action, which has been proposed. The Army hasn't rescinded these awards and they certainly stand out as awards that should receive attention.  If Congress is to act, the best act likely would be to require the Army to review overall its pre 1917 awards once again.  If over 900 were weeded out the first time, at least a few would be today, and I suspect all of these would.

To simply rescind them, however, is problematic, as it will tend to be based neither on the criteria for award today, or the criteria of the award in 1890, but on the gigantic moral problem that is the Battle of Wounded Knee itself.  That is, these awards are proposed to be removed as we regard Wounded Knee as a genocidal act over all, which it does indeed appear to be.

The problem with that is that even if it is a genocidal act in chief, individual acts during it may or may not be. So, rushing forwards to rescue a wounded comrade might truly be heroic, even if done in the middle of an act of barbarism.  Other acts, such as simply shooting somebody, would seem to be participating in that barbarism, but here too you still have the situation of individual soldiers suddenly committed to action and not, in every instance, knowing what is going on.  It's now too late to know in most cases.  Were they acting like William Calley or just as a regular confused soldier?

Indeed, if medals can be stricken because we now abhor what they were fighting for (and in regard to Wounded Knee, it was questioned nearly immediately, which may be why the Army felt compelled to issue medals to those participating in it, to suggest it was a battle more than it was), what do we do with other problematic wars?

Eighty six men, for example, received the Medal of Honor for the Philippine Insurrection.  In retrospect, that was a pure colonial war we'd not condone in any fashion today, and it was controversial at the time.  Theodore Roosevelt very belatedly received the Medal of Honor for leading the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry up Kettle Hill during the Spanish American War, and he no doubt met the modern criterial, but the Spanish American War itself is morally dubious at best.  

Of course, none of these awards are associated with an act of genocide, which takes us back to Wounded Knee.  As noted above, maybe so many awards were issued there as the Army wanted to to convert a massacre into a battle, and conferring awards for bravery was a way to attempt to do that.

Certainly the number of awards for Wounded Knee is very outsized.  It's been noted that as many awards have been issued for heroism at Wounded Knee as have been for some gigantic Civil War battles.  Was the Army really more heroic at Wounded Knee than Antietam?  That seems unlikely.

Anyway a person looks at it, this is one of those topics that it seems clear would be best served by Army action.  The Army has looked at the topic of pre 1917 awards before, and it removed a fair number of them.  There's no reason that it can't do so again. It was regarded as harsh the last time it occurred, and some will complain now as well, but the Army simply did it last time.   That would honor the medal and acknowledge the history, and it really shouldn't be confined to just Wounded Knee.

Dead men and horses at Wounded Knee following the conflict.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 8. Trump's Party, Getting Vaccinated or not, or definitely, but for what, Goodfellas, Prince Harry the Wuss, Rude Hearing Examination, Indian Names on Vehicles, Gas Stations, or not, Bankrupt Boy Scouts, Voting Restrictions, Hidden Meanings, and other news of the day.

Trump's Party?  The Long Goodbye?

There's been a lot of debate about where the GOP is headed, post Trump, and it appears we don't know, as the post Trump era has not arrived.  By all signs, he remains firmly in control of his party.

The former President delivered a speech at CPAC.  It was really long.

Trump predictably insisted that he won the election, but in terms of the popular vote he's lost every election.  Indeed, it'd be well worth remembering for conservatives that he lost the popular vote in 2016.  That year he entered his Administration with the House and the Senate in GOP hands. He lost the House in 2018, and while the House made gains in 2020, the Republicans didn't take it back and directly lost the Senate due to his actions.

Given all of this, the GOP appears set to ride the Trump horse into 2022. We'll see how that works, but this week's past Senate vote on the COVID 19 relief bill suggests that the Democratic era of cooperation with the GOP, more hoped for among moderate Democrats than real, may have more or less come to an end.  This may give the GOP a chance to really assert its conservative and populist issues, but the overall problem right now is that a party with Trump at the head, even though he's firmly in control inside the GOP, appears weaker and weaker nationally.  If the GOP doesn't pick up seats in 2022, it'll be due to Trump.  Right now, conservative columnists that stuck with him, and the columnists are normally the sounding boards for political ideas, are almost completely without credit, leaving only those who opposed him, who are now outside the GOP folds, with any credit at all, but no audiences.

On audiences, for much of Trump's presidency I'd hear from his supports, "he speaks just like us".  This struck me as a couple of times I started, and then abandoned threads on the bizarre nature of New York political speech.  Trump is a New Yorker.  So is Mario Cuomo.  It's odd to think that they're from the same state as Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller.  It's almost as if at some point all New York politicians determined that they had to watch Goodfellas for speech cues.

