I may have mentioned it before, but I’m originally from parts much more Southern than my current NW Iowa.  I spent a large part of my formative years in Oklahoma. My mother’s family is from Texas.  I’ve spent some time examining that branch of the family tree, and it’s facinating.  It reads like a history of Texas. Part Comanche, part settler, with more recent additions of cattle men and oil men. So, when I heard that there was a new history of the Comanche empire out, I couldn’t resist. S.C. Gwynne’s “Empire of the Summer Moon” has been just as enlightening as I had hoped. One of the first encounters he details is that of the Parker clan at their self-titled fort, in 1836.

Now, this is a common part of Texas history and widely taught in schools down in that area.  Hopefully though, parts of this will be new for my Eastern readers. It’s one of my favorite examples of how to NOT survive in a hostile territory.

First, the scene, the Louisianna purchase brought the American frontier all the way West to what we now think of as East Texas.  Mexico had VERY recently lost control of the region North of the Rio, and the area styled itself as the Republic of Texas. While original intentions of most Texan fighters had been to join up with the United States as soon as possible, political realities had made that an impossibility. (Mexico didn’t recognize the Republic, and the US didn’t want to risk war with Mexico by recognizing it and then annexing it into the Union.) So, the broke Republic was limping along on, mostly on gumption.  Enter the Parker clan, stage left. There were 6 Parker families who had pooled their land grants into a respectable 16,000 acres. They were smart enough to stay together, and they built a large fort. Once you get past Louisianna there isn’t much timber in Texas, so again they were smart, and they stayed on the Eastern edge, where they could still find enough timber to build this fort. The fort was quite good. 15 foot tall walls of sharpened solid Cedar, enclosing a full acre, 6 cabins, and 4 blockhouses. Numerous gunports, and a large bullet proof front gate completed the pioneer dream home. No near neighbors, no governtment forces to protect them and large swatches of Comancheria directly North and West. A Comancheria full of hostile Commanches.

These Indians were not the same as the Eastern Indians, they didn’t farm, they didn’t build houses or villages, and they didn’t take prisoners. Plus, they rode horses; they fought on horseback and they lived on horseback. These Indians had pushed out all rival bands. They had stopped the northward march of the Spanish cold in its tracks. They were equally deterent to the French and English.  All of this should help to illustrate the pure foolishness that the Parkers displayed on May 19.

Ten of the sixteen able-bodied men were out working the cornfields. The eight women and nine children were inside the fort, but the armored gate had been left wide open.  The men who remained there were unarmed. James, the patriarch, and his brother Silas were both Ranger captians, very familiar with Comanche battle. How or why they thought their settlement was even remotely safe, we’ll never know. They almost certainly had heard about the recent Comanche raids in the area, 2 in the previous month. Had they been armed, and inside the fort, they could have held off a large band of raiders for quite a long time.  As it was, they were easy prey.

At 10 o’clock in the morning, about a hundred Indians rode up to the front gate of the fort. Benjamin Parker, (another brother) attempted a parlay with the band, for his trouble he was clubbed, shot with arrows and then scalped.  The Indians immediately attacked the fort, and killed all the men remaining in it. The few family members that escaped out a back hatch were hunted down, and again either brutally killed or in the case of the younger women, taken as slaves.  A few children were taken to be adopted into the tribe. One small family was rescued by the men returning from the cornfields with their rifles. In barely half an hour, five men were dead, two women wounded, and 5 people were taken captive.  Part of the fort was burned and most of the animals killed or taken.

Brutal. I’ll spare you the details of how the men were killed and what happened to the captive women. Neither is pretty.  Folks, the bottom line here, if you are settled in a hostile area, and you have a great fort, DON’T do any of the things the Parkers were doing that day. Your enemies may not give you the chance to learn any better.

- Calamity Jane

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Thanks Jarhead, for the post idea!

Today I’ll be talking about my personal experience organizing a group of people in a doomstead.  This is one of those subjects, where I think there are as many ways to organize as there are people on this earth.  Use my experience as a guide, but do understand that your people and your situation will demand different responses and different organizing to be optimal.

