I've always believed most of what was needed to be remembered and learned again regarding 'insurgents' came from the 400 year Native American resistance movement right here at home. It had already been all done once before. Anyway, regarding numbers, take for instance Red Cloud's war and the fighting over the Bozeman Trail, i.e. Fetterman's massacre, the Wagon Box fight and numerous other 'insurgent' attacks. Once Red Cloud achieved what he wanted, he quit fighting. He and most of his men stayed on the reservation. Other insurgent leaders, such as Crazy Horse, Gall and Sitting Bull would accept into their ranks young men from Red Cloud's band, but said numbers were small. When the Lakota massed and defeated Crook and Custer at the Rosebud and Little Big Horn, there was no Red Cloud contingent per se. Best estimates put the Indian numbers at 2,000 and it simply is not known how many of those combatants had just drifted in for the fight and how many Cheyene and others were present. Actual Lakota numbers may well have only been around 1,000, maybe even less. We envision hordes of wild redskins but that simply is not the case, nor IMO are there hordes of insurgents.
The last incident of Indian insurgency occured in 1973 at Wounded Knee 2, in which some Federal forces were involved, Guardsmen put on standby and a couple of US Marshals were killed at the Jumping Bull Compound in a fire fight. The press and public imagination again envisioned large numbers of wild redskins ready to go on a rampage when in truth the core number of American Indian Movement (AIM) members was very small. I've spoken with several Indians involved and they told me alot of guys showed to occupy Wounded Knee because there wasn't much else to do and they harbored a grudge against the dominant society. I think the same can be said on many insurgents in Iraq.
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