Synopses & Reviews
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Euro-American citizenry of California carried out mass genocide against the Native population of their state, using the processes and mechanisms of democracy to secure land and resources for themselves and their private interests. The murder, rape, and enslavement of thousands of Native people were legitimized by notions of democracyand#8212;in this case mob ruleand#8212;through a discreetly organized and brutally effective series of petitions, referenda, town hall meetings, and votes at every level of California government.
and#160;Murder State is a comprehensive examination of these events and their early legacy. Preconceptions about Native Americans as shaped by the popular press and by immigrantsand#8217; experiences on the Overland Trail to California were used to further justify the elimination of Native people in the newcomersand#8217; quest for land. The allegedly and#8220;violent natureand#8221; of Native people was often merely their reaction to the atrocities committed against them as they were driven from their ancestral lands and alienated from their traditional resources.
and#160;In this narrative history employing numerous primary sources and the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on genocide, Brendan C. Lindsay examines the darker side of California history, one rarely studied in detail, and the motives of both Native Americans and Euro-Americans at the time. Murder State calls attention to the misuse of democracy to justify and commit genocide.
Review
and#8220;Democracy and genocide are two activities that most would declare antagonistic. Yet Brendan Lindsay presents primary evidence that reveals the hatred and murderous acts committed by early Californians and government officials, as a grassroots movement, to settle the and#8216;Golden Stateand#8217; by exterminating and dispossessing Native peoples of their ancestral homelands.and#8221;and#8212;Jack Norton, Hupa historian and emeritus professor of Native American studies, Humboldt State University
Review
and#8220;Historian Brendan Lindsay has documented the attempted extermination of Californiaand#8217;s first people and provided a detailed, comprehensive historical treatment of Californiaand#8217;s genocide. He offers a groundbreaking study that will change the historiography of California and genocide studiesand#8212;a penetrating but readable book that will quickly become a classic.and#8221;and#8212;Larry Myers (Pomo), executive secretary of the California Native American Heritage Commission
Review
"[Murder State is] one of the most important works ever published on the history of American Indians in California in the mid-nineteenth century."and#8212;Steven Newcomb, Indian Country
Review
and#8220;A significant historical account detailing white pioneers perpetrating genocide against California Indians. . . . [Employs] compelling evidence.and#8221;and#8212;Clifford E. Trafzer,
Journal of American Studiesand#160;
Review
and#8220;Lindsayand#8217;s methodology and conclusions . . . highlight important questions for scholars to ask of frontier societies, their legal systems, and their citizens.and#8221;and#8212;Brenden Rensink,
Western Historical Quarterlyand#160;
Review
and#8220;Perhaps the most provocative aspect of his book is Lindsayand#8217;s connection of American democracy to the killing of Indians.and#8221;and#8212;Robert G. Lee,
American Historical ReviewReview
"A splendid anthology, full of rigorously researched and strongly written essays that will rapidly become must reading for historians of early America."—P. Harvey, CHOICE
Review
"These powerful and well-written essays, collected in a clearly organized volume, shed valuable light on a long-neglected aspect of colonial history. Indian slavery can no longer be ignored."—Mikaëla M. Adams, North Carolina Historical Review
Review
"This collection brings much needed scholarly attention to the many faces of Indian slavery and hopefully indicates a growing interest on an exciting topic."—Janne Lahti, Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Review
"Indian slavery was a real, prolonged, contradictory, catastrophic, and essential facet of native history and American colonial history. Unlike Hernando de Soto's slaving and stealing expedition in the mid-sixteenth-century Southeast, this collection leaves us with a wealth of pearls."—Tiya Miles, Journal of American History
Review
"This volume is valuable to students and scholars who study North American Indians, New World slavery, European expansion and colonization, and the history of colonial North America more generally."—Heidi Scott Giusto, Florida Historical Quarterly
Review
"This is a tremendously valuable book. . . . There is no better single-volume introduction to the history of Indian slavery in early America. All serious students of early American history, the colonial South, and slavery in general will benefit from time spent with this edited collection."—Jon Parmenter, Journal of Southern History
Review
and#8220;Performing Indigeneity lays out a sophisticated treatment of the cross-cultural politics embodied in the productive but hard-to-define category and#8216;indigeneity.and#8217; Laura Graham and Glenn Pennyand#8217;s ground-breaking collection brilliantly guides readers through the emergence and renegotiation of such tropes as cultural heritage, human rights, environment, and aboriginality.and#8221;and#8212;Philip J. Deloria, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan and author of Indians in Unexpected Places
Review
and#8220;This terrific set of essays brings together some of the best and freshest thinking in a field burgeoning with creativity. Native arts and activism are flourishing, and so are interdisciplinary conversations about Indigeneity. Every chapter offers surprises: gems of insight from unexpected angles. This is a bold step forward.and#8221;and#8212;Beth A. Conklin, chair of the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society
Review
and#8220;One is not born indigenous. Thatand#8217;s the far-reaching upshot of this remarkable collection, which radically expands our notion of indigeneity. Along with their collaborators, Laura Graham and Glenn Penny break with any sense of essential selfhood, giving us a performative and dialogic concept that sees the indigenous as a creative space of collective imagination.and#8221;and#8212;Matti Bunzl, professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois
Review
and#8220;Aboriginal weapons are an important subject in themselves and for their role within Native societies and Native-white relations. Roland Bohrand#8217;s knowledge of how Aboriginal weapons work and why they were constructed as they were allows the author to critique the ethnocentric and technologically ignorant assumptions of many earlier scholars. As a bowyer himself, Bohr brings knowledge of making and using bows and arrows lacking in earlier scholarship to his careful historical research.and#8221;and#8212;Dr. Laura Peers, curator of the Americas at the Pitt Rivers Museum and reader in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford
Review
andldquo;Haveman offers an unflinching look at Americaandrsquo;s own ethnic cleansing in this carefully researched study of Indian removal. A powerful book that exposes the brutality of U.S. policy while never losing sight of the perseverance of Indian people.andrdquo;andmdash;Christina Snyder, author of Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America
Review
andldquo;Christopher Haveman presents a much-needed and compelling narrative of the forced removal of the Creek Indians. In Havemanandrsquo;s hands, the inexorable weight of American expansion is felt as it played out on the ground in rampant and illegal land speculations, the forced signing of treaties, the invasion of Americans into Creek country, corrupt contractors, bitter intra-Creek disputes, and the subsequent suffering and grief of thousands of Creek men and women forced into exile from their homelands.andrdquo;andmdash;Robbie Ethridge, author of Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World
Review
andquot;[Murder State] is solid in its synthesis of an array of scholarship, clear in its arguments, and much needed in situating Californiaandrsquo;s indigenous presence in the stateandrsquo;s history.andquot;andmdash;Damon Akins, H-AmIndian
Review
andquot;A fascinating read for anyone interested in the evolution of native North American hunting, warfare, and society after contact with Europeans.andquot;andmdash;James Donohue, South Dakota History
Synopsis
European enslavement of American Indians began with Christopher Columbuss arrival in the New World. The slave trade expanded with European colonies, and though African slave labor filled many needs, huge numbers of Americas indigenous peoples continued to be captured and forced to work as slaves. Although central to the process of colony building in what became the United States, this phenomena has received scant attention from historians.
