#apache wars

I know there’s been a lot of controversy about the last panel of the chapter, and I wanted to say a few things about it, but mostly in relation to the historical setting in which this flashback happens.

Note: If you’re totally unfamiliar with the Indian Wars, check out the video in this post or look at my #indian wars tag. (Don’t @ me about the name of the series of wars; that’s what they’re called.)

It’s shown at the beginning of the chapter that there’s violence on both sides and Bard wants no part bc he’s been taught to respect and be grateful for the Natives.

I won’t get into the potential lie in what Bard was told about the “thanksgiving story,” bc the truth of it doesn’t matter (as far as this context goes). The important thing is that Bard genuinely believed that the Natives had helped his ancestors and he owed them a debt.

It’s fine if the chapter’s ending made you uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise considering the setting and the time period.

It was a violent time. The American government absolutely did horrid things, and some of the violence (from the Natives) was a direct response to it. Some were warring tribes taking the opportunity to further displace more peaceful/smaller tribes as well as kill both American troops and settlers (like Bard and his family).

There were so many wars during this time west of the Mississippi that I can’t even get it all in one screenshot. But I will include this excerpt since it refers to Arizona and the Apaches, which Bard has specifically mentioned before:

Arizona ranked highest… in deaths from the wars. At least 4,350 people were killed, including both settlers and Indians…

We don’t know where Bard’s homestead was, but he did mention Arizona and snakes before, which myself and others had theorized could have been a reference to the Snake Wars and the Snake Indian tribes in that region (see below).

It’s likely we’ll never know exactly where Bard was living or which Native tribe(s) killed his family, but if we do, we may get some insight next chapter.

I have an older post that talks about the Snake Wars in particular, back when I was trying to figure out which wars Bard may have fought in. In addition to being some of the bloodiest conflicts of this period, they also ended around 20 years too soon to have been the one from which Sebastian recruits Bard.

From my post on the war:

This timeline would fit the events of ch 182, et al., since it’s likely Bard lost his family 10-20 years ago, and likely closer to 20. If so, it’s possible that his family experienced an offshoot of the violence of this particular period/region, and it could explain why Bard mentions both Apaches and “snakes in Arizona.”

Just as Yana showed a (slightly accelerated) version of real history during the Green Witch Arc and the horrors that people can wreak on one another (tanks, poison gas, etc), she is showing a glimpse here.

People calling Bard/Yana a bigot based on that last panel also forget that he specifically says he never wanted to be part of that. He didn’t want to kill anyone initially.

Once again, the theme of the manga is that humans are more demonic than demons. In my opinion, that is the intent here as well, and to also have Bard’s story parallel Ciel’s.

It will be interesting to see what happens next chapter, and also how Bard behaves when we return to the present, since he seems to have a very strong feeling against hurting innocents. It’s possible this could have been bc he was always that kind of person. It’s possible it could be bc he remembers his innocent family being killed. It’s also possible his experiences while in the Calvary drove him to feel that way.

Regardless, ch 182 is set in a violent time and Bard is established at this point as not having a previous grudge or bias against the Natives. More than that, we can’t say until we see the conclusion of this arc.

~#~

#100Days100Women Day 5: Lozen was a Chiricahua Apache woman, a tactician and fighter in Apache Wars. She was also a prophet called "a shield to her people". Lozen fought alongside her brother Victorio and Geronimo, as well as warrior woman Dahteste, who was close to Lozen and may have been her lover (caveat, I could not verify this within my means, but there seems to be enough behind it that it’s worth the mention-with-a-caveat). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lozen

In a previous post, I documented some information on Bard’s military service. Now that ch 172 has released, we can dig into this a bit more.

As of ch 172, we know Bard must have fought in the Apache Wars, and presumably he saw his comrades felled by poisonous snake bites (hence the snake comment from ch 100). He also mentions Arizona again...

This confirms he was a Cavalry member in the Indian wars, and it’s possible the man in his arms (in the ch 44 panel) when he meets Sebastian is “Terry,” who died from a snake bite, since it’s likely his acting routine is inspired by some of his real experiences...

