Indian Tribes

[Hota]

What Indian tribe do you think was the:

1. Toughest - maintained ethics and were just plain tough

2. Meanest - a bit unethical and fierce

3. If you were trekking, the tribe to be most feared if you came across

I know my definitions of tough and mean are vague. In the east I think the tribes that made up the Iroqius Nation were tough but as history showed, Conrad Weiser was able to break barriers and eventually I.nation leaders met in Phila to negotiate trade, peace etc. (Doesn't mean they weren't tough though, just were definately not portrayed in some books as overly tough or mean). The movies definately portray the Blackfoot as a tribe of mean folk. Fought till the end. Souix, Crow, Apache, Comanche?? Unfortunately, I am not a historian and do not have many books but was hoping I could start with this post and figure out what nation would be most interesting to study.

If this is a weak or uninteresting post, just wack away :thumbsup:

 

[Stumpkiller]

The Seminoles withstood three wars with the U.S. and it ended in a stalemate. To my knowledge they are the only "belligerant" people to successfully defend their territory.

The Nez Perce and Lakota Souix undertook one of the most impressive retreat maneuvers that, last I knew, was still studied at West Point as an almost perfect campaign, though it was doomed.

"Meanest" is a tough one. There were many who were fierce warriors and had little love of strangers, colonists or otherwise. Some tribes you'd rather not be captured by. The Senecas, Ottawas and Ojibwas wiped out several forts during Pontiac's Rebellion and, disgusted with the defenders when they surrendered, butchered them.


Pontiac's Rebellion

 

[Gordon Horn]

I suspect a good case could be made for all of them, but I'd have ta vote for the Apache. :imo: :huh:

 

[Gary]

Being a Westerner, I tend to gravitate in favor of the Apaches. The only reason the Army won was because Apache scouts helped them. Otherwise the Army would never have caught up with them.

 

[rifleshooter2]

My vote is for the Miami Indians. They handed the Army their greatest defeat over 600 soldiers killed in one battle in 1791. That makes Little Big Horn look like a victory.

 

What Indian tribe do you think was the:

1. Toughest - maintained ethics and were just plain tough

2. Meanest - a bit unethical and fierce

3. If you were trekking, the tribe to be most feared if you came across

I know my definitions of tough and mean are vague. In the east I think the tribes that made up the Iroqius Nation were tough but as history showed, Conrad Weiser was able to break barriers and eventually I.nation leaders met in Phila to negotiate trade, peace etc. (Doesn't mean they weren't tough though, just were definately not portrayed in some books as overly tough or mean). The movies definately portray the Blackfoot as a tribe of mean folk. Fought till the end. Souix, Crow, Apache, Comanche?? Unfortunately, I am not a historian and do not have many books but was hoping I could start with this post and figure out what nation would be most interesting to study.

If this is a weak or uninteresting post, just wack away :thumbsup:

1: Toughest--All of them. They endured things in everyday life that would make us ball up and cry.

2: Meanest-- Now THERE'S a matter of perspective. Mutilations, scalpings, disemboweling, torture and burning at the stake were common all over the place. Is it unethical to mutilate your enemy? Not if you're a Huron or Iroquois or Apache...or white man. White governments paid pretty darn good for scalps, and didn't care who was lifting them.

3: If I were trekking, who would I be most afraid of meeting? Any tribe I wasn't actively trading with, drinking with, or sleeping with...and even then I would keep an eye on them. It's all perspective. As a frenchman, I would not want to bump into any Iroquois, as an Englishman, I sure wouldn't want to bump into a Huron. As anyone in the southeast, I sure wouldn't want to tangle with the seminoles, and if I was out in the south west I wouldn't want to lock horns with the Chirucauha, specifically, or the Comanche. But if you want my vote? Blackfoot-- absolutely killed whites on site, all the time, everytime...no reasoning with that bunch, you just stayed out of their territory, period.

:results: :imo:

 

[musketman]

What Indian tribe do you think was the:

1. Toughest - maintained ethics and were just plain tough

2. Meanest - a bit unethical and fierce

3. If you were trekking, the tribe to be most feared if you came across

Blackfoot for all three...

Ha, thought I was going to say the Cleveland Indians, didn't ya? :haha:

 

[Gametracker]

1. Not sure who was the toughest, but I'll give the Souix honorable mention. Willing to unite tribally, fought U.S. head-to-head, was the only American Indian tribe to defeat the United States at war and force terms of surrender. It is true that the U.S. was undermanned in the far west, but the Souix were tactical enough to draw the forted-up Army out into vulnurable situations. Later the Souix would defeat the U.S. in an "even" battle on Little Bighorn by simply outstratagizing them. Crazy Horse finally understood that successfully fighting the whites meant abandoning the traditional Indian methods of fighting used in tribal wars. But too little too late, it would be starvation that would finally bring the Souix to its knees.

