The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History |
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The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History
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by Kass Fleisher
Sales Rank: 1393328
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List Price: $25.95
$2.75
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 352 pages
Published by: State University of New York Press April 2004
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0791460649
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0791460641
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
Weighs: 12.8 ounces
Book Description
Explores how a pivotal event in American history-the massacre of over 300 Shoshone men, women, and children in 1863-has been constructed, contested, negotiated, and forgotten.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Back Cover Copy
At dawn on January 29, 1863, Union-affiliated troops under the command of Col. Patrick Connor were brought by Mormon guides to the banks of the Bear River, where, with the tacit approval of Abraham Lincoln, they attacked and slaughtered nearly three hundred Northwestern Shoshoni men, women, and children. Evidence suggests that, in the hours after the attack, the troops raped the surviving women-an act still denied by some historians and Shoshoni elders. In exploring why a seminal act of genocide is still virtually unknown to the U.S. public, Kass Fleisher chronicles the massacre itself, and investigates the National Park Service's proposal to create a National Historic Site to commemorate the massacre-but not the rape. When she finds herself arguing with a Shoshoni lady elder about whether the rape actually occurred, Fleisher is forced to confront her own role as a maker of this conflicted history, and to examine the legacy of white women "busybodies."
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
Let's dispel a few myths, some circulating hereabouts, about Fleisher's valuable book, which is getting much-deserved attention, but is of course not without its flaws: Fleisher is not alone in advocating that a mass rape followed the massacre. In point of fact, Brigham Madsen, the primary historian of the Bear River massacre, also believes a mass rape ensued. That Madsen is a lapsed Mormon generally isn't taken as evidence that he's biased, and of course shouldn't be take as evidence that he's biased. Only one-third of Fleisher's book deals directly with the history of the massacre as such, and related historical events. There are some factual errors therein, none of which invalidate her thesis or her analysis. Fleisher is hardly the first to discuss rape in a military context. The gold standard here, and a book that Fleisher makes ample use of, is Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. More recently, Maria Bevacqua has added a volume to this ongoing discussion. (Yes, Bevacqua blurbs Fleisher's book.) Rape continues to be a serious social problem, as we all know, and what Fleisher terms "genocidal rape" is happening right now, for instance, in Darfur. Fleisher's primary target in her book is the *telling* of history, and how social realities invariably end up influencing such tellings. One of those social realities is gender, another is race, another is class, and so forth. Fleisher's interviews with the women who are arguing for and against a National Historic Site -- both of whom, incidentally, are Mormon (like so many others with whom she speaks), and both of whom Fleisher treats with the utmost journalistic respect -- comprise one practical (and contemporary) dimension of this situation. Her more theoretical point is not simply that historians are not "objective" -- a number of reviewers have incorrectly accused her of mounting such an argument -- her point is that objectivity and accuracy and truth and the like are invariably a function of the historian's perspective, and as such, we might need to understand how such perspectives are inflected by those social realities, above. Sure, there might be some things we can all agree upon, accuracy-wise -- we tend to treat facts as relatively stable entities (even if they're often proved not to be so stable) -- but here's a case in which we can't even agree on whether a mass rape took place (and we have a documented eyewitness account). So our stubborn pursuit of a fixed truth often blinds us to other possible truths, as Fleisher argues, which isn't to say we don't ultimately have to reckon with same. And which leads us to the final portion of Fleisher's book, where she does a good deal of historical unearthing and (cultural) analysis to unpack the role that white women have played in Native affairs. All by way of casting her *own* work under increasingly harsh light, in order finally to draw some conclusions about history, about the telling of history, and about our public responsibility in addressing and participating in such tellings. Drivel? I think not. And that kind of hatchet-job rhetoric is probably something that itself needs to be examined as a social reality now, given the preponderance of such hatchet jobs floating around in these spaces.
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The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History
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Price: $2.75
Updated on 6-21-2008.
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