But it’s still not clear in what battles/wars Bard may have fought. Two of the most famous would be one of the conflicts in the Geranimo’s War, which would fit with the Arizona and Apache reference, but ended in 1886. Since Geranimo is a famous figure, it’s possible that Yana may tweak history to make that work. However, the war didn’t end in a way that aligns with that image in ch 44 (small skermishes with the 4th Cavalry, ending in a surrender negotiation). {Photo: before the surrender, source.}

The other is “Custer’s Last Stand,” aka the Battle of Little Bighorn, which happened 10 years earlier in 1876, and involved the 7th Cavalry in Montana. That slaughter would certainly fit the image we get in ch 44, with Bard seemingly the only calvaryman remaining (~260 US soldiers died). The massacre changed the opinion of the “Indian problem” and led to changes in how they were dealt with, increasing the number of soldiers. Ofc, it isn’t Arizona and snakes were the least of the 7th’s problems. But perhaps Yana will tweak history here to make it fit.

Interestingly, Alfred Terry was a real Union general and commander of the Dakota Territory (1866-9, 1872-1886) and was Custer’s commanding officer (7th Cavalry). Ofc, he didn’t die in battle but of illness in 1888, after he’d retired. Still, maybe the name isn’t a coincidence?

So perhaps Yana is mixing things up (either out of ignorance, or intentionally). She already has Bard talking about “trenches” in ch 172, so either this is a translation error (often ravines and other natural features were used by both sides, but trenches weren’t dug in the Indian Wars), Bard is including references to previous military experiences (such as the Civil War), or Yana is changing history. Ofc, it’s also possible she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, or she wants to tie Bard’s experiences somehow with the impending war in Europe that she’s moved the timeline for. (Trenches were a main feature of World War I.) There aren’t any trenches in sight in the ch 44 panel, so perhaps it is Bard adding as much random detail (from different past military experiences) to make his acting more dramatic.

I’m looking forward to learning more about Bard and is background.

⚠️ Long post.

⚠️ Some slightly graphic images (from the manga) and descriptions of warfare and death.

😅 There is a TL/DR at the end of this post for all three parts.

Here’s Part 1.

Here’s Part 2.

Bard’s uniform, hat, and other recruitment memory details

Bard mentions trenches (weird for the Apache Wars), but he also mentions Apache arrows. And poisonous snakes in Arizona. He might be mixing his various war experiences into his faked PTSD episode (the trenches might have been from a previous experience). But he must mean Terry was bitten in Arizona, during the Apache Wars, since he had much earlier told Snake he’d had a bad experience with snakes in Arizona.

The odd idea of a trench in the Apache Wars is one major detail that Yana-San seems to have overlooked. Or she has simply changed it on purpose, which is possible. I mean, it works really well for Bard’s “outbursts” to include the horror of hunkering down in trenches. And that detail could actually have come from previous experience, say during the Civil War. He just wanted to display classic symptoms of PTSD, so it doesn’t really matter if everything happened during the same battle or even the same war.

He meets Sebastian any time between later 1887 and early 1888, after Mey-Rin joins the Phantomhive household (She joined sometime in 1887) but before Chlaus’s visit in spring or summer of 1888. I’m basing the timing of Chlaus’s visit off the weather being warm enough for lemonade to be a good idea, the garden needing to be weeded, the roses already starting to have spent blooms, and Sebastian deciding to set up dinner outside in the garden.

So, here’s the scene where Bard is recruited by Sebastian.

There’s a LOT going on here.

From the spurs on their boots and the Hardee hat with the crossed swords ⚔️ on it, they are US Calvary. Like I said before, this might be the 4th US Calvary, which was one of the most decorated calvaries in US history. There would normally be a number just above where the swords cross, but this has been omitted... or there wasn’t enough room to show it. Yana-san can have them be from the “US Calvary”, in general, if she so chooses.

Bard is probably a high-ranking officer, but the rank itself is not clear. The three stars on his shoulders are for a lieutenant general.

The single stars on his coat lapels don’t make sense with the three on his shoulders, so 🤷🏻‍♀️. It’s not how you would designate a four star general. The leaf pin on his ascot is probably an oak leaf, which can mean a lieutenant colonel (silver) or an army major (gold).

I think it might be that Yana-san kept seeing “lieutenant” and got confused about the fact there are different rankings that include “lieutenant” in the name. And the star on the lapels probably just looked nice and gives the impression that he’s ranked pretty high.

Then we have this odd detail that I’m not sure anyone has mentioned before: his fallen comrade is only wearing one boot, while the unbooted foot (and leg) are mostly covered by a text bubble.

