AHC: US Native Police

Throughout the 1900s the British Australian govt employed aborigines as police to suppress other aborigines from tribes not their own. Could this practice have been used in the USA. That is using employing Native Americans in armed divisions to suppress other tribes. Such as using Cherokees against the Sioux in the 1870s.

EDIT:
I should elaborate. I don't mean the general use of Native people in the army, I mean the creation of units purposely composed of entirely of native people (except for the head officer perhaps). Much like the US Colored Troops or Buffalo Soldiers.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
SOP,,actually...

Throughout the 1900s the British Australian govt employed aborigines as police to suppress other aborigines from tribes not their own. Could this practice have been used in the USA. That is using employing Native Americans in armed divisions to suppress other tribes. Such as using Cherokees against the Sioux in the 1870s.


Standard operating procedure, actually, going back to the earliest days of conflict between the various tribal societies and the English, French, and Dutch colonies in North America.

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Nah...

Nah... But thanks.

Cripes, it really goes back - at least - to Cortez et al, who came ashore at exactly the right time and place to take advantage of the inherent fault lines between the Mexica/Aztecs and their various vassals, subject peoples, and their rivals - the Tlaxcalans, etc.

The US, as early as the Revolutionary War, had sought neutrality if not alliances, and the tribal societies that made the correct bet - the Tuscarora, for example - came out well ahead of their peers who bet on the British. The pattern continued in the rivalries between the US and the British and Spanish during the Napoleonic era, including the 1812-15 conflict with Britain and 1819 with Spain. Throughout the rest of the century, the US was always able to find allies among various tribal groups to serve as scouts, police, and line troops against the tribal group that was resisting - the "civil war within the Civil War" in the Indian Territory in 1861-65 gives plenty of examples, across the spectrum, and it continued to the end of active resistance in the 1870s-1880s.

Best,
 
I should elaborate. I don't mean the general use of Native people in the army, I mean the creation of units purposely composed of entirely of native people (except for the head officer perhaps). Much like the US Colored Troops or Buffalo Soldiers.

Couldn't maintaining the all Native American units from the ACW be possible?
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
The US raised multiple "Indian Scout" units

I should elaborate. I don't mean the general use of Native people in the army, I mean the creation of units purposely composed of entirely of native people (except for the head officer perhaps). Much like the US Colored Troops or Buffalo Soldiers.

The US raised multiple "Indian Scout" units in the Nineteenth Century, as well as line units during (for example) the Civil War. The 1st - 3rd Indian Home Guard regiments were made up of Indian enlisted and a mix of Indian and white officers.

Best,
 
The US raised multiple "Indian Scout" units in the Nineteenth Century, as well as line units during (for example) the Civil War. The 1st - 3rd Indian Home Guard regiments were made up of Indian enlisted and a mix of Indian and white officers.

Best,

Agreed, native americans played an important, and under-recognised, part in the Civil War.

Plus, there was a widespread policy of policing just as happened in Australia.

The United States Indian Police, the Indian Agency Police, and the Indian Tribal Police (although the latter two were essentially just men with law-badges as was common across the West - think Sheriff's Posse type of lawmen) were all in action across Indian Reservations.

Remember - its an Agency Policeman, Red Tomahawk, who shoots and kills Sitting Bull.
 
Agreed, native americans played an important, and under-recognised, part in the Civil War.

Plus, there was a widespread policy of policing just as happened in Australia.

The United States Indian Police, the Indian Agency Police, and the Indian Tribal Police (although the latter two were essentially just men with law-badges as was common across the West - think Sheriff's Posse type of lawmen) were all in action across Indian Reservations.

Remember - its an Agency Policeman, Red Tomahawk, who shoots and kills Sitting Bull.
I recall, but that is reservation policing after the official end of the 'Indian Wars' era. I mean using units made of native people against the western tribes from the 1860s onwards.
 
As others have pointed out this did indeed exist in the USA. Like with so many things if you are looking for exact parallels you aren't going to find them but insisting there is a difference between "Tribes used to police other tribes" and "tribes allied against other tribes being used by the USA" you are really splitting hairs. You might look more into the Pawnee and Crow Scouts during the Great Sioux War.

So to answer your initial question the situation you describe more or less happened just not in the exact way as it did in Australia... Therefore I would say that if you want to "win" the AHC all you have to do is swap a few words around here or there. Very Plausible, not much of a challenge.
 
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