Indian Slavery in Colonial America, edited by Alan Gallay, examines the complicated dynamics of Indian enslavement. How and why Indians became both slaves of the Europeans and suppliers of slaverys victims is the subject of this book. The essays in this collection use Indian slavery as a lens through which to explore both Indian and European societies and their interactions, as well as relations between and among Native groups.
Synopsis
This engaging collection of essays discusses the complexities of and#8220;beingand#8221; indigenous in public spaces. Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny bring together a set of highly recognized junior and senior scholars, including indigenous scholars, from a variety of fields to provoke critical thinking about the many ways in which individuals and social groups construct and display unique identities around the world. The case studies in
Performing Indigeneity underscore the social, historical, and immediate contextual factors at play when indigenous people make decisions about when, how, why, and who can and#8220;beand#8221; indigenous in public spaces.
and#160;Performing Indigeneity invites readers to consider how groups and individuals think about performance and display and focuses attention on the ways that public spheres, both indigenous and nonindigenous ones, have received these performances. The essays demonstrate that performance and display are essential to the creation and persistence of indigeneity, while also presenting the conundrum that in many cases and#8220;indigeneityand#8221; excludes some of the voices or identities that the category purports to represent.
and#160;and#160;
Synopsis
Gifts from the Thunder Beings examines North American Aboriginal peoplesand#8217; use of Indigenous and European distance weapons in big-game hunting and combat. Beyond the capabilities of European weapons, Aboriginal peoplesand#8217; ways of adapting and using this technology in combination with Indigenous weaponry contributed greatly to the impact these weapons had on Aboriginal cultures. This gradual transition took place from the beginning of the fur trade in the Hudsonand#8217;s Bay Company trading territory to the treaty and reserve period that began in Canada in the 1870s.
Technological change and the effects of European contact were not uniform throughout North America, as Roland Bohr illustrates by comparing the northern Great Plains and the Central Subarcticand#8212;two adjacent but environmentally different regions of North Americaand#8212;and their respective Indigenous cultures. Beginning with a brief survey of the subarctic and Northern Plains environments and the most common subsistence strategies in these regions around the time of contact, Bohr provides the context for a detailed examination of social, spiritual, and cultural aspects of bows, arrows, quivers, and firearms. His detailed analysis of the shifting usage of bows and arrows and firearms in the northern Great Plains and the Central Subarctic makes Gifts from the Thunder Beings an important addition to the canon of North American ethnology.
and#160;
Synopsis
At its height the Creek Nation comprised a collection of multiethnic towns and villages stretching across large parts of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. By the 1830s, however, the Creeks had lost almost all this territory through treaties and by the unchecked intrusion of white settlers who illegally expropriated Native soil. With the Jackson administration unwilling to aid the Creeks in removing the squatters, the Creek people suffered from dispossession, starvation, and indebtedness. Between the 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs and the forced migrations beginning in 1836, nearly twenty-three thousand Creek Indians were relocatedand#8212;voluntarily or involuntarilyand#8212;to Indian Territory.
Rivers of Sand fills a substantial gap in scholarship by capturing, for the first time, the full breadth and depth of the Creeksand#8217; collective tragedy during the marches westward, on the Creek home front, and during the first years of resettlement.and#160;
Unlike the Cherokee Trail of Tears, which was conducted largely at the end of a bayonet, most Creeks were removed through a combination of coercion and negotiation. Hopelessly outnumbered military personnel were forced to make concessions in order to gain the compliance of the headmen and their people. Christopher D. Havemanand#8217;s meticulous study uses previously unexamined documents to weave narratives of resistance and survival, making Rivers of Sand an essential addition to the ethnohistory of American Indian removal.
About the Author
Alan Gallay is a professor of history at Ohio State University. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717, winner of the 2003 Bancroft Prize, and Voices of the Old South: Eyewitness Accounts, 1528-1861. Contributors: Juliana Barr, Jennifer Baszile, Denise I. Bossy, James F. Brooks, E.A.S. Demers, Robbie Ethridge, Chris Everett, Alan Gallay, Joseph Hall, Margaret Ellen Newell, and Brett Rushforth.