edbenton wrote: vsmith wrote: Red Horse wrote: The Vikings were mighty foes as well, why not name the war birds after them,,, because it is still not right that's why.Viking related, there was the XB-70 VALKYLRIE, named after the mythological female figures who flew over fields of battle and chose the bravest warriors who died in battle to be taken to Valhalla. IMHO one of the most beautiful creations that ever flew. The name was somehow very appropriate to me.I guess it all depends on your perspective. I can perfectly understand why certain images are considered rascist and demeaning. As one whos ancestry is Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Viking, I have to endure all sorts of bad image things like Leprechans, drunken Irishmen, bagpipes, and other horrors. But the reality is I have held no real misgivings over different aspects of my ancestry being used for things like sports teams or such, but then again I saw nothing wrong when that school wanted to change their teams name to the "Fighting Whities" And as for sports, big Notre Dame fame, even dont mind their silly Leprechan mascot, I wish the dam Vikings could win once in a while, and I wish all those chowderheads in Boston would pronounce the dagnabbited teams name right, it's supposed to be pronounced "Kel-tics" ya bums! not "Sel-tics" Running to cover my Blarney Stones. Actually there is a Warplane named after the Vikings. The S-3A is called the Viking and is the Carrier based Sub Hunter for the US Navy. Also used for a tanker and abot anything else that they need on ship short fo Fighter and Cargo Plane since it does not have a big enough space to be used for that.
vsmith wrote: Red Horse wrote: The Vikings were mighty foes as well, why not name the war birds after them,,, because it is still not right that's why.Viking related, there was the XB-70 VALKYLRIE, named after the mythological female figures who flew over fields of battle and chose the bravest warriors who died in battle to be taken to Valhalla. IMHO one of the most beautiful creations that ever flew. The name was somehow very appropriate to me.I guess it all depends on your perspective. I can perfectly understand why certain images are considered rascist and demeaning. As one whos ancestry is Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Viking, I have to endure all sorts of bad image things like Leprechans, drunken Irishmen, bagpipes, and other horrors. But the reality is I have held no real misgivings over different aspects of my ancestry being used for things like sports teams or such, but then again I saw nothing wrong when that school wanted to change their teams name to the "Fighting Whities" And as for sports, big Notre Dame fame, even dont mind their silly Leprechan mascot, I wish the dam Vikings could win once in a while, and I wish all those chowderheads in Boston would pronounce the dagnabbited teams name right, it's supposed to be pronounced "Kel-tics" ya bums! not "Sel-tics" Running to cover my Blarney Stones.
Red Horse wrote: The Vikings were mighty foes as well, why not name the war birds after them,,, because it is still not right that's why.
The Vikings were mighty foes as well, why not name the war birds after them,,, because it is still not right that's why.
Viking related, there was the XB-70 VALKYLRIE, named after the mythological female figures who flew over fields of battle and chose the bravest warriors who died in battle to be taken to Valhalla. IMHO one of the most beautiful creations that ever flew. The name was somehow very appropriate to me.
I guess it all depends on your perspective. I can perfectly understand why certain images are considered rascist and demeaning. As one whos ancestry is Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Viking, I have to endure all sorts of bad image things like Leprechans, drunken Irishmen, bagpipes, and other horrors. But the reality is I have held no real misgivings over different aspects of my ancestry being used for things like sports teams or such, but then again I saw nothing wrong when that school wanted to change their teams name to the "Fighting Whities"
And as for sports, big Notre Dame fame, even dont mind their silly Leprechan mascot, I wish the dam Vikings could win once in a while, and I wish all those chowderheads in Boston would pronounce the dagnabbited teams name right, it's supposed to be pronounced "Kel-tics" ya bums! not "Sel-tics"
Running to cover my Blarney Stones.
Actually there is a Warplane named after the Vikings. The S-3A is called the Viking and is the Carrier based Sub Hunter for the US Navy. Also used for a tanker and abot anything else that they need on ship short fo Fighter and Cargo Plane since it does not have a big enough space to be used for that.
Yep, I knew about the S3A Viking, one of these:
I just like the B70 more, far sexier!
Have fun with your trains
Vsmith wrote:
I wish all those chowderheads in Boston would pronounce the dagnabbited teams name right, it's supposed to be pronounced "Kel-tics" ya bums! not "Sel-tics" " border="0" width="15" height="15" />
Red Horse writes: I've always wondered about this also?
