For this assignment on kings article answer the following questions: what is the purpose of this piece? What is the main argument? Summarize it in one sentence. Who is the intended audience? What notable tools does the author use? What is the style
For this assignment on kings article answer the following questions: what is the purpose of this piece? What is the main argument? Summarize it in one sentence. Who is the intended audience? What notable tools does the author use? What is the style
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For this assignment on kings article answer the following questions: what is the purpose of this piece? What is the main argument? Summarize it in one sentence. Who is the intended audience? What notable tools does the author use? What is the style
Transcribed Image Text:10
The Inconvenient Indian
The irony is that there are a great many stories that are as
appealing as the story of Pocahontas and that have more substance
than the fiction of the Almo massacre.
The Rebellion of 1885, with Louis Riel playing the lead, is one
such story, as is the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, starring
George Armstrong Custer. Each is a moment in the national iden-
tities of Canada and the United States, though in terms of promi-
nence and fame, they are not historical equals. While the 1885
Rebellion as a historical moment and Louis Riel as a name are
well known throughout Canada, the event and the man hardly
register in America. I would that they don't register at all,
but I ran into someone in San Francisco about twelve years back
who knew something about Batoche and was able to use "Duck
Lake" and "Gabriel Dumont" in the same sentence. On the other
hand, Custer's name and the legend of the Little Bighorn are well
known in both countries, even though the battle in Montana was
not nearly as important or as long as the Métis fight for indepen-
dence. In part, that's not history's fault. You can blame the extra
brightness of Custer's star on nineteenth-century American out-
rage and twentieth-century Hollywood.
The Inconvenient Indian
Still, I object, in an ineffective and somewhat churlish way, to
the manner in which Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and Dumont
have been allocated minor roles in the "public history" of North
America, while George Armstrong Custer is read into the books
because he made a sophomoric military mistake and got himself
killed. Though perhaps that's not the reason. Perhaps it's simply
because he's White, and the rest are not.
So, am I suggesting that race is a criterion in the creation of
North American history? No, it wasn't a suggestion at all.
But then what about Riel? He's not White. If race were the issue,
you might expect that General Middleton would get the glory, that
his name would be the one that hangs over Batoche. After all, he
defeated Riel and Dumont, and scattered the Métis. So I guess I'm
wrong about the role of race in the construction of history and I
will try not to mention it again.
I have to stop here for a moment, because I'm struck by an
amusing thought, albeit not an original one. One of our problems
in understanding Indian history is that we think we don't have all
the pieces. We believe our understanding of, say, the nineteenth
century is like buying a thousand-piece puzzle from the Salvation
Army, taking it home, and discovering that one-third of the card-
board squiggles are missing. Whereas, today, with our ability to
18
The Inconvenient Indian
Just not in the same grave.
The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the col-
lective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history
of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are
left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly,
a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history
is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo,
Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site
of Powhatan's village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the
parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape
of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an
imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances
and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative perfor-
mances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks,
candy, and popcorn.
In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when
we can watch the movie?
6 of 7
Forget Columbus
record any detail, hardly anything of note goes unmarked. If the
twenty-first century were a puzzle, we could well have more
pieces than we might reasonably manage.
Too little information or too much, what history encourages
us to do is to remember the hindrances that Native people posed
to the forward momentum of European westward migration,
even though Native people were more often an assistance, show-
ing Europeans river systems and trade routes, taking them around
the neighbourhood and introducing them to family and friends.
I don't mention this because I think such encouragements were a
particularly good idea. I bring it up because popular history for
the period tends to ignore this aid and focuses instead on the
trouble Indians caused. Worse, when the names of Native people
who did help Europeans or who did try to bridge the gap between
the two groups come up, we don't applaud their efforts. In many
cases, such as that of Sacajawca, we tend to look sideways at the
alliance and wonder about their intent and morals.
I suspect that a great many of these intermediaries were
women, and if this is true, it answers the implicit question of
intent and morality. Helen, who is attuned to the ways in which
women have been used throughout history, has reminded me that
most, if not all, of the European explorers, soldiers, trappers,
map makers, and traders were men, and that dealing with a
Native woman they could sleep with held more appeal than deal-
ing with a Native man whom they might have to shoot. Sure,
there might have been gay explorers, but if there were, history
has buried them right alongside equally forgotten Native figures
such as Washakie, Standing Bear, Ely Parker, Carlos Montezuma,
Osceola, and Jane Schoolcraft.
