• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

James M. Redwine

  • Books
  • Columns
  • 1878 Lynchings/Pogrom
  • Events
  • About

Military

D-Day

June 3, 2022 by Peg Leave a Comment

“Throughout the 200-year history of the United States the American nation has been at war.” That was how author William Koenig led into his 1980 book, Americans at War. Although ostensibly a study of American warfare from about 1775 at Lexington and Concord to 1975, the end of the Viet Nam War, Koenig actually starts with the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 and Native Americans meeting the ship. Had he waited until today to publish he could have included another fifty years of Americans at war, right up to Ukraine.

In general, we Americans view our involvement in foreign wars, that is, non-Native American warfare, as justified by the belligerence of others who have forced us reluctantly into “making the world safe for democracy.” The beginning of our provision of armaments, intelligence and training to Ukraine dates back to soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “breakup” of the Soviet Union. The current U.S. commitment of over 50 billion dollars is only a fraction of our huge military and economic support for Ukraine over many years. Russia has often taken note.

George Soros, the Hungarian born American billionaire, stated on May 24, 2022 that the Russia-Ukraine war may be the start of World War III and result in the end of human civilization. Such doomsday statements are not a new phenomenon. Ever since the days of The Flood people have warned that human behavior, usually by someone other than the Jeremiad of the moment, was going to lead to the end of the world. They mean the end of homo sapiens’ short 200,000-year reign on our 4.5-billion-year-old planet. Earth will survive, but without us.

I have no estimate how many predictions of mankind’s demise have been made from the time of our common really great-grandmother, Lucy, in Africa until 1945. Until America came up with and used the atom bomb, the philosophers who had previously cried wolf were doing just that. However, now with numerous countries possessing nuclear weapons and itching to use them, we may have finally made honest men out of Noah and all the other survivalists. I am not going to address climate change and pollution as doomsday machines as I only have about three pages of print available. I will stick with nuclear war in this column.

With nuclear powers, such as Russia, North Korea, China, America and Israel all claiming they fear for their survival, I am reminded of my onetime acquaintance who told me in 1973 that if Egypt were about to destroy Israel that Israel would be justified in destroying the whole world to avenge itself. Fortunately, he was not an Israeli and Egypt stood down. I do wonder if Putin might feel so threatened he would believe Russia would be justified in starting the nuclear daisy chain.

These thoughts of World War III came scrambling into my brain when I thought about June 06, 1944 and D-Day. Americans and many others thought the World War of 1914-1918 with its inane carnage, over no one knew what, was going to end world-wide war. Then the courage and sacrifice of 150,000 American soldiers on D-Day was touted as the beginning of the end of totalitarian regimes. Later we thought we had learned something from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, George Soros, hardly a war monger, fears we may be at the beginning of WWIII raging in Ukraine.

As for me, I will place my confidence in that part of human nature that has pulled us back from self-immolation many times. History leads me to have faith we will not self-fulfill such a dire prophecy. Of course, if I am right everyone will be around to say so, and if I am wrong, what difference will it make?

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Authors, China, Gavel Gamut, Israel, Military, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, United States, War Tagged With: Americans at War, China, cry wolf, D-Day, Egypt, fall of the Berlin Wall, George Soros, Israel, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Lucy, Noah, North Korea, nuclear war, Russia, self-immolation, Ukraine, United States, William Koenig, World War III

Memorial Day

May 27, 2022 by Peg Leave a Comment

My earliest memories of Memorial Day involved hot cemeteries where all the adult women spent a great deal of time loudly hushing all the children and the few men in attendance furtively smoked cigarettes while shifting from foot to foot. Any attempt by me or my brother, Philip, to chase butterflies or engage in horseplay was met with stern stares and an occasional knock on the head or a swat on the tail.

Mother had three brothers and one sister who had served in the Army in WWII and Mom observed the service of all veterans solemnly and reverently; she demanded her children properly learn the ritual. Our role was to honor the dead soldiers and show gratitude to those veterans who were still with us.

Memorial Day has slowly metamorphosized from a national day of honoring veterans to a general recognition of all who have passed on. And Mother and her mother and their mainly female friends and relatives saw their duty to include the graves of deceased loved ones in various cemeteries in divergent locales. Mom would load all four of us kids and bunches of freshly cut ferns and flowers into a black Ford without air conditioning and without a thought on her part of a cold pop or an ice cream cone for us. She would say that was scant penance on our part to repay the sacrifice of our service people and their families.