Vsmith wrote: Running to cover my Blarney Stones." border="0" width="15" height="15" />
Red Horse writes: Now this is the funniest thing I've read in a while....
MP173 wrote: So, would the west have been settled differently without the land grants? In your opinion, did the railroad expedite the settling?
So, would the west have been settled differently without the land grants? In your opinion, did the railroad expedite the settling?
Land Grants almost always presaged the environmental and human sociological disasters of the homesteaders: people planted where they shouldn't be, by railroads intent on exploiting the government -- not their own -- lands to generate traffic that otherwise would not have been there to generate railroad revenue -- and even at that not enough to avoid the bankruptcies of the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific roads -- the two largest recipients of Land Grants.
It was a merciless exchange of human capital for railroad capital, to "make" the Land Grants work. And didn't, as the subsequent bankruptcies show. So why the sacrifice of the human capital -- real live human beings, their hopes, dreams, and personal investment, ... and lives? It was a humanitarian catastophe, as well as an economic one.
It was unjustifiable.
And what happens when private capital and decision-making are crowded out by speculation? The usual. As Western railroad expansion became associated with the Credit Mobilier and the Northwest Improvement Company, private financing dried up. The Northern Pacific destroyed Jay Cooke, the best known financier of his era. JP Morgan refused to have anything to do with the Union Pacific receivership of 1893, if that offers any suggestion about what genuinely knowledgeable financiers thought about the "expedited" settlement and development of the West at the time.
As the Land Grant roads spent 20 years or more winding down to bankruptcy, demonstrating the ultimate failure of the Land Grant concept, Western development was wholly regressive as each new disaster persuaded settler and investor alike to steer clear of the West, until some new explosion of railroad propaganda took advantage of some new generation's ignorance. It is a propaganda that resonates among self-professed knowledgeable people to this day, and continues to "take them in" exactly as it "took in" earlier generations of listeners and readers, but who in those days bet their fortunes and lives on the losing propositions.
The Land Grant roads imposed an economic penalty on the development of the West, and slowed the fruition of its ultimate promise.
Once inevitable Western development inevitably made the Land Grant roads profitable, they in turn leveraged their Grants to gain advantage over authentic private ventures -- the poorly built and improbable gaining competitive advantage, courtesy of the US Taxpayer, equal to or exceeding the private ventures that otherwise made economic sense and had superior planning: the sheer force of the subsidy overwhelming the logic of enterprise development and defining the ultimate resolution of the Western railway map.
All of the things that railroads accuse the highway system of being today, the artificial Government Frankensteins called Land Grant Railroads did to the "real" railroads of the era.
And the same railroad spokesmen that speak to highway subsidy today as a profound injustice, inevitably, in the West, work without the slightest hint of profound personal embarassment for a descendent of a Land Grant Railroad.
ed
MP173 wrote: Now that we have discussed the western attitudes towards the east, it is very obvious to note your attitude toward those (historically at least) east of the Rockies.
Now that we have discussed the western attitudes towards the east, it is very obvious to note your attitude toward those (historically at least) east of the Rockies.
Not so much east of the Rockies, as east of the Appalachians, i.e. Wall Steet.
East of the Rockies were located the natural instruments of a rational Western expansion, the railroads that would have, under an "enterprise" theory of expansion, been able to advance the frontier according to reasonable economic principles, and indeed were doing so at the time, each with their own long-term plans to reach the Coast, when the circumstances justified construction. These were the Chicago & North Western, the Rock Island, the Milwaukee, and the Burlington. Others might well qualify. The Santa Fe was perhaps an intermediate type: land grants in Kansas, private initiative elsewhere.
However, the private enterprise invested in those successful Midwestern roads was ultimately stunted by massive government grants to purely exploitative enterprises which, given the natural bounty thus bestowed, didn't care whether their efforts made economic sense or not from a railroading perspective. The Government created the condition whereby the only economic sense of the entire concept was for small groups of capitalists to exploit the grants and the construction contracts to line their pockets.
MP173 wrote: Michael:Most continents were already settled prior to the developement of railroads.
Michael:Most continents were already settled prior to the developement of railroads.
Yes, my poorly made point was that, only in America, at the prodding of purchased Congressmen, a cheap commodity considering the stakes involved, did the idea take root that railroads were necessary to "develop" a region, and that the railroads had to come first -- ignoring the first million or so years of human history -- and that oh by the way the government had to give away its own resources to do so, rather than rely on the natural development of private resources which, it is now claimed by some railroad men, is the essential measure of a project's worth but will gladly suspend their logic and personal credibility when it comes to Land Grant Railroads.
