The show was called Miami Vice, and, sure enough, it became appointment viewing for a bunch of us through college.

I wasn’t really into the aesthetic; I’m not a pastel kinda feller, and ol’ Sonny Crockett was a little too well-coiffed for my tastes. I did like his Bren 10 and iconic Galco shoulder rig though…

I did like the dark storytelling and the action though.

Anyways…

You’re probably wondering about the Last of the Mohicans thing, so I’ll get to it. This UC Berkeley prof opined that Miami Vice was tapping into a long American tradition of frontier storytelling, what with the Crockett name and all. He figured that Sonny Crockett was Natty Bumppo, with Rico Tubbs acting as his dark-skinned sidekick Chingachgook. This being a Berkeley professor, he was looking a little askance at all this — but he wasn’t wrong (although I think he wasn’t entirely fair to Tubbs).

The funny thing is, Miami Vice was run in its first couple of seasons by Michael Mann, who would go on to direct Last of the Mohicans in 1992. Which, it occurs to me, also features a male lead with great hair. I have read that Mann initially wanted an electronic soundtrack for LOTM to contemporize the 18th Century setting. Thankfully, that terrible idea did not gain traction, and instead we got perhaps the most epic soundtrack ever created.

Anyways…

Crockett and Tubbs were, in fact, operating on a Wild Frontier. In real life, Miami in the 1980s was the primary transshipment point for 70 percent of the cocaine entering the United States, and there was a violent, dangerous and mind-blowingly lucrative free-for-all going down. It was the perfect setting for a new kind of crime show, and Miami Vice resonated powerfully.

As Edward James Olmos (Lt. Castillo) said:

Miami Vice was a glamorized and romanticized production. It created a style that went around the world, something that resonated throughout the entire planet.

Sure did. Now it’s getting a reboot. Per Deadline:

Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler are set to star in Miami Vice ’85 with Joseph Kosinski directing. The film will be shot for Imax and is set to bow on August 6, 2027 [other sources have it pushed back to May 2028] .

The film explores the glamour and corruption of mid-’80s Miami in an all-new version of Miami Vice, inspired by the pilot episode and first season of the landmark Universal Television series that influenced culture and set the style in everything from fashion to filmmaking.

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My favorite scene in Miami Vice is a tense stalk in the brush where Crockett and Tubbs are going after Captain William Maynard aka Captain Real Estate, played by none other than Watergate conspirator and all-around lunatic, G. Gordon Liddy. It’s a long, dialogue-free set-piece run to The Doors’ My Eyes Have Seen You.

Still kinda cool, ain’t it?

The Bren 10 is long gone. The girlfriend is even goner. Time has marched on, and binge-watching has replaced appointment viewing. The 1980s are a historical epoch now, and I don’t miss ’em, really. But it’ll be fun to visit again,  with a new Crockett & Tubbs venturing out onto those moody, colorful, mean streets…

Guest post by Matthew Ilseman

I remember a few years ago watching a news report about how many young men were obsessively thinking and talking about the Fall of the Roman Empire online and how it might relate to what was going at the time. I remember coming to the realization that I spent more time thinking about the rise of the Mongolian Empire than Rome’s fall. What that says about me I don’t know but I was reminded of this about when watching two National Geographic Channel series on Hulu — Genghis Khan: the Secret History of the Mongols and Gladiators: Warriors of the Ancient World.

Genghis Khan: The Secret History of the Mongols

Secret History follows the Mongol Empire from the rise of Temujin, later known as Genghis Khan or rather Chinggis Khan, to its dissolution after the death of Ogodei. I had read Harold Lamb’s March of the Barbarians about the same thing and was broadly familiar with the outlines of the empire’s history. This show reminded me of a lot of that I had forgotten.

Temujin came from ancient line that descended from the original ruler of Mongolia. He was forced into exile after he murdered his brother and the death of his father. Despite this he would rise to conquer not only Mongolia but much of the rest of the world. Under his son Ogodei they would have the largest contiguous empire in history. Larger than the Roman one. Their empire was not, however, as long lasting, fragmenting after Ogodei’s death.