2. Meanest- Blackfeet did some pretty gruesome mutilating

3. Most feared- Blackfeetfor the afore mentioned reason

 

[Hota]

Thanks guys, just what I was lookin for :thumbsup:

 

[halfstock]

There was an old tribe that roamed mexico , texas, newmexico, ariz, area's that even the apache and comanche shyed away from , I may be wrong on the name but I believe were the Yaqui.

Halfstock :results: :m2c:

 

[Rebel]

Yep, that's them. they were something to be feared in their day. Nowdays most of them are alcohlics living on the rez. Or at least that's the way it was when we lived near their rezervation when i lived in Tucson.

 

i think that would depend on what time frame. early on i would say Delaware ,Taslagi and Shawnee in the south , north Seneca Huron and Ottawa.

"The dark and bloody ground" LMAO the don

 

[TexiKan]

There was an old tribe that roamed mexico , texas, newmexico, ariz, area's that even the apache and comanche shyed away from , I may be wrong on the name but I believe were the Yaqui.

Halfstock,

HA! :crackup: NOW I know why I exhibit two, different traits! On one side of my family is the Texas Jose Antonio Navarro heritage. (He was also known as "The White Dove.") On the other side of my family is my grandfather who was purportedly an Apache Indian but was kidnapped by the Yaqui when he was a young boy. He was raised Yaqui and the only name he knew was that of his Yaqui step mother. Thus, the Mexican last name. Now, combine the fierce Apache and Yaqui influence--and you get one hot headed white dove!!!

An Indian friend, at the Rondys, tends to call me his Habanero Apache brother because of the hot and spicy food I cook! :winking:

Boy........is my persona in trouble!!

TexiKan
-------------

If you continue to do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got.

 

[dodgecity]

I guess it depends on the period. On the eastern frontier of the 1700s, the Shawnee were certainly one of the cruelest and most implacable enemies faced by the frontier inhabitants of that time. From the little I have read, the Commanches of Texas inherited that same reputation 100 years later. On the other hand, it was a half breed French Canadian who ripped the warm heart from the still living Miami chief Unemakemi's chest and ate it. It's pretty tough to single out a recipient of the cruelest award in that era. As far as tough goes, they were all tough, or they didn't survive adolesence.

 

[brushbuster]

here in texas the comanche and lipans were greatly feared because of quanah parker ,but one seldome mentioned any more were the kiowas along the texas coast.they were cannibals :shocking:

 

[halfstock]

(Big grin) Well my tribe was kinda referred to as savages at one time me thinks the race designation at that time was called Picts. They kinda raped pillaged and generally raised hell in europe :redthumb:. Now when my bunch came to the shores of the carolina's about 1670 they were called Irish or them damn Mics or those white Injuns, :: I think thats why my bunch came way far west, they just didn't get along with the gentry of the east, soooo they just started with their backs to the sun and kept on movin till they didn't see no smoke, whole lot of those 1st Irish lived with and adopted the way's of the native tribes.For a little info of that time a lot of Irish and Scots were mercenaries hired to protect the english holdings because of being fierce fighters and having a natural knack for being able to shoot a fire arm well. :results:

Halfstock

 

[jim gray]

What about the Abenaki(I think that is one way to spell it.) From what I've heard being captured by them wasn't pleasant either.

As for the Shawnee I believe a favorite pasttime of theirs, before Pontiac stopped the practice, was burning captives alive.

 

[Birdwatcher]

here in texas the comanche and lipans were greatly feared because of quanah parker ,but one seldome mentioned any more were the kiowas along the texas coast.they were cannibals

Hoo boy Brush... let us not start an Indian War :: 'Twas the tall Karankawas who were reputed to be ritual cannibals, and further north the Tonkawas too. The Kiowas were mostly north of us people in Texas.

I'm a litle leery of questions like this because a) I wasn't there, I get everything from books and b)We are attempting to make sweeping generalizations about groups of individual humans, but... starting from the East....

I believe the Susquehannocks of the Pa. area had a sterling reputation in their day, successfully resisting the other Iroquois in the early 1700's, likewise the history books have it the Shawnee were formidable also.

As far as treachery goes, Eckhert has it that the Illini of that present day State were infamous for their Machiavellian politics to the point it got 'em wiped out by their neighbors. A bit off topic, elsewhere I recall reading somewhere long ago of them being incorporating ritual homosexuality into their customs.

The Sauk and Fox, also of Illinois, apparently were also of sterling reputation in their day, both in fighting skills and codes of behavior. We see photos of Black Hawk only as an old man, but those grizzly claws he wears were from extended solo trips West in his youth, through lands of tribal enemies, to find a grizzly to fight.