"Land grants" seem to continue in one form or another, even today. Witness the recent tax incentives for corn based ethanol. While not a "land grant" it is a subsidy, which is very similar to the concept of land grants.
How did ATSF parlay 3 million acres into 14 million?
Now that we have discussed the western attitudes towards the east, it is very obvious to note your attitude toward those (historically at least) east of the Rockies. Interesting in that it is usually noted that the major regional disagreement in the US was between the North and South.
No doubt if one spent time studying (which I havent) other regions such differences would be noted. Many of those differences were pointed out in recent elections with brightly colored red and blue states.
Ah, geography and politics mixed with railroads. Good stuff.
Modelcar wrote: ...All very interesting. Didn't realize the "western lines" were originally built to such rough and crude standards....I understand they were built as fast and least expensive as possible to get it {the line}, to it's destination. I'm not criticizing the engineering / surveyors for the work they did....in fact I don't understand how they did it at all....With 3 and 4% grades {and no air brakes yet}, I can't understand how they managed to get a consist over the line without dumping it down over an embankment, etc....each trip. And then in Winter....??It's amazing the routes eventually did develope into the network we have now crossing the country.
...All very interesting. Didn't realize the "western lines" were originally built to such rough and crude standards....I understand they were built as fast and least expensive as possible to get it {the line}, to it's destination. I'm not criticizing the engineering / surveyors for the work they did....in fact I don't understand how they did it at all....
With 3 and 4% grades {and no air brakes yet}, I can't understand how they managed to get a consist over the line without dumping it down over an embankment, etc....each trip. And then in Winter....??
It's amazing the routes eventually did develope into the network we have now crossing the country.
If you ever want an interesting read about 19th century railroads, read about the D&RGs battle to build their line over Marshall Pass, at over 10,000 feet it was the highest mainline railroad ever built in the US, and then read about the struggle to keep it open to traffic year round, and the battle the crews had to get trains up and over the pass in one peice.
MP173 wrote: The land grant contracts were either not well written or executed. Michael, was the "intent" of the grants contractualized...or simply ignored?
The land grant contracts were either not well written or executed. Michael, was the "intent" of the grants contractualized...or simply ignored?
The respective Land Grant Acts were not drafted by populist crusaders with the best interests of "The People" involved. The provenance of those Acts is very nearly unique; other nations, indeed, entire continents managing somehow to get "settled" without huge government gifts of land to private companies, or even railroads for that matter. It is the pure political propaganda of the time that the Land Grants were necessary to "settle" the West. About all they did in advance of normal development and growth was to put farmers and homesteaders where they didn't belong, causing untold misery, even as they poured billions of dollars into Eastern pockets -- which, as the well-documented and sordid history of the Union Pacific demonstrates, was the primary purpose of the Grants.
The fine sounding language of "Development" nearly always leaves out the tragedies, and astonishing economic waste, which is never tabulated in the "Heroic" version of Western Railroad expansion.
The railroads were willing participants in the first railroad climatological disaster when the Santa Fe and the Burlington promoted settlement of their lands in Kansas in the 1870's. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner had written that "the occupation of western Kansas may illustrate the movement which went on also in the west of Nebraska and the Dakotas. The pioneer farmer tried to push into the region with the old methods of settlement. Deceived by rainy seasons and the railroad advertisements, and recklessly optimistic, hosts of settlers poured out into the plains beyond the region of sufficient rainfall for successful agriculture without irrigation. ... Kansas farmers eagerly mortgaged their possessions to secure the capital so freely offered for their attack on the arid lands."
The Santa Fe did receive land grants, contrary to what has been posted here, but they were not on the order of magnitude of the UP or NP. However, the Santa Fe was one of the roads that "locked up" additional corporate land ownership benefitting its Eastern owners at the sacrifice of genuine development, it's initial 2,929,348 acre land grant being parlayed into a 14,000,000 acre corporate empire by the 1970s.
The railroads would have come on their own, when development was good and ready, the Milwaukee was an example of that, and in a more convoluted way, the Great Northern. And when the West did begin to realistically develop, 1908-1925, the two fastest growing railroads in the nation were the Santa Fe and the Milwaukee Road. However, the grip of the mythology is so complete that modern Americans cannot conceive of the development of the West without the Land Grants, as though the process never occured anywhere else in the history of the world without a railroad involved or, for that matter, in the East of the United States, as well as in the West.
