All the World's a Stage

War is inscribed into our daily lives; since the founding of the USA, this has always been so.

In an earlier post, I looked at two versions of Edward H. Tarrant, commander of the Fourth Brigade of the Republic of Texas back in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Whether many now in 2011 directly know it or not, he led efforts to push Caddos, Cherokees and Tonkawas out of their villages (by burning them) within five years of "the Alamo;" into which lands "Anglo" settlers soon moved. Tarrant's name is inscribed into a county (Tarrant County) and thereby into that country's many social institutions, including its community college district. Fort Worth, now a city larger than Detroit and the primary demographic entity of Tarrant County, began as a military outpost named after Major General William Jenkins Worth, a veteran of the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War who died of cholera in 1849 just before Fort Worth was established. The year before he died, Worth had been tapped to lead a filibustering expedition to seize Cuba from Spain.

Turning to Michigan, consider Wayne and Macomb counties. Macomb is named after (British) Detroit-born Major General Alexander Macomb, Commanding General of the United States Army from 1828 until his death in 1841. Macomb was a veteran of the War of 1812 and Second Seminole War. Macomb Community College serves as one of his living institutional descendents -- every time one thinks, writes or sees the name, General Macomb is invoked.

As for Wayne County, it's named for Major General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a fierce combat fighter and frontier treaty negotiator, veteran of the American Revolution and final (victorious) US Army commander during the Northwest Indian War / Little Turtle's War, culminating in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794) and the Treaty of Greenville with Chippewa, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Delaware Lenape, Miami, Kaskaskia and other tribes and bands, ceding Ohio, Chicago and Detroit to the United States. Wayne died of complications from the gout in 1796 at the age of fifty-one.

The cultural inscription of Mad Anthony Wayne does not stop with Detroit or Wayne County or even Wayne State University: his name has spread from Pennsylvania to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and far beyond. Even more, he lives on through John Wayne, often the protoaganist in American "cowboy and Indian" and war movies. John Wayne -- born Marion Morrison -- was first given/adopted in Hollywood the name Anthony Wayne after Mad Anthony in 1930, but the Fox Studios head at the time thought this "sounded too Italian!"  (It would be decades before the rise of Tony Soprano, who definitely is Italian.)   John Wayne did not fight in the Second World War, but he often played a fierce WWII soldier or Marine on the big screen. As for "Cowboys and Indians," Wayne asserted in a Playboy interview in 1971, that back in the 1800s, "There were great numbers of people who needed new land [but] the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for
themselves . . ."  Hmm, "people" vs. "Indians." 

Finally, how many places are named for women?  I think of 12th Street in Detroit, epicenter at Clairmount of the 1967 race riots, being renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard in the 1970s.  Interesting choice and place for the switch. I can guarantee, dear reader, you have places and institutions near you named for male war leaders, but how about places named for women in any capacity?

Today's Rune: Gateway.