The real gist is, especially pertaining to the East, what WE get pertaining to "courage, cruelty and treachery" seems to be second hand, as seen mostly through the eyes of assorted Whites who were on the receiving end. In virtually every case, those who actually KNEW the tribes in question generally have a far more charitable and complex view of them.

Consider the life of Daniel Boone; captured with his companions early on in Kentucky by the Shawnee, let go with a warning, losing their horses. They try to recapture their horses and are captured AGAIN, again let go with a warning. Or during that same time period Boone encouters a small Shawnee boy playing in a forest stream and raises his rifle, after a minute lowering it, deciding not to shoot. Upon lowering his rifle he finds the boy's father had been aiming at HIM from off to the side. One of our major frontier heros spared by the unusual forebearance of an anonymous Shawnee father.

The Seminoles have already been mentioned, and along the lines of this discussion who the heck would have heard of the Miamis had they not handed us our heads on a platter? The Winnebagos and Wyandots too were accounted fierce in their day.

Here in Texas the Lipan Apache and Comanche both have fierce reputations. Yet Smithwick ( http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm ) lived with the Comanches for a spell, and went to war against them alongside Lipan Apaches (who used to hang out at his gunshop). Read Smithwick's account, or read Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford's memoirs ("RIP Ford's Texas) and you'll get a far more multi-dimensional and human (ergo factual) protrait of these same "fierce warriors".

Some Tribes get big press in our history books (mostly on account of how many settlers they killed) others like them Miamis, Winnebago and Wyandots are largely overlooked. Who has ever heard much about the Caddo's? Yet 'twas an elderly Caddo who schooled Charles Goodnight in the ways of woodcraft and Ford (who employed them as scouts and allies) has high praise for the abilities of this same group. Or for thqat matter, who remembers the tall and fleet Omaha?, noted for fighting on foot and for pulling over the horses of their enemies by grabbing the tail, a pactice which has been said accounted for the Comanche practice of tying up the tails on their war horses.

The Kickapoos, yet another Illinois tribe, passed under most White's historical radar screens (just fine with the Kickapoo from what I understand) 'cept maybe for Li'l Abner's "Kickapoo Joy Juice", but the truth is they are likely the most unreduced Tribe in American history, and stil do come and go from Mexico and the US in a sort of diplomatic gray area. Always a fierce people, they notably handed the Texans their heads on a platter when we attacked them at Dove Creek ( http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/DD/btd1.html )

If I were going to pick out one tribe though who still glower down through the pages of history, it would have to be the Pawnees, by their own accounts the fiercest people, who still challenge the World 170 years later, staring out from Catlin's protraits..... http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~landc/images/amico/buffalobull_l.jpg

The fierce reputation of the Apaches is well-documented, yet read James Kaywaykla's first-person accounts "In the Days of Victorio" http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/books/bid23.htm for an entirely different take on events and the personalities of Geronimo, Lozen, Cochise, Nana and a whole bunch of infamous Chiricahuas. Mr Kaywaykla should know, he was there, as a ten-year old child. Then too the Kiowas and Comanches apparently didn't find the Apaches overwhelmingly fearsome, as both fought back and forth with them over the years sometimes winning sometimes losing.

I guess it comes out in the end that there weren't a more fierce or treacherous group ANYWHERE or ANYWHEN on the Frontier than us White folks, at least as seen through the eyes of our enemies.

'Course, most of us here ARE White folks so we know it weren't that simple.....

...but if there was ONE place I'd be sure to keep my powder dry it'd have to be coming back north up the Natchez trace... ...or maybe in the Louisiana redlands while coming West to Texas... ...ya just can't trust them Southern Rednecks, they be a fierce, cruel and treacherous folk ::

Just my $0.02
Birdwatcher

 

[akapennypincher]

Baddest of the Bad in my OPINION were the Semonoles who inhabited the SouthEastern U.S.A. like Florida. The Seminols were rarely defeated in Battle, and are THEOREDICALLY STILL AT WAR with the U.S. Government as they never Signed any Peace Treaties with the U.S. Government. This was taught to me when I learned Florida history as part of my Elementary School Curriculum. :thumbsup:

 

I'm a litle leery of questions like this because a) I wasn't there, I get everything from books and b)We are attempting to make sweeping generalizations about groups of individual humans, but...

I got the same feeling. It's kind of like... "If you were travleing through Europe, who would you fear most, the Germans, French, Italians, etc."

It's different than saying "which enemy army" would you fear most, but then we tended to consider the entire "tribe" the enemy, so I gues it makes sense. ::