That other New Yorker

New York City.

Mario Cuomo is in big trouble right now, of course, as well.

Cuomo is in the class of New York politicians that the New York based press loved, but outside of New York, he was really hard to take.  Of course, in the American fashion, the same forces that adored him have now turned on him like a pack of wolves.

I haven't followed his decline but it all has to do with "inappropriateness" and women.  I don't know if he's guilty or not, and I'm not going to investigate the whole thing as its not worth my time to do so, but its interesting how he went from hero to goat overnight.

Prince Harry, wuss

Prince Harry. . . oh wait, King Edward VIII, and earlier royal wuss.

This will be inappropriate Prince Harry and his wife Meaghan are in the news once again as they were interviewed by Oprah.

I can't stand Oprah in the first place as she's too emblematic of false pop culture.  It'd figure that she'd interview the royal whiners.

I figure that every family has its problems, and the British Royals are no different.  Maybe their existentially set up for this due to a long history of narrowed genetic lines and a whacky institutional role that leaves them with less and less of a role very year.  Their last period of real relevance was during World War Two and now its really hard to figure out what they do, and why they need to do it, if they do.

Be that as it may, Prince Harry had some merit until he married Meaghan, but now he just seems to be a full time drama queen.  Enough already.

Getting the Amy Coney  Barrett treatment?

Representative Haaland, who got yelled at by Sen. Barrasso.

Senator John Barrasso was front and center in the news concerning Deb Haaland's confirmation as Secretary of the Interior, and not in a good way.  Various Native American spokesmen felt that she'd received the Amy Coney Barrett treatment, so to speak, in being singled out due to her ethnicity for abusive treatment.  Sen. Barrasso interrupted her at one point and yelled "I'm talking about the law", which was apparently a reaction to what he thought were efforts to dodge questions he posed.

This wasn't as bad, however, as the statement by Louisiana Senator Joe Kennedy who called her a "neo socialist, left of Lenin, whack job".

Haaland is the first Native American nominated to the post.  In reaction to her getting rough treatment Native Americans in Montana purchased a billboard advertisement supporting her.  Senator Barrasso really can't stop her appointment and probably ought to back off a bit unless he's absolutely certain that the GOP is taking back Congress in 2022, which he can't be certain of.

Rebranding a Jeep Brand?

A Jeep before they were called that. The short lived Bantam 1/4 ton Army truck, the very first, and extremely tiny, Jeep.

The Cherokee nation wants Jeep to quit calling the Jeep Cherokee the "Cherokee" and it will probably do so.

There are and were a lot of automobiles named after Indian tribes and it was meant as an honorific, not an insult.  Jeep probably has no choice but to do this, but the fact of the matter is that it's better to be remembered as a Jeep name than forgotten, which is what is generally the case for Indian tribes.  I can't say having your name on the side of an automobile leads to a lot of deep thought about your culture, but it might lead to at least some.

The term "cancel culture" is big in the zeitgeist right now, and this does indeed seem to be a legitimate example of it.  At least it isn't a "woke" example, like the flap over UW's "The world needs more Cowboys" campaign of a couple of years ago.

Banning the pumps.

Gas station obviously built in the day before they were a topic of controversy.

Petulma California banned the construction of new gasoline stations in an effort to address climate change.

I don't know that this does anything  It sounds more like a city zoning matter ("we think gasoline stations are ugly") than a legitimate ecological effort.  It's not like people won't be able to buy gas.  Indeed, present owners of gas stations in Petulma are probably jumping for joy. . . as are lawyers who will soon be suing arguing that this is an unfair and unconstitutional restraint of trade.

But those why might  be engaging in a little Schadenfreude right now would be well advised not to.  I'm constantly hearing that electric vehicles "won't work here" as if cars are built for Wyoming, or that "Americans love to travel too much . . . "  Auto makers are now making it plain that in 2030. . . and that's just nine years, the day of the petroleum fired vehicles is going to rapidly end.  In that way, Petulma may be on to something, but not in the right fashion, as charging stations are going to be going up all over California, not gasoline stations.

Navy requiring sailors to re take their enlistment oaths

One of the things the recent insurrection brought to light is that there are a disturbing number of servicemen who have have brought radical politics into the military.

This has actually been known for sometime and was a pretty big story in military backchannels the past few years, but the general public seems to have been unaware of it.  Now its getting some daylight and the services are openly taking steps to do something about it.