Were the Grants poorly contractualized? No, they achieved exactly what their drafters intended, and many a mansion was built on Fifth Avenue and in the Hamptons upon the backs of exploited Chinese coolies, the suffering of Indian nations, and the tragedies of starving homesteaders and their dying livestock, oh yes, and thousands of bilked investors, many often with their life savings invested and lost on the promises, not knowing the character and purpose of those making them.
Best thing that ever happened ... in some history books.
Well, where I can not speak for all Native People I can speak for myself and those around me who share the same view point of such things as giving Sports teams and so on Native American names.
First let me say it is not all Natives whom feel this way, some of us are happy that it is Sports teams and so on, at least sports teams are a positive thing for adults,and kids especially, now if say, the local head shop or an adult book store or liquor store were to call themselves the "Indians", "Braves" or "Chief Fire Waters" for a bar than I'd have something to say.
Most of us realize that the Sports teams wanted to give their teams a good strong proud name and so they look to our Culture for such symbols and that is why you and others think the way you do on such things as far as saying it is "too honor us".
A Lot of the younger natives coming up are growing up with anger in their hearts, they want to get politically active and this subject is an easy target, now the older Natives such as myself are not impressed by the political correctness that has run amuck, yes we like it when people are not trying to be offensive but because of all this "over the top" political correctness it is only serving to divide the younger generations from getting to know each other, some native teens will not have non Native friends and I feel this hurts relationships from forming and growing between our cultures.
Now my feelings differ on the US Military using our names, images etc. on war icons, I'm proud to be allowed to continue to live in the USA and I'm proud of our military as I have served honorably as an MP for 6 years in the 1980s, but I do not enjoy the fact that there are other innocent civilians in villages a half a world away that know that the "Apaches" are coming to rain death down upon them, lets face it not all those who die in war are combatants, imagine the image of such destruction being linked to YOUR culture, I've heard there were actually people in other countries that believe that all the war machines are built by the once proud native people here, they think that WE named these things after making them, this doesn't sit well with me.
I'm all for breaking down the walls that have been put up by those that do not understand that when we allowed "political correctness" to run away with our ability to communicate openly we have doomed the next generations to live with mistrust and fear of those who are not "From their village".
We as Native people have a group that is so sensitive that they have lost track of their original intent, the group called A.I.M. the "American Indian Movement" has grown from a protector of the people too a boarder line terrorist organization, they think they have the right to do what ever they want in the name of helping and protecting the Native people, they are young, they are armed to the teeth and they no longer follow the wisdom of the Elders and this is a recipe for disaster.
So if a kid wants to name his soap box racer, his bike or his High School sports team after a Native American ideal then I say go for it, I'd rather see him or her doing this than naming their bike after an adult film star.
I tend to ramble but within my rantings I can sometime plant a seed that will bring our cultures closer together than further apart.
I'm also blessed to have a unique perspective, my Mother was full blooded Blackfeet and a decorated Warrior and my Father was an Irish bridge builder so I guess I have a little of both their Spirits in me.
Now we follow our mothers blood lines in our culture and not the Fathers for reasons I'll not get into here.
I hope this has answered your questions and as far as Model Rail Roading, I'm raising my Grand Children to be more tolerant when it comes to the use of Indian names in a positive light and the SF Chief isn't a bad thing, besides from their past actions we know they thought well of the Natives just by treating them fairly as employees..
Be well my friends, and never worry about "Offending me" on the forums unless it is deliberate, I know most of you here would never do that or hurt any ones feelings or their cultural back grounds just for sport.
I still call myself Indian after the rest of the country was forced to call us Native Americans, our "TAG" has changed so much over the generations no wonder Native kids don't know who they are today.
Peace upon you and yours.