19
Transcribed Image Text:The Inconvenient Indian
WHEN I ANNOUNCED TO my family that I was going to
write a book about Indians in North America, Helen said, "Just
don't start with Columbus." She always gives me good advice.
And I always give it my full consideration.
In October of 1492, Christopher Columbus came ashore some-
where in the Caribbean, a part of world geography with which
Europeans were unfamiliar, and as a consequence, he was given
credit for discovering all of the Americas. If you're the cranky sort,
you might argue that Columbus didn't discover anything, that he
simply ran aground on unexpected land mass, stumbled across
a babel of nations. But he gets the credit. And why not? It is, after
all, one of history's jobs to allocate credit. If Columbus hadn't
picked up the award, it would have been given to someone else.
The award could have gone to the Norse. They arrived on the
east coast of North America long before Columbus. There
even evidence to suggest that Asians found their way to the west
coast as well.
But let's face it, Columbus sailing the ocean blue is the better
story. Three little ships, none of them in showroom condition,
bobbing their way across the Atlantic, the good captain keeping
two journals so that his crew wouldn't realize just how far they
had drifted away from the known world, the great man himself
wading ashore, wet and sweaty, flag in hand, a letter of introduc
tion to the Emperor of the Indies from the King and Queen of
Spain tucked in his tunic.
A Kodak moment.
And let's not forget all the sunny weather, the sandy beaches,
the azure lagoons, and the friendly Natives.
Most of us think that history is the past. It's not. History is the
2
The Inconvenient Indian
didn't discover the town. Nor did Jacques Cartier or Samuel de
Champlain or David Thompson or Hernando Cortes. Sacajawea,
with Lewis and Clark in tow, might have passed through the
general area, but since Almo didn't exist in the early 1800s, they
couldn't have stopped there. Even if they had wanted to.
Almo is a small, unincorporated town of about 200 tucked into
south central Cassia County in southern Idaho. So far as I know,
it isn't famous for much of anything except an Indian massacre.
A plaque in town reads, "Dedicated to the memory of those
who lost their lives in a most horrible Indian massacre, 1861.
Three hundred immigrants west bound. Only five escaped.
Erected by the S&D of Idaho Pioneers, 1938."
Two hundred and ninety-five killed. Now that's a massacre.
Indians generally didn't kill that many Whites at one time. Sure,
during the 1813 Fort Mims massacre, in what is now Alabama,
Creek Red Sticks killed about four hundred Whites, but that's the
largest massacre committed by Indians that I can find. The Lachine
massacre on Montreal Island in Quebec in 1689 killed around
ninety, while the death toll in nearby La Chesnaye was forty-two.
In 1832, eighteen were killed at Indian Creek near Ottawa, Illinois,
while the 1854 Ward massacre along the Oregon Trail in western
Idaho had a death toll of nineteen. The 1860 Utter massacre at
Henderson Flat near the Snake River in Idaho killed twenty-five.
The 1879 Meeker massacre in western Colorado killed eleven.
The Fort Parker massacre in Texas in 1836 killed six.
It's true that in 1835, just south of present-day Bushnell, Florida,
Indians killed 108, but since all of the casualities were armed sol-
diers who were looking for trouble and not unarmed civilians who
were trying to avoid it, I don't count this one as a massacre.
The Inconvenient Indian
the Shoshone-Bannock should stand out in the annals of Indian bad
behaviour. After the massacre at Fort Mims, Almo would rank as
the second-largest massacre of Whites by Indians.
Three hundred people in the wagon train. Two hundred and
ninety-five killed. Only five survivors. It's a great story. The only
problem is, it never happened.
You might assume that something must have happened in
Almo, maybe a smaller massacre or a fatal altercation of some
sort that was exaggerated and blown out of proportion.
Nope.
The story is simply a tale someone made up and told to someone
else, and, before you knew it, the Almo massacre was historical fact.