Unanimous Consent – That’s right, everyone has to agree on what’s being decided. Not every group is run like this, I think it’s quite likely we’re in the minority.  It does have advantages, in that everyone has a buy-in to decisions and direction, so everyone feels ownership. The downside is pretty obvious, with different views and different priorities, compromises are inescapable.  We use a rough form of Robert’s Rules to keep order in meetings, when they are in person meetings.  E-meetings, chats on our personal forum board, these are all much more common right now than sit down in person meetings.

Leadership – There is still a need for leadership, whether it’s a president to lead meetings or a combat leader to take charge in emergencies.  There are lots of meetings, with this method.  Initially we were having a meeting every 2 months.  As we moved out of planning and into building, the pace slowed and meetings became less frequent. Which is a bit of a shame, since they were nice social opportunities. :-)  We have a president, and that works nicely with the next point, which is the business side of things.

Business and Legal – We found that it was best to have an umbrella group to cover the purchases, multiple profit streams and sharing that we wanted to do. We ended up deciding on an LLC  or limited liability corporation; that way we could enjoy the liability protection, the flexibility of multiple owners and share profit.  LLCs don’t have to be organized for profit, and the starting costs aren’t enormous, check out the other advantages if you’re interested.  We created 5 year/10 year/15 year plans to make sure we all knew the direction. We wrote down voting and membership guidelines. (Membership guidelines were defining the distinctions between voting board member and seasonal laborer, between land owner and member spouse and how they fit into the “corporation.”)

Zoning – This is one of those organization things, you really need to figure out all zoning laws that will apply to your land. If you don’t do this, you run into problems if you exceed the number of dwellings or people.  Or if you try to farm something that’s zoned no agriculture. Or if you set up a farm stand in a no business zone. Or if you have the wrong kind of pooper… oh the bureaucracy. This plays right back into the documents/meetings mentioned before, if you have a clear idea of what you want to do on the land, you’ll have a clear idea what to look for in the zoning laws (and which battles to fight.)

None of these things are the exciting parts of working with a group to build a doomstead.  They are more like the bone structure that holds the fun exciting stuff together.  And really, if  the SHTF and you end up hunkering down with people you’ve never met, well, work with what you’ve got.  But if you have a group you’re already sure you’ll tap, and if you have a place you know you’ll end up, lay some of the groundwork.  Save yourself some headaches down the road, by taking care of them now. Now, while you can relax with a glass of wine instead of rainwater flavored with roasted dandelion roots.

- Calamity Jane

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So, you’re  setting up a lifeboat community. You’ve got a group of “like-minded” people, a handful of acres, maybe a house or two, and plans to ride out TEOTWAWKI.  But, do you really know who you’ve signed on with?   I’ll be talking today about my personal group, and I’ll change names to protect the innocent, but maybe you’ll recognize some of this crazy in your own group.  Feel free to chime in if you’ve got insight on any of this to share.

The Crazy Guy.

We’ll call him Chris, Crazy Chris.  He doesn’t date much, and is a little socially awkward.  He’s intelligent enough, and a really nice guy, so joining up with him didn’t seem like that big a deal.  He even has experience with organic farms, through the WWOOFing group. Sounds great! Until the crazy starts coming out.   He left a good job to come back to the doomstead a few years ago, (a bit premature, but sure, ok.)  Then we realize his entire plan is to set up in a tee-pee.  In Iowa, all year.  *sigh* At that point in doomstead construction, we had a shed, and half a house. No utilities, no food production, just construction.   Weeks of gentle, reality-oriented discussions failed to persuade him, and he showed up, with a teepee.  He didn’t help with planting or house building. He just set up the tee-pee, moved buckets of dried beans in and left.  We found out weeks later he was living in his parents basement an hour away.   He drifts in and out for the next year. His tee-pee falls down at some point.  We hear he’s looking for work, but he seems unable to find any. We get occasional emails talking about the “chem trails” and free junk he has found in the area and wants to move to the property.  Then com silence for a few months. Through his cousin we learn he’s in jail. He was living with another crazy person, growing illegal substances and they both got busted and thrown in jail.  So, now we’re down one Crazy Chris, and still wondering what we’ll do with the tee-pee.