Jess Red Horse,
Red Horse wrote: I didn't want to comment on the Navajos being employed by the Santa Fe Line until I looked into it and yes, as a matter of fact they did employ them and in doing so the SF line infused a lot of capitol into the Navajo Reservations.Now that was a part of the history of that line that I did not know about but I have a Son in Law who is 1/2 Navajo and I got to talk to his Dad and he told me that my Son in laws Great Grandfather worked on that line until he broke his back in a fall off a bridge pass they were working on, what a shame, because at the time they were one of the few employers that paid the Natives the same as any other laborer which says alot about what kind of company they were/are, I knew I liked that line the most but didn't know why until this afternoon.As a foot note, when Moises (his Great Grand Father) broke his back, the line paid for all his medical and a years pay, now THAT wasn't heard of back then either....very cool!GO SANTA FE!!!!I just love a thread that teaches me something new.
I didn't want to comment on the Navajos being employed by the Santa Fe Line until I looked into it and yes, as a matter of fact they did employ them and in doing so the SF line infused a lot of capitol into the Navajo Reservations.
Now that was a part of the history of that line that I did not know about but I have a Son in Law who is 1/2 Navajo and I got to talk to his Dad and he told me that my Son in laws Great Grandfather worked on that line until he broke his back in a fall off a bridge pass they were working on, what a shame, because at the time they were one of the few employers that paid the Natives the same as any other laborer which says alot about what kind of company they were/are, I knew I liked that line the most but didn't know why until this afternoon.
As a foot note, when Moises (his Great Grand Father) broke his back, the line paid for all his medical and a years pay, now THAT wasn't heard of back then either....very cool!
GO SANTA FE!!!!
I just love a thread that teaches me something new.
So what are your thoughts on the use of a Native theme by the Santa Fe to "brand" and market its passenger service? They branded their trains "The Chief", etc. and used art depicting a proud Indian. I've got an old Santa Fe timetable with a cover that has a drawing of a passenger train rolling though the southwest in the background with "Chico" in the foreground. "Chico" was an advertising agency's invention of a small Native boy. On the timetable cover he was drawn tracing a Santa Fe logo in the sand as the train passed in the distance.
I'm a graduate of the Univeristy of Illinois and we recently lost "Chief Illiniwik" (SP?) because it was thought his performance at football/basketball games was offensive. I never thought it to be anything but an honor. The teams are the "Fighting Illini" and the state is named after the Illini Tribe - which may be an Anglo corruption of the name.
I've always thought the "Kansas City Chiefs" football team was named after the Santa Fe train.
Here in Antioch, IL the high school teams are the "Sequoits" which was a tribe. It's also the name of a creek and the PC people are dodging the issue by claiming the team is named after the creek, not the tribe.
The US Army names its helicopters after the tribes it fought. Kiowa, Apache, Blackhawk, etc.
I see such names (and Chief Illiniwik) as honoring Native people, not dishonoring them. And I'd be interested in your thoughts on the subject.
From one who had the priviledge to work with Navajo Steel Gangs 1 & 2 on occasion:
They were a world unto themselves and Santa Fe's patience was well placed. They frequently embarassed the steel gangs of SP (What a show at Tehachapee in 91!) , BN, UP, MP and some of the midwestern roads in terms of quality of work and the amount of steel laid. These guys were not the fastest, but they worked at the same pace all day.
"It appears, that as the railroad moved west, civilization followed it."
I think that pretty much sums up a lot of the history of our country. People still would have followed Greely's advice, but the growth of the nation would have been nothing without the railroads,
Quentin
Jesse, being part Indian myself, (Cherokee and Lakota), I can identify with what you said and I thank you for saying it!!! I'm sure your post was very enlightening to a lot of people on this forum. Most people probably never knew that EVERY part of the buffalo was used by American Indians for many numerous applications such as grinding up the hoofs and making glue to name just one. Yes, things must change but not always for the better unfortunately. Most Indian Nations had thier own form of Government and thier own language and alphabet long before the first European ever set foot on this continent. For the most part, it was a pretty good way of life too!! Thanks again.