I do not know how many veterans’ gravesites Mom dragged me to before I joined the Air Force myself during the Viet Nam War. I did not get sent to Viet Nam but several of my childhood friends did. One of them, twenty-two-year-old Gary Malone, went twice but he only came back once. That changed my understanding of Mom’s dedication to Decoration Day. I may be generally obtuse but I no longer needed a pointed stare, a tap on the head or a kick in the behind to appreciate Memorial Day. I sure wish Gary were here so I could tell him but his veteran’s memorial marker is close to my Mom and Dad in the local cemetery so I can, at least, salute Gary as I visit the folks on Decoration Day. I now get it; as always, Mother knew best.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Friends, Gavel Gamut, Military, Patriotism, War Tagged With: cemeteries, Decoration Day, Gary Malone, graves, honor the veterans, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Memorial Day, Viet Name War, WWII

A Cuppa For Peace

March 11, 2022 by Peg Leave a Comment

Post Card from Moscow Coffee Bean. Photo by Peg Redwine

Starbucks Coffee Company has suspended operations in all 130 of its Russia based coffee shops as a protest to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The first shop opened in September 2007 in Moscow. Peg and I were in Moscow in 2003. We are Americans. We drink coffee. We were in anguished caffeine withdrawal almost the whole week we were in Russia. I applaud Starbuck’s gesture but worry about those people who are forced back to the pre-2007 coffee-less culture in Russia. Of course, the blame lies with Putin but the headaches are visited on the Russian proletariat as war is visited by Putin on the Ukrainians.

In 2003 Peg and I, after long and frenzied searching, located one coffee shop, The Coffee Bean, in Moscow. As this was our first trip to Russia we had been unaware of Russian culture which at that time considered one cup of instant coffee in tepid water good enough for such foreigners as we. The cold turkey shock treatment made us acutely aware of a society where vodka and cognac were more available at breakfast than coffee.

I do not expect Putin to come to his senses on his own so his war on Ukraine will most likely play out as such debacles always have. There is the initial shock and awe, then the search for weapons of mass destruction, the trading of lies and misinformation, then death, injury and misery followed by years of confusion and remaking of history by the survivors.

I do wonder what Putin’s thought process was that led him into this tar pit. He keeps making public statements and allegations about NATO and Ukraine’s belligerence. His statements and actions appear to arise from paranoia, what most of the world sees as an unreasonable fear that Ukraine and the other pre-1991 Soviet Union countries along Russia’s western border will be used as bases for the United States and our allies to attack Russia.

Putin may have reasoned that as Ukraine was steadily building up its ties to democracies such as America, if he did not strike now, he would have no viable defense to a stronger Ukraine that might become a member of NATO later. Such an analysis seems ludicrous to us but it is not our thought process that is in question. If Putin believes it, even if it is false, then his actions may make sense to him.

He also may have been misled by the relative ease with which Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. In today’s attack his objective may have mainly been to take over that part of Ukraine, such as Odessa, that borders the Black Sea. But then he made a common tyrant’s mistake. He got too greedy and decided to grab what was left of the remainder of Ukraine beyond Crimea.

By this time, Gentle Reader, if you are still with me, you are asking, “What does any of this have to do with coffee?” Okay, as Fareed Zakaria might say, “Here’s my take”. I hope the Russian people will have become so hooked on coffee after 2007 that this forced Starbuck’s withdrawal will cause them to see Putin for the despot he is. Then perhaps the aroused common citizens will rise up and replace the warmongering Putin and his incompetent military leaders. If the Russians feel anything similar to the way Peg and I did in 2003, revolution is not so farfetched.