Will we let him back after he’s released? I don’t know. We have our own semi-legal/illegal schemes we’re considering, (did you know outhouses are illegal in most of Iowa?) We don’t need someone bringing the cops around.  His plans are always more fantasy based than reality based.   Perhaps he could come back on a probationary term, only if he does x amount of actual work to further our actual group goals.

The Handy Guy Who Can’t Commit.

We’ll call him Bob.  Oh Bob. He is SO handy.  He’s a woodworker, an electrician and a fix-it-man all rolled into one.  He loves to tinker, he loves to fix stuff. He made a miniature model of  some wind turbines after we had a discussion about them. Just to see if the blade concept would work.  When we entered unexplored territory with the buried house, he spent hours running weight calculations trying to help figure out the support structure needs for pouring a concrete roof.  He’s way better at peppers than I am, he can get pepper seedlings with 5x less death than what I manage.  But, he’s got this wife.  She’s a sweetheart, I love her to death, but she refuses to have anything to do with our “dirt farming.”  She’s been clear about that from the get go, so there’s no hurt feelings or anything. We just know that our handy Bob may not join us in the end.  So, we make use of him when we can, and we keep both of them included in our lives, not just the doomstead stuff, but the normal stuff too.  We’re always hoping that he’ll convince his wife that the doomstead is a valid back up plan.  We’re hoping that once we get the basic infrastructure squared away we can put in something like a pottery kiln that will make use of her amazing creative skills.  She would be just as much of an asset to the group as Bob, I’ve seen her create everything from a period dress costume to a dog jacket for an injured pet.  Plus, she has some medical training from her day job.

We’re not leaving space for them on the property, not to live anyway.  We are planning some space for their creative enterprises, Bob needs more space to cure local wood, his wife might be tempted by the kiln. I figure that if we can get them involved with the doomstead, even on a partial basis, it is better than nothing at all.

Security Crazy Guy

Security Steve, it doesn’t matter what the discussion starts out as, he’ll steer it towards security at the first chance.  We run the group using consensus, so I’ve sat through more than my fair share of security wet dreams.  At one point I had to be polite while he hashed out the security potentials of cougars.  Not, “how do we keep them out,” but “I think we could use cougars as guards.”  *sigh*  He lives off of wealthy parents, but has dreams of grandeur, in a fantasy world where he’s a great warrior and can spend his days productively keeping our doomstead safe.  Presumably he would not still be living off his parents money, but like I said, fantasy world.   He gallops off on Quixotic quests. Right now he’s living in a different state, chasing his current windmill, and dodging the police.  Group consensus has him removed from the board, connected only as a friend and potential volunteer, but no longer able to vote.  Will we let him back, if the SHTF? Probably not. There’s probably not going to be any need for that level of security. We’ll train some dogs, grow some well placed thorny vines and put some barbed wire up. No need for cougars or a crazy person.

The Gal Who Will Work To Death

We’ll call her Rose. Rose tries to do EVERYTHING.  Her and her husband are the landowners. They live in the under-ground bermed concrete house, with their 4 year old, that we built by ourselves.    To say their life is crazy, is an understatement.   This summer we’re helping them move out of the doomstead, into a shed, so that we can rip up the flooring and dry out the subflooring from a drainage issue last fall.  She works a couple of jobs, her husband works a couple of jobs, and slowly a homestead is emerging around them.  The biggest problem we have with her is she will literally work herself till she’s sick.  She takes on too much and has trouble saying no. Her husband and I often have to work together to get her to rest and eat properly.   We couldn’t do it without her of course. Everything would take twice as long  without her.  But, we constantly have to pull her back from the brink of burn out.

What Kind of Crazy am I?

Well, like every good crazy person, I think I’m fairly sane.   This isn’t true of course, I’m probably pretty crazy. We all are. It helps to be honest about the crazy, and treat it like the reality it is.  There are types of crazy you can live with and types you can’t.  Figuring it out sooner rather than later, is probably preferable.

- Calamity  Jane

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