Dick
Texas Chief
Railway Man wrote: The need is always to satisfy the investors, unless you are a gazillionaire named W.A. Clark and your hobby is building semi-useless railways. The U.S. was illiquid in the 19th century and capital had to be stretched far for any speculative business venture to exceed. The necessity for the pioneer transcontinental railways was to (1) occupy territory as fast as possible and (2) come out on the other side. No railway was more worthless than a transcontinental that dead-ended in a wilderness. The transcons were not built "good enough," they were built "cheap enough." There's quite a difference.Most of the original alignments were inoperable on an ongoing basis. The least of their shortcomings was heavy grades and curvature. The more pressing problem were alignments located too close to stream banks or in quite a few cases in streambeds; inadequate openings for cross-drainages or no openings at all; inadequate embankments that would fail under the weight of a locomotive when the frost came out of the ground and pitch the locomotive into a gully; cuts so narrow that locomotive appliances were scraped off; inadequate facilities to maintain, water, and fuel the locomotives; inadequate or no housing for employees; and so forth. The ties were often cottonwood or other low-quality softwoods and could not hold gauge for more than a few months, and too widely spaced; the rail was iron and too light; the bridges in imminent danger of collapsing sometimes under their own weight; the locomotives too light and so quickly abused that they would be dispatched with less than 1/2 their nominal rating and that was wishful thinking.Affordable loans to rebuild western railways did not become available until about 1896. Prior to that time the financing of improvements was a combination of cashflow, and equity financing consisting of a cycle of stock sales and bond issuances, bankruptcy that wiped out the stockholders, reorganization that capitalized the bonds, new borrowing in the bond markets, and another bankruptcy. Fortunately for the development of America there was a plethora of investors in Britain and Holland who believed in get-rich-quick schemes in America.RWM
The need is always to satisfy the investors, unless you are a gazillionaire named W.A. Clark and your hobby is building semi-useless railways. The U.S. was illiquid in the 19th century and capital had to be stretched far for any speculative business venture to exceed. The necessity for the pioneer transcontinental railways was to (1) occupy territory as fast as possible and (2) come out on the other side. No railway was more worthless than a transcontinental that dead-ended in a wilderness. The transcons were not built "good enough," they were built "cheap enough." There's quite a difference.
Most of the original alignments were inoperable on an ongoing basis. The least of their shortcomings was heavy grades and curvature. The more pressing problem were alignments located too close to stream banks or in quite a few cases in streambeds; inadequate openings for cross-drainages or no openings at all; inadequate embankments that would fail under the weight of a locomotive when the frost came out of the ground and pitch the locomotive into a gully; cuts so narrow that locomotive appliances were scraped off; inadequate facilities to maintain, water, and fuel the locomotives; inadequate or no housing for employees; and so forth. The ties were often cottonwood or other low-quality softwoods and could not hold gauge for more than a few months, and too widely spaced; the rail was iron and too light; the bridges in imminent danger of collapsing sometimes under their own weight; the locomotives too light and so quickly abused that they would be dispatched with less than 1/2 their nominal rating and that was wishful thinking.
Affordable loans to rebuild western railways did not become available until about 1896. Prior to that time the financing of improvements was a combination of cashflow, and equity financing consisting of a cycle of stock sales and bond issuances, bankruptcy that wiped out the stockholders, reorganization that capitalized the bonds, new borrowing in the bond markets, and another bankruptcy. Fortunately for the development of America there was a plethora of investors in Britain and Holland who believed in get-rich-quick schemes in America.
RWM
Sounds like the story of my life so far.
Murphy Siding wrote: Is it safe to say, that the lines were built *good enough* at the time, and only upgraded when traffic and quantifiable productiveoity gains could be used to persuade the powers that be that it was justified?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Your capital spending is predicated on company income (no bank loans). The sexier the rate of return, the faster your project is funded.
Good Example: The ATSF Original Transcon/Northern Route - Ribera Loop in New Mexico south of Las Vegas is still there and still do-able, but the ROR is relatively low. The line change would be relatively simple, but it has remained the same as a 3/4 circle/ 270 degree loop for 120+ years.
I'm pleased that my post did not offend anyone and got a few thinking about the other side of the coin.
As far as the issue on Indian Casinos my Tribe will have nothing to do with them, we struggle to teach the next generation the pit falls of what alcohol does to our lives (lets face it, I've NEVER met a Native that could hold their liquor) this is just a biological fact that our systems can not metabolize alcohol like other people.
So to have a place on a Reservation that alcohol plays such a big part in the gaming industry we would be very hypocritical in trying to save our kids from such a plight and then turn around and make big money off it.
My Tribe has a very thriving industry in specialty writing instruments, surgeon's markers, pens that write in zero gravity, pens that write under water and so on, we started out by making Ticonderoga #2 pencils in the 1950s and if you ever used one in school growing up they all came from one place, our Rez.
Although casinos have helped many Reservations build a better way of life for the Natives they have also hurt their people as well with a rise in alcohol rates, gabling habits that can wipe out an entire family in no time and lets face it, 1/2 of them unfortunately have organized crime embedded in them, that's right, the casinos have a few Silent partners that I would rather not discuss here on the internet but they know the Casinos that I'm referring too.
Because a Native tribe is doing something to infuse capitol into their communities doesn't mean it is right or good for the people as a whole.
We have voted down the casino issue, many times and will continue to do so, there are other less destructive ways to help the reservations such as what was done at Eel River Bard, they took a Hugh sum of money and started a massive growing operation to bring back the indigenous herbs that were once abundant in the native life style such as the medicinal herbs that were once used to cure our sick, these herbs are now traded and sold across the USA to Native and non Native people.
As for change, of course we must if we want to survive in the modern world but there are ways of doing so without selling off our soles.
I know this has nothing to do with the original post of the Santa Fe rail road and the funny part of this thread is that the SF is my favorite along with the Rio Grande (My spelling isn't that good) I have only Santa Fe and a few military trains in my collection.
Thanks for some feed back and to those who PMed me, thank you also for not dragging this thread into the mud, it is a good topic and even I had learned some things in this one as well.
Be well and Happy Rails to all.
Jess Red Horse, "a little old fashioned but still trying".
Murphy Siding wrote: Here's something I don't quite understand: As time went on, Santa Fe was able to greatly improve their system, by building some 'cut-off' lines. These typically were new routes between 2 existing places on the line, built to eliminate harsh grades, curature, and helpers. The Belin cutoff avoided Raton pass dropping from 3% grades to 1.25% grades. The Coleman cutoff shortened the route through Texas. The Williams-Crookston line change replaced a lot of steep, up and down profile line, with some 10 degree turns and horseshoes, with a 1% grade line only 2 miles longer. Why the line changes (sometimes long) after the fact? Wouldn't those routes have been considered during the initial layouts of the lines?
Here's something I don't quite understand: As time went on, Santa Fe was able to greatly improve their system, by building some 'cut-off' lines. These typically were new routes between 2 existing places on the line, built to eliminate harsh grades, curature, and helpers. The Belin cutoff avoided Raton pass dropping from 3% grades to 1.25% grades. The Coleman cutoff shortened the route through Texas. The Williams-Crookston line change replaced a lot of steep, up and down profile line, with some 10 degree turns and horseshoes, with a 1% grade line only 2 miles longer.
Why the line changes (sometimes long) after the fact? Wouldn't those routes have been considered during the initial layouts of the lines?
Murphy:
This could be a thread of its own, but let's try a thread within a thread for brevity:
(1)Consider the times:
Red Horse wrote: There were a few entries here that did romanticize the role that rail roads played in "Taming the West" and now for a different opinion, from a different perspective.I have heard stories from my Grand parents that were told to them by their parents about how the rail roads impacted the indigenous people who lived and hunted in these areas while the rail lines were beginning to grow and in our oral history I'd be hard pressed to find anything "romantic" about the coming of the Iron Horses.The first encounters were terrifying to the Native populations, they didn't know what to make of the ground shaking, roaring massive smoke bellowing giants that began to creep into their lands.Jesse Red Horse, Tribal Member of the Northern Blackfeet Nation.
There were a few entries here that did romanticize the role that rail roads played in "Taming the West" and now for a different opinion, from a different perspective.
I have heard stories from my Grand parents that were told to them by their parents about how the rail roads impacted the indigenous people who lived and hunted in these areas while the rail lines were beginning to grow and in our oral history I'd be hard pressed to find anything "romantic" about the coming of the Iron Horses.
The first encounters were terrifying to the Native populations, they didn't know what to make of the ground shaking, roaring massive smoke bellowing giants that began to creep into their lands.
Jesse Red Horse, Tribal Member of the Northern Blackfeet Nation.
Thank you Jesse. There is always more than one side to an issue.
Change is inevitible. A person can adapt, fight back, or do a little of both. But nothing ever stays at it "always" was.
Right now, "Indian Casinos" are destroying one of my great passions, Greyhound racing. 80% of the people who gamble prefer casinos to pari-mutal tracks. Horse and Greyhound tracks are going the way of those buffalo. I love those dogs and I love their racing. But trying to compete with slot machines in an "Indian Casino" just doesn't work that well. Hopefully, like the buffalo, they'll be a few left. It's just inevitible change - nothing I can do but adapt and help take good care of the dogs. Nothing to resent, it's just inevitible.
And, as Ed said, history is written by the "winner".
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