[July 17th marks the 200th anniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]
On the
horrifying and inspiring effects of reading a vital late 19th century
text.
I’ve written
about Sarah
Winnemucca and her autoethnographic book Life
Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883) many times, including
in this column for We’re History. As I do sometimes, I’ll
stop this first paragraph and ask you to check out that piece, and then come on
back here for more.
Welcome back! There
are lots
of important 19th century texts
that help us engage with Native
American histories and communities,
but I don’t know any one that more potently traces the horrific effects of US
expansion on indigenous Americans than does Winnemucca’s book. Much of that is
due to her choice to begin the book with two interconnected subjects: the
initial contact between US settlers and Winnemucca’s Paiute (the modern
spelling) tribe; and the perspective of her grandfather, a tribal chief who welcomed
the settlers and worked tirelessly and yet frustratingly unsuccessfully to
create a positive relationship between the communities. Beginning her book as
she does with the thorough shattering of this impressive man’s optimism and
hope by the hostility and brutality of the US arrivals, Winnemucca immediately and
powerfully locates her reader’s empathy with both that specific figure and the
tribe as a whole; and the rest of the book, which traces with unrelenting
detail the horrors of the removal policy, the “Indian Wars,” and the consistent
aggressions of European settlers, builds on that initial empathy quite
effectively.
All those
histories, and even more so their effects, comprised vital elements of US
expansion, and Winnemucca’s book thus is a must-read for all Americans. But as
I traced in that We’re History column,
Winnemucca also exemplifies Native American resistance to those destructive
histories—and, importantly, the successes that resistance achieved, at least as
much as the tragedies with which it was met. To extend a bit of my topic from yesterday’s
post, another reason why it’s not enough just to think about expansion through
the lens of settler colonialism is that that frame too easily locates Native
Americans entirely as victims, passively colonized by the arriving settlers. Whereas
another layer to the story of expansion is the active response and role of
indigenous communities, the countless ways they contributed to the evolving
histories of these places and of the expanding nation as a whole. That far more
inspiring layer is important to remember as well, and there are no figures nor
texts that help us do so any better than do Winnemucca and her book.
Last expanded
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?
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