Dragoon
Dragoons were a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 18th century onward, dragoons were also employed as conventional cavalry, trained for combat with swords from horseback. Dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the late 17th and early 18th centuries; the name is derived from a type of firearm, called a "dragon", a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army. The title has been retained in modern times by a number of ceremonial mounted regiments; the establishment of dragoons evolved from the practice of sometimes transporting infantry by horse when speed of movement was needed. In 1552 Prince Alexander of Parma mounted several companies of infantry on pack horses to achieve surprise. Another early instance was ordered by Louis of Nassau in 1572 during operations near Mons in Hainaut, when 500 infantry were transported this way, it is suggested the first dragoons were raised by the Marshal de Brissac in 1600.
According to old German literature, dragoons were invented by Count Ernst von Mansfeld, one of the greatest German military commanders, in the early 1620s. There are other instances of mounted infantry predating this; however Mansfeld, who had learned his profession in Hungary and the Netherlands used horses to make his foot troops more mobile, creating what was called an "armée volante". The name derives from an early weapon, a short wheellock called a dragon, because the first dragoons raised in France had their carbine's muzzle decorated with a dragon's head; the practice comes from a time when all gunpowder weapons had distinctive names, including the culverin, falcon, etc. It is sometimes claimed a galloping infantryman with his loose coat and the burning match resembled a dragon, it has been suggested that the name derives from the German "tragen" or the Dutch "dragen", both being the verb "to carry" in their respective languages. Howard Reid claims that the role descend from the Latin Draconarius.
Dragoon is used as a verb to mean to subjugate or persecute by the imposition of troops. The term dates from 1689, at a time when dragoons were being used by the French monarchy to persecute Protestants by forcing Protestants to lodge a dragoon in their house to watch over them, at the householder's expense. Early dragoons were not organized in squadrons or troops as were cavalry, but in companies like the infantry: their officers and non-commissioned officers bore infantry ranks. Dragoon regiments used drummers, not buglers; the flexibility of mounted infantry made dragoons a useful arm when employed for what would now be termed "internal security" against smugglers or civil unrest, on line of communication security duties. During the English Civil War dragoons were used for a variety of tasks: providing outposts, holding defiles or bridges in the front or rear of the main army, lining hedges or holding enclosures, providing dismounted musketeers to support regular cavalry.. In the closing stages of the Battle of Naseby Okey's Dragoons, who had started the action as dismounted musketeers, got on their horses and charged the first time this was done.
Supplied with inferior horses and more basic equipment, the dragoon regiments were cheaper to recruit and maintain than the expensive regiments of cavalry. When in the 17th century Gustav II Adolf introduced dragoons into the Swedish Army, he provided them with a sabre, an axe and a matchlock musket, utilizing them as "labourers on horseback". Many of the European armies henceforth imitated this all-purpose set of weaponry. A non-military use of dragoons was the 1681 Dragonnades, a policy instituted by Louis XIV to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or re-converting to Catholicism by billeting ill-disciplined dragoons in Protestant households. While other categories of infantry and cavalry were used, the mobility and available numbers of the dragoon regiments made them suitable for repressive work of this nature over a wide area. In the Spanish Army, Pedro de la Puente organized a body of dragoons in Innsbruck in 1635. In 1640, a tercio of a thousand dragoons armed with the arquebus was created in Spain.
By the end of the 17th century, the Spanish Army had three tercios of dragoons in Spain, plus three in the Netherlands and three more in Milan. In 1704, the Spanish dragoons were reorganised into regiments by Philip V, as were the rest of the tercios. Towards the end of 1776, George Washington realized the need for a mounted branch of the American military. In January 1777 four regiments of light dragoons were raised. Short term enlistments were abandoned and the dragoons joined for three years, or "the war", they participated in most of the major engagements of the American War of Independence, including the Battles of White Plains, Princeton, Germantown, Saratoga and Monmouth, as well as the Yorktown campaign. Dragoons were at a disadvantage when engaged against true cavalry, sought to improve their horsemanship and social status. By the Seven Years' War the primary role of dragoons in most European armies had progressed from that of mounted infantry to that of heavy cavalry. Earlier dragoon responsibilities for scouting and picket duty had passed to hussars and similar light cavalry corps in the French, Austrian and other armies.
