Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence by Boyd CothranThe Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age by Robert Aquinas McNally
2018; Oregon Historical Society; Volume: 119; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/ohq.2018.0047
ISSN2329-3780
Autores Tópico(s)Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Resumo126 OHQ vol. 119, no. 1 REMEMBERING THE MODOC 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, index. 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 have established the Willamette Mission. The 1847 murder of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman was a matter of such gravitas that it required the creation of the colony ’s first formal judicial process. Joseph Lane made the Cayuse an offer they could not refuse: surrender the suspects, or face the complete destruction of their nation. The Cayuse complied, and the accused were found guilty, based on the novel legal argument that their surrender was an admission of guilt. Telokite, Tomahas, Isiaasheluckas, Clokomas, and Kiamasumkin were hanged in front of an enthusiastic crowd in Oregon City, and the U.S. Congress formally declared Oregon a Territory of the United States. Arguably though, no Indigenous 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 as the Modoc defied the U.S. Army, winning battle after battle in convincing fashion from the safety of their lava-bed stronghold. To add outrage to injury, Kintpuash shot and killed a general officer of the U.S. Army during a truce. Kintpuash and three others — Schonchin John, Boston Charley, and Black 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 Institution by an Army doctor as scientific curiosities. The Modoc War is the subject of recent books by Boyd Cothran and Robert Aquinas McNally, and both reiterate a critical point: the Modoc War was as much a media narrative as it was a historical event. What made and continues to make the Modoc War compelling in this sense is that it was among the first such narratives to be reported in real time through the then-novel technology of the telegraph, photography, and mass-produced newspapers — presaging much of our media landscape today — complete with competing news personalities and the perpetuation of lurid “fake news” that played into peoples’ prejudices. McNally retells the Modoc War narrative through a journalistic lens; how emigrants constructed trails through Modoc land, 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 forty 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 home on the new Klamath Reservation. Several Modoc families, dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty and the federal government’s follow-through, eventually returned to their homes on Lost River. In November 1872, under the direction 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 south of Tule Lake, the Modoc — outnumbered forty against thousands — repeatedly defeated the combined forces of the Oregon and California militia and the U.S. Army, drawing the rapt attention of a nation. The dénouement of McNally’s book details the interrelated response by the U.S. government on the one hand and the fourth estate on the other. Public interest ran high, as thanks to...
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