JPeg Osage Ranch Coffee Bar. Photo by Peg Redwine

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Foreign Intervention, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Military, Russia, Ukraine, War, World Events Tagged With: Black Sea, caffeine withdrawal, coffee, Crimea, Fareed Zakaria, Gentle Reader, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Moscow, NATO, Odessa, paranoia, Putin, Revolution, Russia, Starbucks, The Coffee Bean, Ukraine

The Briar Patch

February 2, 2022 by Peg 2 Comments

Hitler’s troops easily conquered that part of Stalin’s USSR known as Ukraine in 1942. Total world victory was almost in Germany’s grasp. Then Hitler decided to bring Russia to its knees at the Battle of Stalingrad. Six hundred thousand dead German soldiers and six months later Germany was on its way to total defeat. The Russians sacrificed one and one-half million of its soldiers to confront Hitler’s arrogance. Neither Russia nor Germany has forgotten this carnage.

When one visits the site of the battle in Volgograd, Russia today there is a 172-foot-tall statue of a Russian woman thrusting a sword into the sky. She stands erect on Mamayev Hill and guards the hallowed ground where so many died. There is a memorial close to her feet where the names of countless dead soldiers are carved into marble walls that line a descending walk to an eternal flame. No one makes a sound as they honor the fallen heroes.

When the United States government complains that Germany is not rushing to confront Russia’s belligerence on the border of Ukraine, a visit to Volgograd might explain Germany’s caution. As for us, we need only to recall our ignominious exits from our incursions into Afghanistan (2001-2021) or Viet Nam (1955-1975) to give us pause.

Most of us learn the hard way that angry and arrogant challenges often lead to dire repercussions. America may wish to tread cautiously in our efforts to dictate how other countries should handle their border crises. We did not brook Great Britain’s claims to territory below the 49th parallel (Fifty-Four Forty or Fight) in 1846.

And the same President, James Polk, who demanded the Oregon country from Great Britain annexed the Republic of Texas that Mexico believed should be a part of Mexico. Texas and Mexico share a border that is over 1,250 miles long. The border between Ukraine and Russia is over 1,400 miles long. About 40% of the residents of Texas are of Hispanic/Latino descent and for about 30% of Texans Spanish is their native language. Of the 41 million Ukrainians about 17% are of Russian descent and for about 30% of Ukrainians Russian is their native language.

As Ukraine was a part of Russia for hundreds of years, until 1991, and there are deep geographical, cultural and historical ties between Russia and Ukraine, Russia may consider Ukraine much as we considered “Oregon” and Texas. That does not mean the world should ignore Russian aggression or Ukrainian independence. It should, however, advise government leaders and those who would bang the war tocsins to remember that briar patches might be easily entered but may result in much lost skin to exit.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Events, Foreign Intervention, Gavel Gamut, Military, Russia, Ukraine, War, World Events Tagged With: Afghanistan, America, Battle of Stalingrad, borders, Germany, Great Britain, hallowed ground, Hitler, James M. Redwine, James Polk, Jim Redwine, Mamayev Hill, Mexico, Oregon, Republic of Texas, Russian aggression, Stalin, Ukraine, Ukrainian independence, USSR, Viet Nam

Hot Lead or Cold Water

November 29, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

At the Washita Battlefield, November 21, 2021. Photo by Peg Redwine

Charles Brill’s account of the November 27, 1868 incident between Black Kettle’s Cheyenne tribe and U.S. 7thCavalry troops led by Lt. Col. George Custer is entitled, Conquest of the Southern Plains: Uncensored Narrative of the Washita and Custer’s Southern Campaign. Brill’s 1938 publication relied on eyewitness accounts from aged Indian survivors of the conflict. Brill personally took Cheyennes Magpie and Little Beaver and Arapaho Left Hand along with government interpreter John Otterby, a.k.a. Lean Elk, to the site of the attack. This article relies on the 2001 republication of Brill’s accounts by the University of Oklahoma Press re-titled Custer, Black Kettle, and the Fight on the Washita.

The fertile Washita River valley area on the western edge of Indian Territory (Oklahoma) had been a common peaceful wintering ground for numerous Indian tribes for countless years before 1868. There was an abundance of water, game, shelter and vegetation. It was also an area set aside for the Indians in several treaties with the United States between Black Kettle’s Cheyenne and other tribes. On the bitterly cold, snow-covered morning of November 27, 1868 the Indians’ only concerns were keeping warm and tending to their horses. Then Custer’s seven hundred mounted soldiers came charging at the sleepy Indians from all sides with rifles blazing and sabers slashing.