In the Imperial Russian Army, due to the availability of the Cossack troops, the dragoons were retained in their original role for much longer. An exception t
Quapaw
The Quapaw people are a tribe of Native Americans that coalesced in the Midwest and Ohio Valley. The Dhegiha Siouan-speaking tribe migrated from the Ohio Valley area to the west side of the Mississippi River and resettled in what is now the state of Arkansas; the Quapaw are federally recognized as the Quapaw Nation. The US federal government removed them to Indian Territory in 1834, their tribal base has been in present-day Ottawa County in northeastern Oklahoma; the number of members enrolled in the tribe was 3,240 in 2011. Algonquian-speaking people called the Quapaws /akansa/, the French called them Arcansas; the French named the territory and state of Arkansas for them. The Quapaw Nation is headquartered in Quapaw in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, in the northeast corner of the state, they have a 13,000-acre Quapaw tribal jurisdictional area. The Quapaw people elect the tribal chairman, who serves a two-year term; the governing body of the tribe is outlined in the governing resolutions of the tribe, which were voted upon and approved in 1956 to create a written form of government.
The Chairman is John L. Berrey. Of the 3,240 enrolled tribal members, 892 live in the state of Oklahoma. Membership in the tribe is based on lineal descent; the tribe operates a Tribal Police Department and a Fire Department, which handles both fire and EMS calls. They have their own housing authority; the tribe owns two smoke shops and motor fuel outlets, known as the Quapaw C-Store and Downstream Q-Store. They have both located in Quapaw. In 2012 the Quapaw Tribe's annual economic impact was measured at more than $225,000,000, they own and operate the Eagle Creek Golf Course and resort, located in Loma Linda, Missouri. The Tar Creek Superfund site has been listed by the Environmental Protection Agency for clean-up of environmental hazards. European-Americans leased lands for development; the traditional Quapaw language is part of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan language family. There are few remaining native speakers, but Quapaw was well documented in fieldnotes and publications from many individuals, including George Izard in 1827, Lewis F. Hadley in 1882, 19th-century linguist James Owen Dorsey, Frank T. Siebert in 1940, by linguist Robert Rankin in the 1970s.
Classes in the Quapaw language are taught at the tribal museum. An online audio lexicon of the Quapaw language was created by editing old recordings of Elders speaking the language. Other efforts at language preservation and revitalization are being undertaken. In 2011 the Quapaw participated in the first annual Dhegiha Gathering; the Osage language program hosted and organized the gathering, held at the Quapaw tribe's Downstream Casino. Language-learning techniques and other issues were discussed and taught in workshops at the conference among the five cognate tribes; the Annual Dhegiha Gathering was held in 2012 at Downstream Casino. The Quapaw host cultural events throughout the year held at the tribal museum; these include Indian dice games, traditional singing, classes in traditional arts, such as finger weaving, shawl making, flute making. In addition, Quapaw language classes are held there; the tribe's annual dance is during the weekend of the Fourth of July. This dance started shortly after the American Civil War, 2011 was the 139th anniversary of this dance.
Common features of this powwow include gourd dance, war dance, stomp dance, 49s. Other activities take place such as Indian football, traditional footraces, traditional dinners, turkey dance, other dances such as Quapaw Dance, dances from other area tribes; this weekend is when the tribe convenes the annual general council meeting, during which important decisions regarding the policies and resolutions of the Quapaw tribe are voted upon by tribal members over the age of eighteen. The Quapaw Nation are descended from a historical group of Dhegian-Siouan speaking people who lived in the lower Ohio River valley area; the modern descendants of this group include the Omaha, Ponca and Kaw. The Quapaw and the other Dhegiha Siouan speaking tribes are believed to have migrated from the Ohio River valley after 1200 CE. Scholars are divided in whether they think the Quapaw and other related groups left before or after the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, in which the more powerful Five Nations of the Iroquois drove out other tribes from the Ohio Valley and retained the area for hunting grounds.