The best summary and critical analysis of the Almo massacre is
Brigham Madsen's 1993 article in Idaho Yesterdays, "The Almo
Massacre Revisited." Madsen was a historian at the University of
Utah when I was a graduate student there. He was a smart, witty,
gracious man, who once told me that historians are not often
appreciated because their research tends to destroy myths. I knew
the man, and I liked him. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should
say that I have a bias towards his work.
Bias or no, Madsen's research into Almo settles the question.
No massacre. As Madsen points out in his article, attacks by
Indians did not go unmarked. The newspapers of the time-the
Deseret News in Salt Lake City, the Sacramento Daily Union, the San
Francisco Examiner-paid close attention to Indian activity along
the Oregon and California trails, yet none of these papers had any
mention of Almo. Such an event would certainly have come to
the attention of Indian Service agents and the military, but again
Madsen was unable to find any reference to the massacre either
The Inconvenient Indian
But let's not blame Almo for spinning fancy into fact. There
are much larger fictions loose upon the land. My favourite old
chestnut features Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. The orig-
inal story, the one Smith told, is that he was captured by the
Powhatan in 1607, shortly after arriving in what is now Virginia.
He was taken to one of the main villages, and just as the Indians
made ready to kill him, he was saved by the daughter of the head
man, a young woman whom all of us know as Pocahontas.
It's a pretty good tale. And 1607 wasn't the first time Smith
had used it. Before he came to America, he had been a soldier
of fortune, had found himself in a number of tight spots, and,
according to the good Captain, had been befriended and/or
saved by comely women. Smith makes mention of three such
women in his writings, the Lady Tragabigzanda in Turkey, the
Lady Callamata Russia, and Madam Chanoyes in France,
all of whom "assisted" him during his trials and tribulations as
a young mercenary.
Lucky guy.
Of course, the story of heroes being saved by beautiful maidens
is a classic and had been around for centuries. Personally, I don't
believe that Smith knew Pocahontas. I certainly don't believe that
she saved him or that they had any sort of relationship. His first
mention of her doesn't come until Pocahontas arrived in England
in 1616. By then, as an authentic American Indian princess, she
had acquired a certain fame and notoriety, and Smith, I suspect,
eager to bathe once again in the warmth of public glory, took the
stock story out of storage, dusted it off, and inserted Pocahontas's
name in the proper place.
Helen likes details, and
e is inordinately fond of footnotes.
Forget Columbur
stories we tell about the past. That's all it is. Stories. Such a defini-
might make the enterprise of history seem neutral. Benign.
Which, of course, it isn't.
I listory may well be a series of stories we tell about the past,
but the stories are not just any stories. They're not chosen by
hance. By and large, the stories are about famous men and cele-
la ated events. We throw in a couple of exceptional women every
www and then, not out of any need to recognize female eminence,
lat out of embarrassment.
And we're not easily embarrassed.
When we imagine history, we imagine a grand structure, a
national chronicle, a closely organized and guarded record of
agreed-upon events and interpretations, a bundle of "authenti-
cities" and "truths" welded into a flexible, yet conservative
narrative that explains how we got from there to here. It is a
relationship we have with ourselves, a love affair we celebrate
with flags and anthems, festivals and guns.
Well, the "gens" remark was probably uncalled for and might
suggest an animus towards history. But that's not true. I simply
have difficulty with how we choose which stories become the
pulse of history and which do not.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
On second thought, let's not start with Columbus. Helen was
right. Let's forget Columbus. You know, now that I say it out
loud, I even like the sound of it. Forget Columbus.
Give it a try. Forget Columbus.
Instead, let's start our history, our account, in Almo, Idaho.
I've never been there, and I suspect that most of you haven't
either. I can tell you with certainty that Christopher Columbus
Forget Columbur
By the way, these aren't my figures. I borrowed them from
William M. Osborn who wrote a book, The Wild Frontier, in
which he attempted to document every massacre occurred
in North America. The figures are not dead accurate, of course.
They're approximations based on the historical information
that was available to Osborn. Still, it's nice that someone spent
the time and effort to compile such a list, so I can use it without
doing any of the work.
