Fate Worse Than Death

Always good to get both sides of an argument. This book does the trick.

For a book that purportedly attempts to balance the scales of history, this work is an epic failure. While the Michnos' point is a valid one -- Native Americans were a real and present threat to the early Western settlers, and that pioneers captured by Native Americans could look forward to very nasty things indeed, especially if they were adult females -- the manner in which that point is made is insensitive at best, inflammatory at worst. The narratives are presented entirely outside of any sort of historical context and serve only to paint the Native Americans as savage, brutal and uncaring. What's worse is that the Michnos seem to go out of their way to disregard or discredit any words said by the captives that would serve to contradict their point. Banc Babb's recollection of her time in captivity as happy is dismissed as the sixty year old recollections of "a few idyllic memories of her youth". Given this statement, how accurate can one expect the traumatic memories of a child recounted many years later to be? Especially a child who as been re-assimilated into a society that still viewed Native Americans as savages? If fond memories are to be viewed skeptically, than surely graphic recollections of violence should also be considered with a grain of salt -- especially in an age of sensationalistic journalism. Herman Lehmann's entry is full of the sufferings he faced at the hands of his captors, especially in his early days as a captive; what's not shown is his subsequent deep affection for his captors: in his own account, Lehmann calls Carnoviste, the Apache warrior who captured and subsequently owned him, his "best friend" and deeply morns his death. Missing, too, are the fond memories Lehmann had of Carnoviste's wife and sister.Perhaps the most telling evidence that this book seeks to reiterate the mindset of "Pioneer good, Indian bad" is the lack of any real acknowledgement of the difficulty captive children who had become "Indianized" had in re-assimilating into white society. Much is made over the trauma these children experienced upon being snatched from their homes; nothing is made of the trauma the captives dealt with upon their "rescue". In fact, the culture shock experienced by Herman Lehmann is dismissed as the of a "petulant child", not a traumatized victim (by the time he was returned to his family, Lehmann had spent almost half his lifetime among the Apache and Comanche). If snatching a white woman away from the bosom of her family was horrific and wrong, then how was the rescue of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was separated from the life she'd known for 24 years, as well as from her two young sons, justifiable? True the Michinos do give a barebones account of Cynthia Ann Parker's attempts to escape, and of her unhappiness, but this is nothing like the loving detail they lavished on describing the attack on Ft. Parker (there are notably no quotes from contemporaneous observers here). This lack of acknowledgment of the pioneer's (or at very least, the Texas Rangers/US Army's) side in committing atrocities against the Native Americans is an endemic problem throughout the book; no mention is made of the disembowelment and mutilation of old men and women committed by Texas Rangers against Lehmann's Comanche tribe in 1877, nor is there a mention that scalping was practiced on both sides of the pioneer/Native American conflict (the Michinos leave out the fact that when the Rangers encounter Lehmann in a battle in 1875, the Apache the Rangers pursue and eventually kill is scalped and possibly mutilated in some fashion, per Lehmann's own account). I realize that a full treatment of the complex issues of the times is beyond the scope of the book, but at least some sense of impartiality would have been nice; even just a bit of text commenting on the fact that the pioneers weren't the blameless victims this book seems intent on painting them to be would have helped to offset the rampant bias.A couple last things to note that I found incredibly jarring. Firstly, in the account of Lee Temple Friend, the Michinos spend a good deal of time discussing the Friends' attempts to sue the government for injuries caused by the Native American attacks. One of the "ludicrous arguments" made by the government and derided by the Michinos as evidence of "the government's penurious attitude" towards depredation cases is that the Comanche could be split into northern and southern tribes, and that the southern tribes were not signatories to the treaties the Friends relied on as basis for the claim of compensation. That the Michinos dismiss this argument as among the "specious" indicates a severe lack of understanding of the Comanche tribal system at the time of the treaties in question -- an understanding that could be gained by doing a two minute Google search.Secondly, in their conclusion, the Michinos advance the argument that a desire for profit was the underlying cause of much of the Native American raiding, and they point to the decrease in length of captivity post-1860 as evidence of their argument; the implication here being that because the captive settlers were viewed as commodities by the Native Americans, they were roughly handled and treated. While it's probably true that slave-trading was an element of the Southern Plains tribes economic way of life, this conclusion (and its inherent assumptions) is made outside the context of the larger picture, in particular the increase in buffalo hunters and buffalo hunting and an influx of new settlers (particularly after the Civil War). Both factors would lead to a more pressing need for Native Americans to ransom captives for supplies.Finally, I have to wonder at the Michinos's decision to display these narratives in a void. While this book is definitely praiseworthy in its effort to chronicle and collect the experiences of Native American captives during the Wild West era, the fact that the narratives are then presented in both a sensationalistic fashion and stripped of the historical context is highly lamentable. I don't think of myself as an apologist or revisionist, but perhaps I secretly am, for I constantly wished for the Michinos to at least make a mention of the fact that many of the atrocities committed by the Native Americans on the settlers can find easy analogs in the white treatment of slaves (you will note that the Michinos make no mention of the fact that one major reason Texas revolted was because the Mexican government abolished slavery in 1829). Was the rapine and brutality that was practiced upon the white settlers really so different from what was experienced daily by their black slaves? Was it shocking simply because it was happening to whites? And while the Native Americans were undoubtedly a great peril faced by the pioneers, they weren't the only peril out there -- it would have been interesting to note, even if it was just in passing, some of the other dangers the pioneers faced, and how this played into the tension between settlers and Native Americans.Overall, I think this book can be best summed up in the following four words: concept good, execution bad.

