Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence (First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies)

Cothran, Boyd

ISBN 10: 1469618605 / ISBN 13: 9781469618609

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2014

About this Item

As New book in As New dust jacket. Jacket protected by removable clear archival mylar. All of our books are individually inspected and described. As New condition means without ANY flaws unless as specifically described. Never ex-library unless explicitly described as such.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence (First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies)
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469618605
• ISBN 13: 9781469618609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

On October 3, 1873, the U.S. Army hanged four Modoc headmen at Oregon’s Fort Klamath. The condemned had supposedly murdered the only U.S. Army general to die during the Indian wars of the nineteenth century. Their much-anticipated execution marked the end of the Modoc War of 1872–73. But as Boyd Cothran demonstrates, the conflict’s close marked the beginning of a new struggle over the memory of the war. Examining representations of the Modoc War in the context of rapidly expanding cultural and commercial marketplaces, Cothran shows how settlers created and sold narratives of the conflict that blamed the Modocs. These stories portrayed Indigenous people as the instigators of violence and white Americans as innocent victims.

Cothran examines the production and circulation of these narratives, from sensationalized published histories and staged lectures featuring Modoc survivors of the war to commemorations and promotional efforts to sell newly opened Indian lands to settlers. As Cothran argues, these narratives of American innocence justified not only violence against Indians in the settlement of the West but also the broader process of U.S. territorial and imperial expansion.

About the Author

Boyd Cothran is associate professor of history at York University.