I should point out that Indians didn't do all the massacring. To
give credit where credit is due, Whites massacred Indians at a
pretty good clip. In 1598, in what is now New Mexico, Juan de
Onate and his troops killed over eight hundred Acoma and cut off
the left foot of every man over the age of twenty-five. In 1637, John
Underhill led a force that killed six to seven hundred Pequot near
the Mystic River in Connecticut. In 1871, around one hundred and
forty Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches were killed in the Camp Grant
massacre in Arizona Territory. Two hundred and fifty Northwestern
Shoshoni were killed in the 1863 Bear River massacre in what is now
Idaho, while General Henry Atkinson killed some one hundred and
fifty Sauk and Fox at the mouth of the Bad Axe River in Wisconsin
in 1832. And, of course, there's always the famous 1864 Sand Creek
massacre in Colorado, where two hundred peaceful Cheyenne were
slaughtered by vigilantes looking to shoot anything that moved, and
the even more infamous Wounded Knee in 1890, where over two
hundred Lakota lost their lives.
Of course, body counts alone don't even begin to tell the stories
of these slaughters, but what the figs res do suggest if you take
them at face value is that Whites were considerably more suc-
cessful at massacres than Indians. So, the 1861 Almo massacre by
Forget Columbus
in the National Archives or in the records that the Bureau of
Indian Affairs kept for the various states and territories. Nor does
the Almo massacre appear in any of the early histories of Idaho.
You would expect that the rescue party from Brigham who
supposedly came upon the carnage and buried the bodies of the
slain settlers or the alleged five survivors who escaped death-
would have brought the massacre to the attention of the authori-
ties. Okay, one of the survivors was a baby, but that still left a
chorus of voices to sound the alarm.
And yet there is nothing.
In fact there is no mention of the matter at all until some sixty-
six years after the fact, when the story first appeared in Charles
S. Walgamott's 1926 book Reminiscences of Early Days: A Series of
Historical Sketches and Happenings in the Early Days of Snake River
Valley. Walgamott claims to have gotten the story from a W.M.E.
Johnston, and it's a gruesome story to be sure, a Jacobean melo-
drama complete with "bloodthirsty Indians" and a brave White
woman who crawls to safety carrying her nursing child by its
clothing in her teeth.
A right proper Western.
That the plaque in Almo was erected in 1938 as part of
"Exploration Day," an event that was designed to celebrate Idaho
history and promote tourism to the area, is probably just a coin-
cidence. In any case, the fact that the story is a fraud didn't bother
the Sons and Daughters of Idaho Pioneers who paid for the plaque,
and it doesn't bother them now. Even after the massacre was
discredited, the town was reluctant to remove the marker,
defending the lie as part of the culture and history of the area.
Which, of course, it now is
Forget Columbur
I'm not. But because I love her, I try to accommodate her needs.
So, here are the facts, as we know them. Smith does come to
Virginia in 1607. He is most likely captured by the Powhatan
people. Whether they want to kill him or not is a moot point.
The reality is they don't. He gets back to the colony one
piece, is injured in a gunpowder explosion, and returns to
England in 1609, Did he know Pocahontas? There's nothing to
indicate that he did. Did he have a relationship with her as the
Disney folks suggest in their saccharine jeu d'esprit? Well, at the
time of the supposed meeting, Smith would have been twenty-
seven and Pocahontas would have been about ten, maybe twelve
years old. Possible, but not probable.
the story, false though I believe it to be, has been too
appealing for North America to ignore. And we have dragged the
damn thing with its eroticism and exoticism, its White hero
and its dusky maiden-across the continent and the centuries.
There's an 1885 musical called Po-co-hon-tas, or the Gentle Savage
by John Brougham, a 1924 film directed by Bryan Foy called
Pocahontas and John Smith, a racehorse named Pocahontas, a
Pocahontas train that ran between Norfolk, Virginia and Cincinnati,
Ohio for the Norfolk and Western Railway in the 1950s and '60s,
a Pocahontas coal field in Tazewell, West Virginia, a Pocahontas
video game, as well as the towns of Pocahontas in Arkansas, Illinois,
lowa, Missouri, and Virginia.
enette)
There's a town in Alberta just a little north of Jasper called
Pocahontas, where you can rent your very own cabin (with kitch-
the heart of the heart of nature, relax in the curative
waters of Miette Hot Springs, and enjoy a meal at the Poco Café.
I don't know about you, but it's on my bucket list.
2 of 7
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