Frontier Violence Research Articles

KEITH WINDSCHUTTLE's CONTRIBUTION TO AUSTRALIAN HISTORY: AN EVALUATION

In two recent books, Keith Windschuttle has reinvigorated debate on two central questions in Australian history: the extent of frontier violence in the colonisation of Australia and the origins of the White Australia Policy. This assessment of Windschuttle's scholarship will focus on how he arrives at his conclusions: his methodology, his use of evidence and the coherence of his arguments. It will draw on the literature of economic history to show how its methods and perspectives can inform these debates in Australian history.

:Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History.(Studies on War and Genocide, number 6.)

:Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History.<i>(Studies on War and Genocide, number 6.)</i>

Moved by Terror: Frontier Violence as Cultural Exchange in Late-Colonial Brazil

Rejecting the conventional presumption that violent indigenous resistance to colonization had become all but ineffectual by the late colonial period in Portuguese America, this article uncovers ample archival evidence of successful raiding and other military maneuvers by Brazil's eastern Indians,especially the Botocudo and the Puri. By carefully examining the comportment of both colonizers and colonized, it elucidates how each employed various forms of violence to achieve and communicate incompatible objectives. In particular, the peculiarities of the encroaching slave-holding Luso-Afro-Brazilian society presented Indians with diverse opportunities to impede expansion. They did so by understanding their adversary's culture and translating that understanding into acts orchestrated to achieve the greatest possible effect. As such, armed conflict did not represent the cessation of cultural interaction on this colonial frontier; rather, it was an essential means by which that interaction occurred. Over time, mutual bloodshed and brutality evolved to constitute a shared language and praxis, at once symbolic and concrete.

Introduction: White Settler Colonialisms and the Colonial Turn: An Australian Perspective

White Settler Colonialisms and the Colonial Turn: An Australian Perspective Fiona Paisley The week before I began writing this introduction, Australian settler colonialism was once again in the news. On Thursday September 25, 2003, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians gathered to remember the last officially documented massacre of Aboriginal people in Australia. In 1927, the killing of a white dingo-trapper by an Aboriginal assailant had precipitated a series of reprisals led by Constable William Murray of the Commonwealth police. As a result, at least 30 Aboriginal women and men were killed in retribution for the murder. In an attempt to hide the evidence, their bodies were burned and the charred remains hidden in a dry riverbed. During a ceremony of remembrance held seventy-five years later near the site of the massacre at Coniston Station in the Northern Territory, descendants acknowledged their shared if divergent relationship to this event. Warlpiri woman elder Jean Herbert stated that ‘This ceremony is about healing the past and walking together in the future. We want to let the spirits rest in peace.’ And Liza Dale-Hallett, great-niece of Constable Murray, responded on behalf of non-Indigenous Australians: ‘We share this past. We also share the future. I feel very privileged to be here with you, face to face, feeling these unjust, painful and tragic events.’1 Around Australia, newspapers announced the Coniston commemoration as evidence of a larger sentiment of national reconciliation. ‘A new chapter was being written in the desert’, The Australian promised its predominantly southern readership, and one ‘with different hearts’ than in the past.2 Where once frontier vigilantes had been bent upon the ‘dispersal’ of Aborigines, their descendants expressed regret. And where once Indigenous witnesses had been excluded from government investigation,3 now, in 2003, their voices were being heard. Just as the past is often constructed as a foreign country, then in the logic of national commemoration, Coniston was to be remembered as distant in sentiment, time and space.4 While this kind of national commemoration, however distancing, reflects something of the recent shifts towards acknowledging settler colonial histories of violence and injustice against Indigenous people, in Australia today settler colonial history remains highly contested. Questions of apology for child removal, acknowledgement of Indigenous sovereignty rights, or treaty with Indigenous communities, have given way to the more recognisably assimilationist line of previous decades as a politics of denial has gained legitimacy.5 History has become a battleground between those wishing to reinstate a unified, progressive account of the past, and those finding in its contested and fragmented present a way forward. While the History Wars are waged in particular form in Australia, they witness a global trend. As with critical historians of empire and colonialism elsewhere, those seeking to disrupt national narratives of benign settlement in Australia have been accused of ‘revisionism’, ‘political correctness’, and ultimately of the ‘fabrication of history’ itself.6 On one level, these accusations reflect fears concerning the status of evidence.7 In the Australian case, renewed dispute over empiricism has been most evident in disagreements concerning frontier violence in Australia. 8While counting the dead has become pivotal to determining the ‘truth’ about Australian settler colonialism, as we can quickly recognise, numbers provide no escape into ‘fact’.9 In the Coniston case, for example, the number of dead remains in dispute: where official contemporary records claimed only 31, Aboriginal community memory asserts that at least sixty people died. For some, discrepancies between ‘official’ and ‘hearsay’ accounts provide the grounds for the dismissal of an Indigenous perspective, despite the glaring partiality and incompleteness of the official archives. Simple assertions of reliance on the ‘facts’ are desperately inadequate if an informed public discussion about Australian settler colonial culture is to emerge.10 At another level, the dispute over settler colonialism reflects a destabilisation of national history. As Indigenous scholar Larrissa Behrendt has pointed out, the History Wars are not about Aboriginal history at all, but about a growing crisis in white identity in Australia. 11Leading historians working to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous settler colonial histories into greater dialogue, often through oral histories and other non-official sources, have confronted...