Black Kettle & Medicine Woman Later Crime Scene. Photo by Peg Redwine

Black Kettle was alerted by a woman who had been tending to the horses and first saw the approaching soldiers. When she yelled out “Soldiers, soldiers!”, Black Kettle fired a warning shot with his rifle to awaken the camp. Then Black Kettle drew his wife, Medicine Woman, up behind him on his pony and attempted to flee as he and Medicine Woman shouted warnings to the camp. He and Medicine Woman were then shot and killed. Magpie, one of the eyewitnesses Brill relied upon, heard Black Kettles’ warning shot and exited his lodge just as he heard a trumpet blast from the nearby trees and then saw the mounted soldiers charging into the village from all sides. Magpie was shot in the leg but managed to escape death by entering the freezing water and hiding in the brush along the banks.

As reported by Brill at page 159:

“From every side came the heavy report of carbines. Occasionally an Indian rifle answered. But these were notable for their infrequency. So sudden had been the attack, only a few of the red men had opportunity to arm themselves. Most of those who did so had only bows and arrows. They were powerless to offer serious resistance. Flight was their only objective.

Those villagers whose tepees stood nearest the stream fared better than their friends in the center and on the south side of the camp. First to dash through the icy waters of the Washita and scramble up the opposite bank found themselves running into scouts and sharpshooters who had deployed in the timber there. They also encountered troopers, mounted and dismounted. Seeing escape shut off in that direction, the fugitives accepted the only avenue left open to them, the channel itself. It was misery to wade its ice-fringed waters, but it was either that or bullets.

Women and children, as well as braves, plunged into the stream. Most of them were scantily clad. Many were without moccasins on their feet. Frequently the water reached to the armpits of adults who had to carry the children through these deep pools to prevent their drowning. Desperately they splashed their way beyond the lines of their enemies.”

Sometimes the fog of history eventually is pierced by uncomfortable facts. The Washita massacre was originally reported as a great military victory over savage foes by courageous heroes. Those reports originated from the “heroes”. The facts managed to slowly ooze out over a great deal of time. Those facts established the betrayal of morality and violations of treaties. They do not tell us, “Why?” The reasons may be explained by Pawnee attorney and scholar of law and history Walter R. Echo-Hawk in his book on bad court cases involving Native American treatment by the dominant white culture.

In the Courts of the Conquerors, The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided contemplates the roots of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and its raison d’être, The White Man’s Burden:

“A popular justification for colonialism among the colonizing nations was the white man’s burden. Originally coined by Rudyard Kipling, the term is a euphemism for imperialism based upon the presumed responsibility of white people to exercise hegemony over nonwhite people, to impart Christianity and European values, thereby uplifting the inferior and uncivilized peoples of the world. In this ethnocentric view, non-European cultures are seen as childlike, barbaric, or otherwise inferior and in need of European guidance for their own good. As thus viewed from European eyes, colonization became a noble undertaking done charitably for the benefit of peoples of color.” See p. 16

The concept of exterminating Native American culture as justified because it was replaced with the blessings of Christianity and civilization is hardly a new idea. The Romans by force of arms visited their supposed superior culture on “lesser” peoples as have many dominate societies for thousands of years. The germ of “destroying a culture to save it” is easily discovered by any powerful society that wants to take what some weaker society has. However, that there was ample precedent for the massacre at the Washita does not expiate Custer’s assault and does not obviate the moral imperative to remember it.

Washita Battlefield. Photo by Peg Redwine

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Events, Gavel Gamut, Justice, Manifest Destiny, Massacres, Military, Native Americans, Oklahoma, United States, War Tagged With: 7th Cavalry, Black Kettle, Charles Brill, Cheyenne, Christianity, destroying a culture to save it, George Custer, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Manifest Destiny, Medicine Woman Later, Romans, Walter R. Echo-Hawk, Washita Battlefield, Washita River

November Re-Visited

November 18, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

As first light appeared on the snow covered ground the morning of November 27, 1868, Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle emerged from his tepee as a woman came running across a stream of the Washita River screaming, “Soldiers, soldiers!” Black Kettle must have thought he was re-living the morning of November 29, 1864 on the banks of Sand Creek, Colorado Territory. That is when and where Colonel John Chivington and seven hundred troops of the U.S. Cavalry massacred a large number of Black Kettle’s tribe.