They arrived at their historical territory, the area of the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, at minimum by the mid-17th century. The timing of the Quapaw migration into their ancestral territory in the historical period has been the subject of considerable debate by scholars of various fields, it is referred to as the "Quapaw Paradox" by academics. Many professional archaeologists have introduced numerous migration scenarios and time frames, but none has conclusive evidence. Glottochronological studies suggest the Quapaw separated from the other Dhegihan-speaking peoples ranging between AD 950 to as late as AD 1513; the Illinois and other Algonquian-speaking peoples to the northeast referred to them as the Akansea or Akansa, meaning "land of the downriver people". As French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet met the Illinois before they did the Quapaw, they adopted this exonym for the more westerly people. English-speaking settlers who ar
Fort Duncan
Fort Duncan was a United States Army base, set up to protect the first U. S. settlement on the Rio Grande near the current town of Eagle Pass, Texas. A line of seven army posts were established in 1848–49 after the Mexican War to protect the settlers of West Texas and included Fort Worth, Fort Graham, Fort Gates, Fort Croghan, Fort Martin Scott, Fort Lincoln and Fort Duncan. Fort Duncan was established on March 27, 1849, when Captain Sidney Burbank occupied the site with companies A, B, F of the First United States Infantry. On November 14, 1849, the post was named Fort Duncan, after Col. James Duncan, a hero of the Mexican–American War; the post consisted of a storehouse, two magazines, four officers' quarters, a stone hospital, in addition to quarters for enlisted men. Construction was done half by half by hired workers. There was ample stone but no timber for building, the men suffered from exposure. Company C, 1st Regiment of Artillery, asked permission to construct quarters at its own expense.
During the 1850s, Fort Duncan provided merchants and traders protection from border frontier outlaws and Native Americans. The fort served as a post for scouting Native Americans. In 1854, Lt.s Philip Sheridan, Zenas Bliss, Richard W. Johnson and Assistant Surgeon Albert J. Myer were stationed here, the Lieutenants after graduating from West Point. Fort Duncan became involved in an invasion of Mexico on 2 October 1855, when Texas Ranger Captain James H. Callahan led an effort to capture "runaway slaves", but confronted by Mexican regular troops and the ex-slaves, Callahan retreated to Piedras Negras, which caught fire, threatening his force with annihilation until Capt. Burbank covered Callahan's retreat across the Rio Grande with Fort Duncan artillery. Secretary of War John B. Floyd ordered the post abandoned in May 1859, but Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee ordered the fort reoccupied in March 1860 during the Cortina Troubles; the fort at this time consisted of "25 buildings... nearly all are stone and adobe with thatched roofs."General David E. Twiggs ordered the fort evacuated on 21 February 1861, just before the outbreak of the American Civil War.
However, Major William H. French was able to evacuate three companies of artillery at Fort Duncan and two at Fort Brown to Fort Jefferson and Fort Zachary Taylor in Florida; the CSA garrisoned the fort with volunteers and Texas Rangers, renaming it Rio Grande Station, which became an important port for the export of cotton into Mexico. Federal troops reoccupied Fort Duncan on 23 March 1868 by the 41st Infantry under the command of Lt. Col. William R. Shafter, Lt. Henry Ware Lawton as quartermaster. An additional unit of Buffalo soldiers stationed at the fort, besides the 41st, was the 9th Cavalry; this included George B. Jackson a businessman in San Angelo called "the wealthiest black man in Texas" during the second half of the 19th century; the 25th Infantry arrived under the command of Major Bliss in 1870, the Black Seminole Scouts were organized at the fort under the command of 2nd Lt. Henry Field Leggett, but commanded by 2nd Lt. John L. Bullis; the post was abandoned once again on 31 August 1883.