Australian ways of death: a social and cultural history, 1840-1918

INTRODUCTION PART 1: IMMIGRANT DEATHS AT SEA: THE TRANSITION FROM THE OLD WORLD TO THE NEW 1. The terror of 'a watery grave': the deaths of infants and children at sea, 1838-1890 2. Faith, fever and consumption: disease and adult deaths at sea PART 2: THE GOOD CHRISTIAN DEATH: TRANSMISSION FROM EUROPE TO AUSTRALIA 3. The Transmission of the European Culture of the Good Protestant Death 4. 'Angels in Heaven': the common tragedies of babies' and children's deaths 5. Medical and secular challenges to Christian ideals of death 6. Funerals and undertakers 7. Women, widowhood, and gendered mourning 8. Christian mourning ritual and heavenly consolations 9. Memory and mourning: secular and material commemoration 10. Dr Springthorpe's memorialisation of his wife: Melbourne's Taj Mahal PART 3: DEATH AND DESTITUTION 11. Sick and dying old people in benevolent asylums 12. An asylum system 'degrading to the most inhuman race of savages': revelations and reform in New South Wales PART 4: DEATH IN THE BUSH AND THE GREAT WAR 13. Death and burial in the bush: a distinctive Australian culture of death 14. Male deaths in the bush: frontier violence, old age, suicide, and accidents 15. Frontier struggles for survival: stoical women and lost children 16. Epilogue: the Great War and silent grief ENDNOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Reviewing the History Wars

suppressing any contrary interpretation. He alleges that they were formed in the radicalism of the 1960s and accuses them of a deliberate politicisation of history. This school comprises prominent historians such as Henry Reynolds, Lyndall Ryan and the late Lloyd Robson, archaeologists such as John Mulvaney and Rhys Jones, local historians such as the late Brian Plomley and younger researchers such as Sharon Morgan. The ages of these scholars range over several decades; they vary widely in views and sympathies. The idea that they colluded in a political project is as absurd as his allegation that they victimise dissidents is offensive. He misreads those whom he castigates. Windschuttle repeatedly alleges that Reynolds and Ryan sought to depict the frontier as a place of indiscriminate white killing. Yet Reynolds was principally interested in the Aboriginal response to the newcomer, and consistently argued that it took a variety of forms, from co-operation and partnership to resistance and warfare. Ryan was concerned to relate the story of the dispossession and survival of Tasmanian Aboriginals, and frontier violence was only one part of her story. So far from them creating an 'orthodox school', other historians had long since challenged the emphasis on frontier violence and queried the idea of a frontier with Europeans on one side and Aboriginals on the other. The greater part of Windschuttle's book is given over to a minute examination of the massacres. He scrutinises the historians' treatment of these events, tracks their references back to the archives and compares their versions against the original source. This is by far the most damaging of his criticisms, as he finds some of the sources do not support what the historians reported while others do not even exist. He pays careful attention to chronology and topography, consistency and plausibility - when and where did the incident occur? who was there and can we trust their version of what happened? - to reduce the number of casualties. He imposes stringent standards of evidence - from reputable eyewitnesses and preferably corroborated - to rule out higher numbers. While Windschuttle applies these forensic techniques to prosecute historians, he also acts as the counsel for the defence for the colonial authorities. They were engaged in the peaceful settlement of a new colony, and encountered 'senseless violence' from its primitive inhabitants, yet they endeavoured to preserve the rule