Black Kettle had settled his tribe at Sand Creek at the suggestion of U.S. Cavalry Major Scott Anthony based on the Ft. Wise Treaty of 1861 signed three years earlier. Major Anthony gave Black Kettle a white flag of truce to display to any soldiers who might come upon Black Kettle’s tribe and mistake its members as hostiles. Chivington ignored it. Only three years after the Sand Creek betrayal, Black Kettle and the United States at the Council of Medicine Lodge, Kansas reached another peace treaty ensuring safety and hunting rights for the Cheyenne along the Washita River Valley in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

During the Sand Creek incident Black Kettle’s wife was shot several times but survived. His wife and he were not so fortunate at The Washita. Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and members of the U.S. Cavalry were acting on orders from General Philip H. Sheridan to: “Kill or hang every warrior. Bring back all women and children.” Both Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman, were shot dead while trying to flee.

Oklahoma history professor Arrell Morgan Gibson (1921-1987) in his widely used textbook, The History of Oklahoma, first published in 1972, at page 94 describes The Washita incident:

“During 1868 the tribes of western Indian Territory had been slow in settling on their reservations assigned by the Medicine Lodge treaties. Some warrior bands had raided settlements on the border. To punish these Indians, the Seventh Cavalry, led by George Armstrong Custer, rode out of Fort Supply (in what is now western Oklahoma) in late November 1868. At daybreak on November 27, Custer and his troops reached the Washita River and made a surprise attack at Black Kettle’s Cheyenne camp. The Seventh Cavalry killed more than one hundred warriors and took fifty women and children as prisoners. The soldiers burned the village and captured a large herd of horses. Chief Black Kettle was among the dead. The Battle of the Washita was more of a massacre than a battle.”

There are other descriptions of The Washita incident. One of the versions most sympathetic to the Indians is contained within Oklahoma historian Charles J. Brill’s (1888-1956) account, Custer, Black Kettle and the Fight on the Washita, that was first published in 1938. Brill reported that Custer’s plan was to use his five-to-one advantage over the Cheyenne and surround the sleeping Indians:

“Custer was not long determining his plan of attack. This time (unlike Sand Creek) there would be no opportunity for his intended victims to escape by flight. Before morning he could surround the village. At a given signal the encircling battle line would converge on the unsuspecting Indians, who then would be completely at his mercy. It would be a wipe-out.”

See p. 148

And there are those who observed The Washita incident in more generic terms. In his The Battle of the Washita historian and professor Stan Hoig (1924-2009) says of Sand Creek and The Washita:

“That both events were massacres-which utilized the element of complete surprise against a people who did not consider themselves to be at war in which troops who had orders to kill anyone and everyone before them made no attempt to allow surrender-is hardly deniable by any accepted use of the word ‘massacre’.”

See p. xiii.

Professor Hoig told the story of The Washita as a clash between cultures:

“At stake were the will and conscience of the United States in resolving the great dilemma of the American Indian. It was an issue in which no middle ground was begged, and one for which history offered no definitive answer concerning the rightness or wrongness of one society and people overcoming and displacing another. At hand was not only the question of human morality but also the march of empire and the inevitable contest between barbarism and civilization.”

See p. 184

Oklahoma in November can range from the temperate to the freezing such as occurred on November 16, 2021 (76℉) and November 19, 2021 (31℉). That there was a foot of ice and snow surrounding Black Kettle’s village on November 27, 1868 is not without precedent and that much more died that day than principle and morality is neither.

A special thank you is due to Cheryl Salerno, Librarian of the Oklahoma Wesleyan University Library
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma for her courtesy and assistance.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Events, Gavel Gamut, Martyrs, Military, Native Americans, Oklahoma, United States, War Tagged With: Arrell Morgan Gibson, Charles J. Brill, Chief Black Kettle, Council of Medicine Lodge, Ft. Wise Treaty, George A. Custer, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, John Chivington, massacre, Medicine Woman, morality, Philip H. Sheridan, principle, Professor Stan Hoig, Sand Creek, Scott Anthony, Seventh Cavalry, The Washita, Washita River, white flag of truce

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

© 2022 James M. Redwine

 

Loading Comments...