Camp at Eagle Pass was established on 3 April 1886 as a sub-post of Fort Clark until it was discontinued in February 1927. The 3rd Texas Volunteer Infantry was based here from 25 May 1898 until 16 February 1899; the camp was ordered abandoned in 1904 but a detachment of Signal Corps was placed here on 9 February 1911 while "Mexico was aflame with revolution" until 1914. The National Guard was mobilized here in 1916, joining the Coast Artillery Corps, while the 90th Aero Squadron operated DH-4Bs from here in 1919 until 1920, which included Jimmy Doolittle. Only a caretaker force remained to watch over the hospital from 1922 until final closure of the camp in 1927. On 3 March 1911, Benjamin Foulois and Philip Orin Parmelee flew the US military's first cross country reconnaissance flight here from Laredo using a Wright Model B covering 106 miles in two hours at an altitude of 800 feet. In 1933, the City of Eagle Pass Parks and Recreation Department began maintaining the old fort as a public park.
The city formally acquired the property in 1938 at an auction price of $3760 and converted it into Fort Duncan Park. In 1942 the mayor offered the fort to the military for use during World War II; the government used the Fort Duncan Country Club as an officers' club and the swimming pool for commissioned personnel stationed at Eagle Pass Army Air Field. The site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Seven of the original buildings still stand today. In the early 1980s, the Fort Duncan Country Club caught only the outer walls remain; the Commander's Headquarters building has been converted into the Fort Duncan Museum, with exhibits of local and fort history and artifacts. National Register of Historic Places listings in Maverick County, Texas Forts of Texas U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Fort Duncan "Fort Duncan - Eagle Pass ~ Marker Number: 14217". Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 1936. "Fort Duncan - Eagle Pass ~ National Register District".
Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 1971. Fort Duncan Museum Fort Duncan from the Handbook of Texas Online "U. S. Army on the Texas Frontier". Texas Beyond History. University of Texas at Austin
Fort Graham
Fort Graham was a pioneer fort established in 1849 by Brevet Major R. A. Arnold at the site of Jose Maria Village, an Anadaca camp on the western edge of present-day Hill County, Texas, it remained in service until 1853. It was named after Col. William M. Graham. A line of seven army posts was established in 1848-49 after the Mexican War to protect the settlers of West Texas and included Fort Worth, Fort Graham, Fort Gates, Fort Croghan, Fort Martin Scott, Fort Lincoln, Fort Duncan. In 1936, the Texas Centennial Commission granted Hill County $6,700 to purchase the land upon which the Fort stood and reconstruct one of the buildings. In 1953, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers took the fort site as part of the Lake Whitney project. Dr. S. Alan Skinner published, in 1974, An Evaluation of the Archaeological Resources at Lake Whitney, Southern Methodist University contributions in anthropology No. 14. The Corps, in accordance with the 1936 dedication, operated a park on the site until 1982 at which time Hill County, Texas was forced to enter into a lease for the property or lose this culturally significant resource.
In 1983, a group of local citizens led by Mrs. Selma Hill raised $15,000 to move the building, determined that the fort be preserved. At this time, the building was only three years from being eligible for the National Register on its own merits, but the citizens were never informed of this. Had it achieved National Register status, the Corps would have been forced to take preservative action; the citizens of the county continued to maintain the site until 2002, when the corps came before the county demanding that a minimum of $60,000 be spent for the revitalization of the area. Hill County did not have sufficient funds, thus it relinquished the lease; the Fort Graham Preservation Society, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation established to ensure that the memory of Fort Graham is not lost. It is working with federal and county agencies to preserve and revitalize Fort Graham Park and archeological site. Fort Worth Fort Gates Fort Croghan Fort Martin Scott Fort Inge Fort Duncan "Fort Graham - Whitney ~ Marker Number: 1984".
Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 1936. "U. S. Army on the Texas Frontier". Texas Beyond History. University of Texas at Austin
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Comanche
The Comanche are a Native American nation from the Great Plains whose historic territory consisted of most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, western Oklahoma, northern Chihuahua. The Comanche people are federally recognized as the Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma; the Comanche were the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains in the 19th centuries. They are characterized as "Lords of the Plains" and, reflecting their prominence, they presided over a large area called Comancheria which a modern historian has characterized as the "Comanche Empire." Comanche power was based on bison, horses and raiding. They hunted the bison of the Great Plains for food and skins, they took captives from weaker tribes during warfare, using them as slaves or selling them to the Spanish and Mexican settlers. They took thousands of captives from the Spanish and American settlers and incorporated them into Comanche society.
Decimated by European diseases and encroachment by Americans on Comancheria, the Comanche were defeated by the United States army in 1875 and confined to a reservation in Oklahoma. In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 members, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional area around Lawton, Fort Sill, the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma; the Comanche Homecoming Annual Dance is held annually in Oklahoma, in mid-July. The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, sometimes classified as a Shoshoni dialect. Only about 1% of Comanches speak their language today; the name "Comanche" is from the Ute name for them, kɨmantsi, but known to the French as Padoucas, an adaption of their Sioux name, among themselves as Nʉmʉnʉ. The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Oklahoma, their tribal jurisdictional area is located in Caddo, Cotton, Jefferson, Kiowa and Tillman Counties. Membership of the tribe requires a 1/8 blood quantum; the tribe issues tribal vehicle tags.
They have their own Department of Higher Education awarding scholarships and financial aid for members' college educations. Additionally, they operate the Comanche Nation College in Lawton, they own four casinos. The casinos are Comanche Nation Casino in Lawton. In 2002, the tribe founded a two-year tribal college in Lawton, it has since closed. Each July, Comanches from across the United States gather to celebrate their heritage and culture in Walters at the annual Comanche Homecoming powwow; the Comanche Nation Fair is held every September. The Comanche Little Ponies host two annual dances—one over New Year's and one in May; the Comanche emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. In 1680, the Comanche acquired horses from the Pueblo Indians after the Pueblo Revolt, they separated from the Shoshone after this, as the horses allowed them greater mobility in their search for better hunting grounds. The horse was a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture.
It was of such strategic importance that some scholars suggested that the Comanche broke away from the Shoshone and moved southward to search for additional sources of horses among the settlers of New Spain to the south The Comanche may have been the first group of Plains natives to incorporate the horse into their culture and may have introduced the animal to the other Plains peoples. From Natchitoches in Spanish Louisiana, Athanase de Mézières reported in 1770 that the Comanches were "so skilful in horsemanship that they have no equal, so daring that they never ask for or grant truces, in possession of such a territory that... they only just fall short of possessing all of the conveniences of the earth, have no need to covet the trade pursued by the rest of the Indians."Their original migration took them to the southern Great Plains, into a sweep of territory extending from the Arkansas River to central Texas. They reached present-day New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle by 1700, forcing the Lipan Apache people southward, defeating them in a nine-day battle along the Rio del Fierro in 1723.
The river may be the location mentioned by Athanase de Mézières in 1772, containing "a mass of metal which the Indians say is hard, thick and composed of iron", which they "venerate...as an extraordinary manifestation of nature", the Comanche's calling it Ta-pic-ta-carre, Po-i-wisht-carre, or Po-a-cat-le-pi-le-carre, the general area containing a "large number of meteoric masses". By 1777, the Lipan Apache had retreated to the Mescalero Apache to Coahuila. During that time, their population increased because of the abundance of buffalo, an influx of Shoshone migrants, their adoption of significant numbers of women and children taken captive from rival groups; the Comanche never formed a single cohesive tribal unit, but were divided into a dozen autonomous groups, called bands. These groups shared the same language and culture, fought each other, they were estimate