You can trace a lot of this back to at least 1973, and maybe a full history of it would have to go back to 1940.  Traditionally, the US has had next to no standing military at all, with the Navy being the exception.  Indeed, American culture prior to World War Two had a strong anti military sentiment to it.  Career soldiers were usually looked down upon by civilians, including the officers.  You'd not guess it now, but the Frontier Army was completely disdained by most Americans, including those who lived in the West, except times of real conflict.  Cowboys, for example, had no use for soldiers at all.  

This view carried on right up to 1940.  Dwight Eisenhower's father in law, John Doud, tried to get him to leave the military at the time of his marriage to Mamie, as he regarded it, like most executives did, as a dead end career for the lazy.

I'm not endorsing that view, but I'm noting that it was a fact.  Indeed, it was so much a fact that heroes of some big wars, prior to World War Two, had spent part of their careers out of uniform prior to them, even if they were professional soldiers.  U.S. Grant and William Sherman provide such examples.

By and large, the nation relied upon the state militias, later the National Guard, for national defense if a bit war broke out.  The two big World Wars of the 20th Century changed that view and we went into the Cold War with a large military made up of conscripts.  When that became unpopular due to the Vietnam War, we went all volunteer once again.

There's a lot of merit to an all volunteer force. . . if its small, but we've never really achieved that.  The current size of the U.S. Army is 475,000, which is actually a very large force.  The Navy and the Air Force each have about 330,000 personnel.  The Marines number 182,000.  In contrast, for example, the Marine Corps in 1939 amounted to just about 20,000 personnel.

The population of the country is bigger, the pay for servicemen is better, and its much harder to get in than it used to be, of course.  But the country has also gone into a period of real hero worship regarding servicemen which is unwarranted.  People act as if every soldier is a saint and thank everyone whoever was in, including myself, "for your service".  

It's not the case, of course, that the military is a reservoir of the far, far right, like the Reichsheer was or something.  But there are a lot of things going on with the modern military that really need to be addressed. This is one of them.  Social experimentation is another one.  It may be that the military is recruiting some of the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, and creating the wrong situation.

Before this seems too extreme, one of the insurrectionist who is most commented on right now is the dopey women who was an Army veteran.  There are so many things wrong with this that it requires another thread.  Less noticed is that one of the figures was a female Army captain, serving out a period in which she's anticipated to be released, who has a psyops assignment.  That's really bad.

Dopey Virginia

So Virginia jumped on the dope bus and also legalized marijuana.

Are we not suffering from enough mental checking out already?

This trend is obviously going to keep on keeping on right up until lawyers file suit for health problems associated with weed, which will be coming.  At that time, some Schadenfreude will be pretty justified.

Boy Scouts file bankruptcy plan

It would pay the survivors of abuse $6,000 each.  The Scouts are selling some of their art collection to fund this.

We've discussed the Scouts here recently, but there seems to be so much institutionally wrong with the organization right now that a person can really wonder what of it will survive.  Much of what happened to it can't be discussed in the current political climate as no matter what a person says, it's going to be taken the wrong way.  Given that, the organization keeps headed off in a direction which appears to be the wrong way itself.

More voting restrictions bills.

Voting, the way that Victor David Hanson imagines it happed up until November 2020.

Most recently in Georgia.

These are suddenly a hot topic in GOP circles even though there's no evidence of any voting fraud.  To a certain extent there's at least a little bit of a resentful backchannel feeling that making it easy to vote mostly makes it easy for Democrats to vote, a feeling not wholly without merit in the past.  Republicans, for whatever reason, tended to go to the polls. The more numerous Democrats did not.

The irony is, however, that as the Republican Party has aged, it now tends to be the party that doesn't show up in person.  These efforts therefore probably hurt the Republicans more than they help them.

Trumps take the vaccine. . . 

but say nothing about it, back in January.

There's a really anti vax sentiment in certain sections of the GOP.  President Trump questioned the vaccines early on while also boosting dubious or even dangerous COVID 19 treatments.  He himself received the best of care when he was infected and there's reason to believe that he would have died if he hadn't received them.  He urged people to get vaccinated later, in complete fairness, but he didn't get them publicly.  The reason probably has to do with not wanting to offend part of his base.

There are no medical or scientific based reasons not to be vaccinated.  The lingering suspicion on the vaccines is wholly unwarranted.  This goes back to an unfortunate, and lethal, movement that got started some years ago based on non science and boosted by people who didn't know what they were talking about.  Now its hard to overcome.

