Since pre Revolutionary War Days, the American Armed Forces have been particularly adept at combating insurgent movements. From Rogers Rangers during the French and Indian War, through Mad Anthony Wayne, through Andrew Jackson, through Colonel Ranald MacKenzie, through Arthur MacArthur(Douglas’ father), the American Army has crushed the aspirations of rebels, be they the Huron, the Shawnee, the Cree, the Sioux, the Cheyenne,the Comanche,the Apache, or the Filipinos.
Born in a Revolution, bred of Revolutionary stock, the American Army knew how to put down a Revolution, until Vietnam. The American Army took the brilliant guerilla tactics of Robert Rogers, Frances Marion(The Swamp Fox), Daniel Morgan, John Moseby(The Grey Ghost), Nathan Bedford Forrest, and inverted them to crush the National aspirations of the Filipino people during the Filipino Insurrection(1902-1913), invade and stifle Haitians, Dominicans,Nicaraguans……defeat the freedom of the Lakota, the Comanche, the Modoc, the Boxers in China during the BOXER REBELLION. We knew how to beat any rebel,ANY REBEL, any insurrection, any insurgency, how to break their will to fight, until Vietnam.
Since then, the American Army has had real difficulty in defeating any insurgency, or breaking the will of any force pitted against us. Why the difference? in one word, TELEVISION.
That said, I give you COLONEL RANALD MacKENZIE. General US Grant called him the most promising Union officer in the Civil War. During the Civil War he was wounded six times, and received seven brevets(battlefield promotions).
After the Civil War, he was given command of the 24th US Infantry, a regiment of Black Buffalo soldiers who fought against the Apache. But he was a marvelous cavalryman, so he was given command of the 4th US Cavalry, and told to defeat the Comanche.
MacKenzie invented new tactics for the 4th. He scuttled their baggage train, stripped the column down to just men, horses, guns, water and ammunition.
He invented MacKenzie’s Raiders and, after defeating the Cheyenne at the DULL KNIFE FIGHT, was ready to defeat the Comanche. Now that was a tall order; the Comanche had NEVER been defeated. They were the finest light cavalry in the world, the best horsemen since Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes. They were THE LORDS OF THE PLAINS. There is a story about the Comanche and their horses in THE SEARCHERS, how a white man would ride a horse til it dropped dead, then a Comanche would come along,get the dead horse up, ride him another twenty miles, then eat him. Horses were their life.
They had fought off the Apache, the Sioux, the Spanish, the Mexican, the Texikan, the Confederates and the Texas Rangers. They had defeated everyone until Colonel Ranald MacKenzie.
There were two fighting Colonels of the Frontier, George Armstrong Custer and Ranald Mackenzie. Custer is an interesting case, even though he fought some battles of dubious honor againt the Cheyenne and Sioux, he lionized the Native Americans, more than MacKenzie. In fact, there are rumors, that while stationed on the Washita, Custer fathered an illegitmate son by a Cheyenne woman.
There are no rumors about MacKenzie,save he knew how to defeat the Comanche. My character SETH HOLLISTER in my John Ford Western, LOS PISTOLEROS is based somewhat on Ranald Mackenzie.
PALO DURO CANYON
It is still out there in West Texas, when you go there it is like going to the moon, or Afghanistan. It was the sacred home of the Comanche nation. It is a State Park now, in the Texas Panhandle.
The canyon was formed by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River which winds along the relatively flat Caprock of West Texas. The Comanche kept their horse herd there for centuries, undisturbed. For the key to Palo Duro is this, from horseback or walking you can not see the entrance to the canyon. The entrance to the canyon is below the horizon, below the sight line of any man riding or walking. Unless you knew it was there, you would walk or ride right past it.
To this day, no one knows how MacKenzie’s Raiders found the entrance to Palo Duro Canyon, but they did.
THE BATTLE
“Mackenzie brought the whole regiment to the edge of the canyon and planned a surprise attack. Comanche Chief Red Warbonnet discovered the U.S. soldiers and fired off a warning shot, but was quickly killed. Mackenzie’s troopers were unable to find a suitable path down so instead plunged straight down the steep canyon cliffs…. by nightfall the canyon belonged to Mackenzie and the villages were destroyed.”
The Comanche escaped onto the plains, but they left behind the last great Comanche pony herd, 1400 ponies.
MacKenzie, “The Comanche have fled?”
His second in command,” Yes sir.”
MacKenzie, ” I have no Comanche.”
His second in command, “Correct.”
MacKenzie, “But I have their horses.”
His second in command, “Correct.”
MacKenzie,”I have no Comanche, but I have their horses.”
The Comanche had been fighting the white man since the first Texans arrived in Texas, 1830; it was now September, 1874. For forty four years the Comanche had fought the white man to a standstill. Once again, they had escaped MacKenzie, but they had left their horses, 1400 of them.
Now remember ,this is key, THERE WAS NO TELEVISION. There was NO visual recording of what MacKenzie did next, no Keith Olberman to indict, no Rachel Maddow to lament, no Arianna Huffington to denounce. There was no PETA, there was no television to organize a backlash. There was just MacKenzie and his ruthlessness.