This dude was probably Terry, and that text bubble is probably covering up a swollen foot and/or leg with a gnarly snake bite wound.

The rest of the people there seem to be dead or dying. One guy looks like he might have even been partly scalped. It could also be a gunshot wound.

I looked it up, and turns out that even though the Apaches were not traditionally scalpers, they did sometimes resort to it. What’s worse is that various campaigns in the US involved rewards for the scalps of Native Americans. Some people tried so hard to make a buck this way that they would scalp Mexicans, too, and try to pass off their hair as that of a native. The tradition in Europe was to behead your enemy and bring back the entire head, but they were killing natives in such vast numbers that they switched to scalping because it was easier to carry back home to claim bigger rewards. A lot of them didn’t even kill their enemies first. They just removed part of the scalp and left them there. Yikes! Some US authorities created rules regarding how much scalp you had to cut off. The Native American tribes who engaged in this practice didn’t have the same monatary motivation, so they killed the enemy, took what they got and usually stretched it out over a hoop for decoration. If that guy in the upper right hand corner was scalped, then it was probably just a relatively small section removed, and this is likely not how he died.

Either he really is the last survivor of his troop, or they did sustain heavy casualties, though not everyone else is dead... but Terry might be the last one that Bard considered a “friend”. Then Sebastian shows up with a deal that Bard couldn’t possibly refuse. Since Sebastian can’t transport Bard to England too quickly without giving away the secret of his demonic nature, either Bard was given the money and information needed to make his own way to London (where Sebastian would take him to Phantomhive Manor), or Sebastian actually travelled the slow way, with Bard, all the way back. Makes me wonder whether our earl is also there to recruit him.

TL/DR:

Bard might have previously fought in the Civil War, when he was a teenager, and he might not originally be from Arizona. The Civil War might be where/when he first learned to make explosives.

By the time Sebastian finds him, Bard was an officer in the US Calvary: either the 4th US Calvary or some equivalent to that in the Kuroverse. The Hardee hat with the crossed swords means US Calvary, but there’s no number on this one. Because of his ranking as an officer, this is probably his hat. And that troop was probably his.

His real ranking is hard to determine because Yana-san has given him insignia that clash, but he could be (in the Kuroverse) simply a “lieutenant” of some kind, like lieutenant colonel. Honestly, Yana-san can give him any rank she wants to, since the ranking system doesn’t have to be the same in the Kuroverse.

Bard could be partly named and modeled after W. B. Royall, colonel of the 4th US Calvary from Nov. 1882 to Oct. 1887, when he retired. W. B. Royall —> B Roy —> Bardroy/Baldroy?

Bard wasn’t personally using the Gatling guns (Gatling, 1865) that were used during the later Apache Wars, since he was on horseback most of the time.

Bard would have had the use of small firearms, a sword, and various small explosives available at the time, like grenades (inventors: Adams, Ketchum, and GW Rains), land mines (GJ Rains), and dynamite (Nobel). All of those explosives were inventions of the 1860’s, too.

That far out west, and fighting enemies with way less advanced weapons, Bard and his comrades were relying on weapons technology a good twenty years old.

Trench warfare wasn’t really used in the Apache Wars because the US was the one with the more advanced weapons (and was largely on the offense), and the (mostly) defensive Apaches generally didn’t dig trenches as a war tactic. So, either Bard is jumbling various war experiences together for the grand effect of it, or Yana-san has decided to add trenches to the Apache Wars.

Sebastian finds Bard in Arizona during one of the Apache Wars. Should be one of the altercations after Geronimo was captured in 1886, but Yana-san might fudge the timeline in order to bring Geronimo into the story, since he’s so famous.

Terry was bitten by a snake in Arizona, even if that’s not really where the trenches were. And that’s probably when Sebastian found Bard, too. It best matches the timeline for the war, the uniforms, the location... and even the fallen comrade with one shoe removed and his leg hidden by a text bubble.

Bonus: Bard meets Hiram Maxim, originally a fellow American, probably after relocating to England. Maxim spent much time in England but made trips back to the US and would take various weapons and other inventions to England. The machine gun Bard uses in the circus arc is a Maxim original, invented ~1885. Even though it should have existed when Bard was fighting the Apaches, he wouldn’t have had access so far West to something this new made back East.