The Michnos' book puts to the lie the myth of the Noble Red Man. Many of the tribes were steeped in war, violence, torture, rape and murder from time immemorial. Obviously, before Europens entered the Americas, native violence was directed at other enemy tribes but these territorial practices were quickly diverted toward the European invaders.It is arguable that before the Indians acquired horses, directly or indirectly, from Europeans violence may have been at a lesser level of intensity because raiding parties had to go by foot. In a similar way, the acquisition of firearms no doubt enhanced tribal lethality. At the same time, the white settlers also owned firearms but with an important difference. Most of the settlers were farmers and simply couldn't remain armed and vigilant at all times. Hostile Indians recognized this and took full advantage of this weakness. Typically they'd carefully scout out vulnerable homesteads; wait until the inhabitants were working, scattered and/or unarmed and strike suddenly. Unlike typical 'Cowboys and Indian' fare, pioneers [and cowboys] invariably got the worst of it. Many settlers suffered capture and death for every Indian killed.Questions arise concerning the treatment of female captives. According to the numerous narratives given--and despite Victorian scruples at the time--most women described gang rape, multiple rapes, serial rapes, and rapes by the warrior who made her his 'wife.' Horrifically, and in a way resembling serial, sexual psychopaths of the present day, captured women were frequently tortured before, during and following the act of rape. Many were deliberately killed during this interval. To me this suggests that the motive wasn't simple sexual gratification but was perceived by the raiders as only another form of pleasurable torture.Make no mistake about it, many of the Indians--men, women and children--thoroughly enjoyed torturing human beings be they white, Mexican, black or Indian. Nowadays this seems almost impossible. I'll postulate, however, that there is something malign in most of us that must be trained out of us when children. In many native american societies cruelty in children wasn't discouraged. It must have been encouraged. A soft-hearted Comanche, for example, would probably have been regarded as a sissy.Still, from our societal point of view, it is difficult to understand Indian women watching their menfolk rape captive women with equanimity. Reading between the lines of some of these tales, it is fairly obvious that Indian women both on the warpath and back in camp, must have observed the sexual abuse of female captives many times. This doesn't mean that they were relaxed about it, though. In fact, some of the fearful acts that Indian women performed on captives, may have been partly motivated by sexual jealousy.I've tried to determine whether male captives were subjected to homosexual rape but find no reference to it. This may be partly because very few adult males were kept alive as captives. Most were immediately killed at their homes or farms or tortured to death shortly thereafter. Still there are a few examples of adult male captives but none mention homosexual rape. Does this mean that it didn't happen or because men, even more than women, were unlikely to admit to this kind of torture and submission?

All the information in this book was well researched by the authors, and as a result, I found the book well worth reading. It can be a difficult book to read, but I felt that learning about the pioneers who were trying to establish family life in a dangerous country, was an important thing to do - it helped me to understand especially how grief stricken they must have been to lose their young children to commanches especially. I was also unaware until I saw the factual statistics in this book, just how many young children and women were taken by commanche tribes. A difficult read, but a book I felt personally was important to read, especially when it was so well researched.

Great

For anyone interested in lesser known facts about the settler v Indian conflict this is a must. Every settler family took their lives in their hands when they moved into lands that belonged to the Comanche, Apache and Kiowas in particular. The stories within this book are as meticulously researched as is possible after all this time, and give a clear feeling for the awful treatment of captive whites, particularly immediately after capture. Gang rape and torture were the norm, babies were immediately destroyed in front of their mothers and children had their fathers' bloody scalps rubbed in their faces. It is amazing how quickly young captives were assimilated into the tribes and how many of them preferred to remain with their captors and joined them in raiding white families themselves. The numbers captured is also astonishing. This is an eye opening account which makes it difficult to reconcile the view of the tribes being 'noble savages'. Savage, yes, but not many were noble in the way they ruthlessly attempted to terrorise the settlers back out of their lands.