The only legitimate reasons not to take the vaccine are medical and moral.  There are those who would need to avoid the vaccines for medical reasons, although they'll be few in number.  Some people hold religious objections to all vaccinations, and while I find that poorly grounded in sound theology, those who hold those views hold them and that must be respected.  Often those same people eschew medial treatments of all kind.

Early on there were some Catholic Bishops who objected to the vaccines based on their stem cell lines, given the connection with abortion, but that was rapidly put down as an objection by the Vatican.  Now there are some who are objecting to the Johnson & Johnson line for the same reason.  That has yet to be fully resolved but that vaccine has just come out and, if a person has that objection, they can get one of the other ones.

People have generally been pretty good sports about this, but at some point people who are refusing on grounds lacking a solid base are going to be faced with the question of whether they pose an unfair risk to everyone else and society in general. That may sound heavy handed, but having lived through earlier really strong public vaccination efforts, no matter what a person might think about it now, there will likely be little sympathy as more and more people are vaccinated.  I suspect that back when I was a kid plenty of children were vaccinated at school without any real involvement by their parents, and parents in the era would have disdained any parent who didn't have their kids line up for shots.  People had lived through horrible diseases and they'd had enough.  The Army didn't ask your permission to vaccinate back in the day either, as the ironically kinder and gentler Army of today does, which leads to this. . . 

You may have freedom on conscience but businesses have the freedom of the marketplace

You used to see the "No shirt, no shoes, no service" signs up at restaurants all the time.  Soon you are going to be asked for your proof of vaccination to get on an airplane, or a ride at Disneyland.  Freedom of conscience on this issue will mean that you have the freedom to stay home and watch television.

I've frankly been amazed that more employers haven't required vaccinations.  Universities require vaccinations for a host of diseases and they will on this one as well.  Public schools are going to soon, almost certainly.  Which brings me to this. . .

HPV?  Oh, that's okay, as it involves sex.

It really says something about how messed up American society is right now that lots of people who won't get vaccinated for a disease that you pick up simply by being around somebody else who has it, and who even believe that the vaccination is part of some big plot, but they don't think twice about lining their teenage daughters up for the HPV vaccine.

HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, so yo have to be having sex to get it.  If you subscribe to what was once conventional morality, prior to the days of Playboy, Friends and The Big Bang Theory, your chances of getting it would be next to nil.  Now, of course, thanks to Hugh Hefner, Playboy and Cosmopolitan's charge against morality and ultimately biology, the disease is out there and lot of people basically forced into destructive sex are exposed to it.  

I've only known one person who has refused to have a child vaccinated for it and I don't have an objection myself to anyone receiving it.  I find it interesting, however, that people wills hove a kid as young as 9 to get a vaccination for disease that's perfectly possible to avoid based on the assumption that they can't control themselves from engaging in an act which at least takes some effort of the will, mentally, to engage in, as well as an exchange of bodily fluids in a sexual act, but they'll not get vaccinated for something you can get just walking down the street.

What's that Tat mean?

A Wyoming legislator has been explaining his tattoo.  It turns out to be a "Three Percenter" tattoo.

He's a Libertarian and says that he had no idea of the meaning of the tattoo, which I wouldn't have known either.  Apparently it has "1776" and the Roman numeral "III" and is supposed to mean that only 3% of Americans at the time of the Revolution supported it.

In actuality, 1/3d, that would be 33% of the Americans at the time supported the Revolution, 33% opposed it, and the remainder waited to see which way it went or had no strong opinion.  Unusual for revolutions, prominent figures in commerce strongly supported it.  Frankly, if only 3% had supported it, that would be nothing to celebrate as that would mean that it was a completely illegitimate revolution.  Even the fact that only 33% supported it is more than a little problematic in that regard, frankly.

I'll be frank that I'm not a fan of tattoos at all.  It's not like I'm going to argue for banning them or something, but the more people that get them, the less they mean.  And I suspect that this phenomenon of people not knowing what a tattoo means is probably incredibly common.  People put Chinese or Japanese characters on their body being told they mean one thing, and not gasping at all how the writing in those languages work.  I suspect that more than one message of that type is a joke by somebody who does speak those languages.  People tattoo phrases and symbols from religions as well not knowing that those symbols carry a lot more meaning, and indeed obligation, than a person might suppose.

Tattoos have now become a massively common part of our society.  It's curious. As we have come to stand for less and less, people obviously reach out to try to grasp something.  But people don't grasp onto those things that really have meaning, as then you have to comport your life accordingly.