The story is of how illiterate nomads created in remarkably short time a great empire. Chinggis Khan’s empire was larger than even Alexander’s. He was probably second to the Macedonian in military genius having lost only two battles in his life (as oppose to Alexander’s none). It makes sense to out modern minds that Alexander, inheritor of Greek civilization and student of Aristotle, would be a great conqueror, but the “barbarian” Temujin?

The harsh truth of his rise and conquest throws a lot of assumptions in the mud. That an illiterate nomad could out-strategize the educated generals of China and the Middle East and almost equal that of a student of one of the greatest thinkers in all of history upends a lot of assumptions. The truth is more complicated than that. He had an education of sorts in that his upbringing as an exile trying to survive day by day taught him a kind of brutal pragmatism.

And brutal it was. The Mongols destroyed tribes and nations. They used dirty tricks like human shields and even primitive biological warfare by catapulting severed heads into cities that they lay siege. Because of this they tended to win. Unfortunately, morality is not necessarily linked to effective strategy and tactics.

The other thing that is surprising is that in some ways the Mongols were enlightened. Their empire had religious freedom, those cities that surrendered were treated well, and, while certainly patriarchal, women held positions of influence. 

It shows that “barbarians” are often a lot more complicated than we think. Often, we think of the Romans as advanced and the Celts as primitive, but the Celts had soap, iron and chain mail before them. The Romans acquired these things by trade and conquest. And like the Mongols, the Celts seemed to have given more freedom to women than the Greeks or Romans.

Which brings us to the second show.

Gladiators: Warriors of the Ancient World

You could make an argument that the Roman Empire was in some ways crueler than the Mongols. All empires, as they say, are built on a graveyard. They all oppress and kill. However while the Mongols were definitely brutal in warfare, Rome seems sometime cruel even during peace time (and just as bloody handed during war.) The best evidence for my assertion is the Games.

Gladiators: Warriors of the Ancient World tells the stories of individual gladiators and relates the history of the Games as a whole. The first episode deals with unsurprisingly, Spartacus. Among other individuals is Spiculus, Nero’s favorite gladiator, Carpophorus known for his skill in battling beasts, and Commodus the emperor who would fight in the arena. It also gives an overview of the construction of the Coliseum (which unsurprisingly was built by slaves).

There are a lot of things of interest. One is that gladiators were most often not killed in the arena. This was not because of compassion but for economic reasons. Most gladiators were slaves and it took a lot of money to buy, train, and feed them. There were also different types of gladiators. These were based on various enemies of the Romans. The famous Spartacus was a Thrax which were based on the soldiers of Thrace (which Spartacus had been.) There were even female gladiators though we don’t know much about them.

One interesting thing is the ambivalent status the gladiators held. Rome was a very status-obsessed society, and yet gladiators held a contradictory position in it. On the one hand they were slaves who were likely not considered fully human; on the other they often became celebrities. They could buy their way to freedom if they survived long enough. 

The final episode deals with the end of the Games due to the fragmentation of the empire and the rise of Christianity. That said, it is acknowledged that humans have not changed that much. We still watch football and the UFC. While I do not consider those activities as morally equivalent to the gladiatorial games, it does go to show that there is something intoxicating about violence. This is probably why I watched these two shows.

Both are recommended.

I love the Frontier Partisans work — love monitoring frontier-related popular culture, love the research, love the writing, the curating of images — all of it. But the thing I value most is the connections that have been created around this campfire. I’ve made real-deal friends here, among people who share a deep interest in and passion for Story, the outdoors, firearms, music and all  the things that make life rich.

I recently connected with a YouTube content creator named Stephen who operates Wild West Deep Dives. His work is really strong, with a clear commitment to historical accuracy insofar as it is possible — determining what is most likely true, while acknowledging the way that history and folklore and legend are inextricably intertwined in frontier history. Stephen recently reached out with interest in taking on an episode about Simon Kenton, the legendary Kentucky scout.

Simon Kenton — Frontiersman. Art by Steve White.

Since Kenton is the hub of the Frontier Partisans wheel, I was both honored and eager to lend a hand. Stephen is as passionate about this history as I am, and a very cool guy to boot. He tells me that this is one of his favorite episodes

Simon Kenton — Legendary Frontiersman is up. Dive on in.

