Chimps and Chumps

I had forgotten about the chimps waging war, but they do indeed. Then there is a subspecies of chimps called "bonobos" or something like that. They don't fight much, but they do try to fuck each other to death. Well, maybe not to death, but to the point where one gives up and accepts the dominance of the other. They don't seem to distinguish between males and females either, anybody is fair game for their game. I suppose that makes the bonobos either more enlightened or more depraved than the chimps, depending on your point of view. "Make love not war" sounds like a good idea, but I suppose, like a lot of other things, it can be carried to extremes. Male lions do something like war, actually more like a gang fight. Several males will join together to overthrow a dominant breeding male, who might also have a couple of allies. Turkeys too, but they seldom fight to the death like lions frequently do. Grazing animals probably don't wage war because they're too busy eating. Grass and weeds have less nutritional value than meat, so they have to eat almost constantly to stay alive.

I have read some about the Indian Removal Act of 1830, but I didn't know that Jefferson had anything to do with it. Sounds like he was ambivalent about the Indians like he was about the Blacks. On one hand he admired them but, on the other hand, he believed they should be kept in their place. U.S. Indian policy has been criticized for being inconsistent, but I think that's just because politicians and bureaucrats come and go, and frequently overturn the policies of their predecessors. The reason the White Man speaks with forked tongue is that it's not just one White man speaking.

People tend to think of Indian chiefs as executive rulers, but they usually were more like a board of commissioners. They mostly sat around the fire debating what the tribe or band was going to do next. They would, however, appoint a war chief in times of crisis. This guy was the supreme authority for the duration of the war but, once it was over, he would return to his place in the fire circle. I think that Indian wars were pretty low key affairs before the White Man came along, giving them guns and paying them a bounty for French or English scalps. I have always wondered how whoever paid the bounty could tell if the scalp was French or English. Maybe they just took the Indian's word for it, for the Red Man never spoke with forked tongue until the White Man taught him how to lie. Damn meddlesome White Man!