The Modoc War a Story of Genocide at the Dawn of Americas Gilded Age Review

126 OHQ vol. 119, no. 1 REMEMBERING THE MODOC State of war: REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCE AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN INNOCENCE by Boyd Cothran University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2014. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 260 pages. $34.95, cloth. THE MODOC War: A STORY OF GENOCIDE AT THE DAWN OF AMERICA'S GILDED Age by Robert Aquinas McNally University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2017. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, alphabetize. 432 pages. $34.95, cloth. Indigenous people are integral to the mythology ofthesettlementofOregon.WithoutSacagawea, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark might not have made it to the Pacific, and without the Nez Perce, Jason Lee might never accept established the Willamette Mission. The 1847 murder of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman was a affair of such gravitas that it required the cosmos of the colony 's beginning formal judicial process. Joseph Lane made the Cayuse an offering they could non refuse: surrender the suspects, or face the complete devastation of their nation. The Cayuse complied, and the accused were found guilty, based on the novel legal argument that their give up was an admission of guilt. Telokite, Tomahas, Isiaasheluckas, Clokomas, and Kiamasumkin were hanged in front of an enthusiastic crowd in Oregon Metropolis, and the U.S. Congress formally declared Oregon a Territory of the United States. Arguably though, no Ethnic people have signified the triumph of manifest destiny in Oregon to the extent of the Modoc under the leadership of Kintpuash, also known as Captain Jack. In 1873, the entire United States followed the events in the volcanic highlands on the Oregon-California borderland every bit the Modoc defied the U.S. Regular army, winning boxing after battle in disarming style from the safe of their lava-bed stronghold. To add outrage to injury, Kintpuash shot and killed a general officer of the U.S. Regular army during a truce. Kintpuash and 3 others — Schonchin John, Boston Charley, and Blackness Jim — like the Cayuse before them, were eventually tried in a public proceeding more spectacle than legal. The four were hanged at Fort Klamath, and their severed heads were carefully shipped to the Smithsonian Establishment past an Ground forces doctor equally scientific curiosities. The Modoc War is the field of study of contempo books by Boyd Cothran and Robert Aquinas McNally, and both reiterate a critical signal: the Modoc War was every bit much a media narrative as it was a historical consequence. What made and continues to make the Modoc War compelling in this sense is that it was amongst the first such narratives to be reported in real time through the then-novel applied science of the telegraph, photography, and mass-produced newspapers — presaging much of our media landscape today — consummate with competing news personalities and the perpetuation of pulp "faux news" that played into peoples' prejudices. McNally retells the Modoc War narrative through a journalistic lens; how emigrants constructed trails through Modoc country, and how resistance to this trespass was met draconically. In 1852, for example, settler vigilantes from Jacksonville and Yreka, led by a future federal Indian agent, Benjamin Wright, massacred at least xl Modoc under a flag of truce. In 1864, as homesteaders and land speculators began to file into the Klamath basin, the Modoc with the Klamath and Yahooskin Paiute agreed to cede much of their traditional land for a abode on the new Klamath Reservation. Several Modoc families, dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty and the federal regime'due south follow-through, eventually returned to their homes on Lost River. In November 1872, under the management of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Army from Fort Klamath attempted to forcibly return them to the reservation, resulting in the death of several cavalry men and Modoc. Under the leadership of Hooker Jim, Modoc murdered more than a dozen settlers. Now fortified in the lava beds southward of Tule Lake, the Modoc — outnumbered forty confronting thousands — repeatedly defeated the combined forces of the Oregon and California militia and the U.S. Regular army, drawing the rapt attending of a nation. The dénouement of McNally's volume details the interrelated response by the U.S. regime on the ane hand and the fourth manor on the other. Public interest ran loftier, every bit thanks to...

This website uses cookies to ensure you lot get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your feel may non be seamless.

toutcherafteptelle.blogspot.com

Source: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/830163/pdf

Share this post