Talkin’ about Nassau in the Bahamas, capital of the so-called Pirate Republic, and setting of my beloved Black Sails.

Bestill me bloody, beating heart…

Per The Guardian:

The first shipwrecks linked to the real pirates of the Caribbean in the Bahamas have been discovered by an international team co-directed by a British marine archaeologist.

Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham were among pirates who, between the 1690s and 1720s, turned Nassau on the island of New Providence into a hideout where they plotted their next heists on the high seas and divided up their plunder.

Now, following the first-ever official permission to dive in the closed zone of Nassau harbour, an expedition has found six wrecks, three of which can be traced to the “golden age of piracy.”

…The discoveries are all the more exciting because, while a handful of pirate wrecks have been found between Mauritius and North Carolina, not one had previously been discovered in Nassau, “the home port of the pirates of the Caribbean in the Bahamas,” [project co-director Dr. Sean] Kingsley said.

The greatest possible find would be Henry Avery’s flagship Fancy.

Henry Avery is among the most remarkable Frontier Partisan outlaws in history. He took the Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai, (Anglicized as the Gunsway) off the coast of India in 1695, outraging the powerful Muslim ruler, endangering the position of the East India Co., and kicking off the first worldwide manhunt, recounted in the excellent book Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt, by Steven Johnson.

After the brutal taking of the ship, Avery and his crew sailed Fancy halfway around the world to New Providence Island in the Bahamas, where they abandoned it at Nassau and dispersed. Avery was never captured.

But wait… this gets better. We can watch all of this unfold free and “on the account” at YouTube.

Teach is watching…

Captain Flint has his spyglass trained on Nassau…

Eleanor Guthrie, Nassau’s trade boss sez, “Shiver me timbers!”

You knew I would provide proper musical accompaniment…

Allegheny Uprising recounts the conflict that exploded in the Pennsylvania backcountry at the end of Pontiac’s War, when merchant traders, with the support of British authorities, attempted to restore trade with the native peoples of the Ohio Country — people who had just months before been attacking backcountry settlers.

Those settlers weren’t having it.

A cadre of Rangers under the leadership of James Smith — known as The Black Boys — interdicted a trade caravan, touching off a months-long confrontation with authorities that would lead to actual shooting — a decade before the shot heard round the world.

One of James Smith’s Rangers, by Gary Zaboly.

It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The Russkies blinked and pulled their ICBMs out of Cuba. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from seething commies. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.

Freddy Otash is injudiciously named the lead investigating officer. He’s a stone-cold criminal with police sanction and a harrowing dope habit. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a murder on Halloween night. It may link to ex-VP and current gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and two commie snuffs from eight years back. Freddy’s overworked and overamped. He’s running the probe, and Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman—Tricky Dick Nixon’s head goons—have hired him to keep Nixon away from the smear-minded press.

L.A. is coming unglued. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for a city council seat and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride, out to exploit racial tension and peddle untold copies of his smut rag.

I am absolutely fascinated by the wild, weird America that emerged during the post-World War II years, the world I was born into in 1965. Cuba, the Kennedy Assassination, Marilyn Monroe, Vietnam, Watergate… all that jazz. This may seem to sit strangely alongside my Frontier Partisan obsessions, but there is a thread of Continuity & Persistence to be pulled there — which I elucidated a few years back:

The Cold War Frontier

Anyways…

Red Sheet apparently includes a plot element that calls back to the Cristero War, an aftershock of the Mexican Revolution which kicked off when the Mexican federal government began to enforce draconian anti-clerical edicts in the 1920s. We explored this terrible insurgency in some depth here.

I’m eager to see what Ellroy does with this…

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Tinus le Roux continues to serve up colorized photos from the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, now employing AI to sharpen the photographs. I am deeply opposed to generating content with AI, but this is a use I can endorse. You can follow him on Facebook.

The photo features General Sarel Oosthuizen (seated, middle) aka The Red Bull of Krugersdorp. Geaneral Oosthuizen was a badass — he fought in numerous engagements, including the train ambush where the Boers captured young Winston Churchill. He was mortally wounded leading his men in a charge against British forces in the battle of Dwarsvlei on August 14, 1900.

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Here’s one for the houndsmen and dog-lovers out there in FP territory: