Sunday, May 30, 2010

Letter to Pastors, May 30, 2010

Dear Preachers:

Let me ask you to be much in prayer concerning this upcoming trip to Israel as I left my house this morning at 4:30.

The Lord Willing, on Tuesday, June 1, at 3:00 PM Israel time, we will be meeting with Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon on the eighth floor of the Prime Minister's building. In addition, sometime on this trip we are attempting to meet up with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's father, who is a Zionist as a Jew; but, unfortunately, his son Bibi, the Prime Minister, is not.

The Givati Brigade Family Celebration will be the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th, and we really need your prayers regarding all that. This is an amazing time for us to share our Christian faith with Jews who are grieving for their sons killed in action against the Ishmaelite Throat-Slitting, Common Enemies our country has with them. Do, please, be much in prayer for those meetings too.

Then, the Lord willing, we are to meet with all those supporters of the Beit Kobi Home, and Aviva Ichlebom, the founder, on Sunday 6th of June, and would appreciate your prayers in that regard also. There will probably be some 20 to 25 Jews with us in that meeting. Beit Kobi is that home which takes care of IDF soldiers in Israel who have no family there with them. We have had an amazing door opened for us there.

In addition, next Thursday, the 3rd, I shall be meeting with Major General Joseph Doriel, who, by the way, on the last day of their 1948 Independence War, was bombing Fallujah in Iraq by dropping 81 mm mortars over the side of the little Piper Cub he was flying at that time. He is bringing a ninety-seven-year-old Retired Independence War, Givati Brigade Tank Commander with him to that meeting. I would covet your prayers for that meeting also.

And, we hope to be able to schedule a time with the Golani Brigade Commander and Captain Boris Eichenbaum, whom we met while over there in February. Please pray for all that also. When we look at the fracas, which has been continuous, measured, of course by the standards which the Everlastingly Covenanted Jews have to live by, since "time memorial," but especially since the formation of their country in the late 1940s I am reminded about American History which I studied as a lad, with respects to the "Plains Indians."

Let me try to explain to you, something I have recently "re-examined" relative to those Amerindians as they were called way back there. It is very instructive, at least for me, relative to the Arabs versus the Jews.

Amerindian wars, like Old World wars and hatreds, were alleviated by truces and remissions from time to time, and enemies sometimes even become allies. When you look at US maps for that era, say pre-1700 time, then in Colorado, on the top of the map you see the Arapahos, below them the Cheyennes, and to the west of the "Eastern Cordillera" were the Utes. In Kansas up at the top of the map were the Pawnees, and then in lower Kansas above the North Canadian River in the Oklahoma Panhandle were the Yampahreekuh, or Yahp-paheenuh, "Eaters of the Yap Root," the ancient Shoshone staple.

In Oklahoma, primarily there were the Osages and the Kuhtsoo-Ehkuh. The Kuhtsoo-ehkuh {Kotsoteka}, "Buffalo-Eaters," hunted mostly through western Oklahoma, making their winter camps along the Canadian Rivers.

In Texas, let me mention, in this order, the Kiowas, the Kiowa Apaches, the Kwerharrehnuh, the Nawkohnee, the Tahneemuh, the Teh nawa, the Pennahterkuh, the Lipan Apaches, the Wichitas, the Caddoans , the Tonkawas and the Karankawas.

Now, in this letter, we will not look at those tribes; you can't sell any potatoes on my opinions, but they have to be descendants of Ishmael, for their hand was against every man.

The "becoming of allies" I mention above never happened between Apache and Comanche. And, if you put a lot of stock in movies you watched in days gone past, the "Apaches" always were more feared than the Comanches. That was the Hollywood version, not American History. All Comanches, everywhere, became the foe of all Apaches, and the final tragedy was that both peoples, in the twilight of their existence, willingly and remorselessly helped the white man "exterminate each other."

It was war to the knife and beyond the grave. The mutual hatred of the two peoples, the great warrior tribes of the Southwest, was a hair-raising phenomenon, transcending any ephemeral hatred they conceived for Europeans, just as the Ishmaelite-Israeli conflict I've been privileged to witness now for several years, is also.

However begun, the Comanche-Apache war was no Amerindian game, no joyous horse raid, no courage rite. It was a fundamental part of the great western upheaval caused by European weapons and horses entering the mid-continent. It ended only when a new balance had been achieved by the Apaches being driven, contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, from the plains.

When Comanches discovered Apaches south of the Arkansas River late in the seventeenth century, the horse had already greatly deepened the dimension of Amerindian war. By 1700, the normal hunting or migrating range of a Plains tribe extended about 800 miles. Whereas before, a hundred-mile war raid was an extended operation, the radius of the 1700 normal raid was then between 300 and 400 hundred miles in any direction from a band encampment.

Such striking distances long seemed absolutely incredible to Europeans, especially those who tended to think in European scales. Yet, Amerindian war parties had little trouble covering such distances on horseback: the Indian ponies foraged off the native grass, and the warriors carried dried meat and water in animal-gut canteens. Both horses and men were able to endure extreme hardships, while the Amerindians' discipline and stoic indifference to suffering on the "war trail" were proverbial.

The long striking distances did require certain refinements and innovations. There were greater logistical preparations, pack horses carrying stores of meat and mesquite-bean meal. Also, the war parties carried along several mounts for each warrior.

It was extremely important to have fresh ponies, and more than one pony, in case of close pursuit. Women began to ride along with war parties, especially on extended operations. They normally did not fight, but erected base camps where they stayed to provide logistical support and the comforts of home.

Married women liked to be taken on the war parties, and some single girls (wild spirits) ran off with warriors going raiding, despite the scandal to their families. Women could fight if necessary. Sometimes they formed a second line of battle, sniping from cover with arrows, killing enemy wounded while a larger battle still raged.

They were always prepared to torture any captives that were brought back to the base camp.

Horse warfare taught the Comanches new tricks. One was that the best time to stage raids was the period of the full moon. Rising late, the full moon gave light to travel by, especially on the return trail when raiders might have to ride by night to escape pursuit.

They avoided striking during a crescent moon, since they believed that this time presaged rain, which slowed war parties. In addition, mud caused them to leave telltale tracks. The optimum time for war was before the coming of the new spring grass, providing forage, and the start of the fall hunt, when all the tribes were too busy with the meat harvest to fight.

The Comanches began to mount long-distance war raids against the Navona or Athapaskans soon after they encountered them below the Arkansas River, the line of which is southeast to northwest in Colorado. They did this exactly as they carried on expeditions against the adjacent Pawnees and Utes to the East and west.

They had a great incentive, because the eastern Apaches were rich in horseflesh taken from the Spanish in New Mexico. The first strikes were doubtless sporting horse raids.

However, the Nermernuh Comanches soon discovered that the Apaches were especially vulnerable to their mode of "mounted cavalry" warfare, compared to Utes or other plains tribes. The Utes were ensconced in mountains, while the Pawnees and Wichitas were as mobile as the Comanches.

But, the Eastern Apaches, husbanding their crops in spring and summer, were easy to locate, surround, and attack on horseback; and the Apaches were not given to bloody pursuit back across the trackless plains, contrary to Hollywood's cinemas.

Since the Comanches moved regularly, never camping in the same spot, the Athapaskans [shortened to Apaches], found their lodges very hard to locate. Apache war bands, who used horses only for transportation, dismounting to fight, were never comfortable out on the sea of grass as their nemesis, the Comanches, were!

The Nermernuh Comanches struck one Apache camp, then another, at widely separated spots. Sometimes they ran off all the horses, leaving enemy warriors raging and helpless; when conditions were right, and only when they were right — they massacred the whole camp.

The Comanches did not consciously commit genocide; this was simply warfare, as they knew it!

Frequently they would make captives of women and children, training them to be Comanches, because their biases were cultural, never racial.

Historians have asserted that the Indians learned slavery from the Spanish under Cortes, but the earliest Spanish explorers left records of finding captive aliens among all the tribes.

Warfare between the Apaches and the Comanches was never organized on a tribal basis; it could not be, since neither formed extensive tribes.

It was between band and band, enemies by a mutual cultural antipathy, institutionalized by ancient custom and new trauma.

It soon became decisive, for all its randomness, particularly as more and more Comanche bands debouched below the Arkansas River - bringing their women and children along on extended raids, seeing the country, enjoying its richness in limitless pace and endless Buffalo herds.

There was really no difference between a Comanches "village" and a Comanches "war base camp." Wherever a Comanches rode and rested, his tepee was home.

Thousands of Nermernuh Comanches spilled south through the southern plains, striking in ever direction at the Apache rancherias. The result was near-extermination of the advanced eastern Apaches, Hollywood notwithstanding!

The sum of the hundreds of raids was the same as the sum of a hundred pitched battles on the soil of Europe during the Valkerwanderung. Apache camps were destroyed one by one, and the whole Apache people began to be displaced.

This great war, or rather, vast series of petty raids and massacres, went largely unseen and unreported, even by the adjacent Spanish in New Mexico. The Spaniards had only vague conceptions of what was happening beyond their sphere of influence in those days.

They were still consolidating their reconquest of the upper Rio Grande, and were largely ignorant about "wild" Indians. Shortly after 1700, the New Mexican authorities realized that something had happened to their old Apache enemies, but, they knew none of the details.

In 1705 the Spanish made their first known contact with the Komantcia or Comanches, and by 1706, the Spanish governor was able to connect the appearance of this new tribe of Indios with the disasters befalling the eastern Apaches.

I find all these events interesting, and I plan to share them with the IDF officers, active duty, and retired, whom I will be privileged to visit over the next ten days.

Do please pray for us on this trip.

I remain sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD