94 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
on, regular armies had incorporated these strategies and tactics as a
way of war to which it often turned, although frequently the regular
army simply stood by while local militias and settlers acting on their
own used terror against Indigenous noncombatants.
Irregular warfare would be waged west of the Mississippi as it
had been earlier against the Abenakis, Cherokees, Shawnees, Mus
kogees, and even Christian Indians. In the Civil War, these methods
played a prominent role on both sides. Confederate regular forces,
Confederate guerrillas such as William Quantrill, and General Sher
man for the Union all engaged in waging total war against civilians.
The pattern would continue in US military interventions overseas,
from the Philippines and Cuba to Central America, Korea, Vietnam,
Iraq, and Afghanistan. The cumulative effect goes beyond simply
the habitual use of military means and becomes the very basis for US
American identity. The Indian-fighting frontiersmen and the "val
iant" settlers in their circled covered wagons are the iconic images
of that identity. The continued popularity of, and respect for, the
genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator. Actual
men such as Robert Rogers, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and David
Crockett, as well as fictitious ones created by James Fenimore Coo
per and other best-selling writers, call to mind D. H. Lawrence's
"myth of the essential white American" -that the "essential Ameri
can soul" is a killer. 25