MacKenzie killed all, ALL 1400 HORSES, every last of one of them…mustangs,pintos,quarter horses, Morgans, COLTS, MARES, FOALS,STUDS, STALLIONS,FILLIES, PONIES, 1400 of them and left their corpses where they fell so the Comanche could smell the stench of their dead herd for 200 hundred miles. He wiped out , to a horse, the last Comanche pony herd, to the last horse, and left the bodies to rot in the Texas sun.
Can you imagine an American commander doing that today? Killing off the Afghan horse herds. Television handicaps ruthlessness; that is good for civilization, bad for winning guerilla wars. America may never win a guerilla war again, not as long as there is television recording the dirty deeds of war making.
MacKenzie broke the will of the Comanche, by slaughtering their pony herd. One year later, broken, they finally surrendered. His victory was too ugly to make good television, just like the TET offensive was too ugly for American viewers.
His victory was one of the most brutal acts in the history of American arms, and it won a forty four year old war.
To defeat the Taliban, we must think like Ranald MacKenzie; we must take the war off of television and win ugly.
Tomorrow I will suggest how Ranald MacKenzie would have defeated the Taliban.
THE LORDS OF THE PLAINS, THE COMANCHE
MY FILM PROJECT, LOS PISTOLEROS, IS ABOUT THE COMANCHE WARS IN NEW MEXICO. WHILE DEVELOPING IT, I HAVE BEEN HONORED TO MEET TWO NATIVE AMERICAN ACTORS OF TALENT AND INTEGRITY, JAY TAVARE and RAOUL TRUJILLO. IT HAS BEEN AN ETERNAL PERSONAL PRIVILEDGE TO HAVE BOTH OF THEM FIND IN MY SCREENPLAY THE RESPECT AND DIGNITY THEIR PEOPLE SO RICHLY DESERVE. IN THAT SENSIBILITY I DEDICATE THIS SIDEBAR TO THEM.
JAY TAVARE
RAOUL TRUJILLO
SIDEBAR-THE FATES OF CUSTER and MacKENZIE.
I don’t know if there was a Native American revenge curse on Custer for the Washita, or Mackenzie for PALO DURO but I do know this.
Custer died with two brothers,a nephew, and a brother in law, all killed, at the LITTLE BIG HORN in a battle which need not have happened.
General Custer’s body was stripped (as were all the bodies,) but it was not mutilated(maybe because he fathered that child on the Washita).
His brother “Thomas Ward Custer, the only two time Medal of Honor winner up to that time, lived and died, literally, in the shadow of his older brother. In contrast to the General, Tom Custer’s body was castrated, brained, scalped several times. His heart had been cut out. Some say it had been eaten by one of the Indian warriors. His face had been so badly mutilated that the only way his body was identified was by the tattoo “T.C.” on his arm. ”
“ The scalp of Custer’s 18 year old nephew, Harry Armstrong Reed, resides in a museum in Wichita, Kansas. He was killed along with his uncle at the battle of Little Big Horn. Harry’s job was to hold the 7th Calvary flagpole, which he reportedly did until the end. His scalp was found six weeks later, attached to a pole, in the camp of Chief Crazy Horse, and then, through a series of private collectors, eventually ended up in Kansas.”
Custer’s brother in law, JAMES CALHOUN was Custer’s adjuntant. He wrote a published book, “WITH CUSTER IN ‘74″ He “ wrote of the Indians in letters to family as “heathens” and foresaw a day when white civilization would wipe them out.” Lt. Calhoun died at the Little Big Horn trying to wipe out the Native Americans.
Custer’s brother BOSTON CUSTER had been unable to officially join the Army due to poor health, but he tagged along with the 7th Cavalry on the baggage train. When his brother, George, asked for more ammunition, Boston Custer carried it to him,to die with him on LAST STAND HILL.
The revenge of the Sioux on the Custers was epic, with the flavor of Homeric myth.
However, the revenge of the Comanche on MacKenzie was Swiftian. He was promoted to General, was about to marry a gorgeous Texas belle. One fine day he went visiting the defeated Comanche nation at their new home, the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory, in a wagon, drawn by a horse. The horse slightly bolted,just slightly. Maybe the horse had had relatives at Palo Duro; anyway, MacKenzie fell from the wagon, and tapped his head.
After that tap on the head, he began to show signs of dementia(as if killing 1400 horses was sane); he lost his command, and his hot Texas fiancee, and was finally discharged from the amy because of , in Army terms,”"General paresis of the insane.”
He died a blithering, drooling idiot just like Jonathan Swift.
At the end of John Ford’s masterpiece, THE SEARCHERS, the John Wayne character is not allowed in the home of his friends and family. He is locked out of civilization because he is an Indian fighter, and no longer needed. His lonely figure at the end of that film reminds us that no one who fought in the Indian Wars came out unscathed. No one who fights in any war gets back unscathed. We are now fighting TWO wars, both sanitized for television.
If our obligation is to fight the wars for televised consumption, we will lose both wars; if our obligation is to win both wars, we will have to fight like Ranald MacKenzie, win the war, then accept the curse.