Genocide and Holocaust Consciousness in Australia

AbstractEver since the British colonists in Australia became aware of the disappearance of the indigenous peoples in the 1830s, they have contrived to excuse themselves by pointing to the effects of disease and displacement. Yet although ‘genocide’ was not a term used in the nineteenth century, ‘extermination’ was, and many colonists called for the extermination of Aborigines when they impeded settlement by offering resistance. Consciousness of genocide was suppressed during the twentieth century – until the later 1960s, when a critical school of historians began serious investigations of frontier violence. Their efforts received official endorsement in the 1990s, but profound cultural barriers prevent the development of a general ‘genocide consciousness’. One of these is ‘Holocaust consciousness’, which is used by conservative and right‐wing figures to play down the gravity of what transpired in Australia. These two aspects of Australian public memory are central to the political humanisation of the country.

Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature Carole Ferrier (bio) Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature. By Clare Bradford. Melbourne: Melbourne P, 2001 In the Summer 2001 issue of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly, John Cohen, in reviewing Heather Scutter's 1999 Displaced Fictions, raised the issue of how many international readers consider "that Australia produces YA literature that deserves reading" (106), with the implication that books about Australian literature should be more celebratory than critical. In the current context of a persistence of public denial in some influential quarters that Aboriginal people were massacred and their children stolen, this argument can become rather ingenuous. Clare Bradford aligns her race-cognisant perspective in Reading Race with the work of Richard Dyer, Anne McClintock, Stephen Slemon, Stephen Muecke, Robert Dixon, and others, but her stance is not counterposed to demonstrating that pleasure is to be gained from these texts—even though much of the engaged teacher's pleasure is likely to come from evaluating the knowledges that can be read in them. The discourses of, and surrounding, "children's literature" have never been innocent activities, and Bradford's central focus on representations of racial difference and race relations in Australian texts provides many striking instances of this. She ranges from analyzing the dominant liberal attitude of earlier periods: "I do not see what can be done for them, except we must [End Page 103] treat them [the indigenous population] kindly and not render their life more miserable than it is. They have no religion and therefore no hope," through to more diverse perspectives in writing by whites and indigenes (69). Many of the former deployed—and some still do"mechanisms of forgetfulness" in relation to what has been called the "black history" of white settlement (29). The mid-nineteenth-century adventure story The Boy in the Bush by Richard Rowe (his pseudonym was Edward Howe—confusing somebody in cover-production who has jumbled the names), provides Bradford's telling cover illustration in which two white boys gaze secretly at the Other, and observe: "The black fellows were in a very savage mood"—as indeed the boys' white relations became when some of their tribe were similarly killed in frontier violence. There are several levels of innocence that might be deconstructed here. Bradford's book finds itself wanting to burst the boundaries of the category of the "children's literature" of her (or perhaps the publisher's?) title and, even, of the associated category of young adult fiction. Some of the texts she discusses were not published as youth fiction at all: for example, the writing of the Nyoongah (Western Australian) Glenys Ward, When You Grow Up (1996) by Connie McDonald, or the novel Lori (1989) by John Wilson, all published by Magabala Books, as well as perhaps Phillip Gwynne's Nukkin Ya (2000). In sometimes moving beyond texts directed towards a youth readership and substantially about youth (if this might be one working definition of children's literature) to include texts that she considers "easily accessible to adolescent readers," Bradford gives her argument a richer field over which to play (73). Given this, and if she is aiming at a comprehensive picture of past practices, there are some odd omissions. These include two ("adult fiction") texts that have had great currency on secondary school syllabi: Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo (1929), long lauded as the first novel to draw a (comparatively) full and credible Aboriginal woman and, more recently, the Koori (South Eastern Australian), and Ruby Langford Ginibi's Don't Take Your Love to Town (1988), an example of Aboriginal autobiographical fiction which, particularly by women, has been a prominent genre in Australian publishing since the 1960s. Bradford's book has a central interest in methodological and political issues, but there are some that might have been engaged with more depth. While able to observe an "internalization of discourses that construct Aborigines as children," Bradford doesn't grapple with the issue of how, for example, self-censorship in much Aboriginal autobiography such as Ward's might make it ostensibly readable by youth (153). Ginibi's Don't Take was innovative in refusing a respectable...

Of ‘native skulls’ and ‘noble caucasians’: phrenology in colonial South Africa

This article traces the origins of racial science in South Africa back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Metropolitan racial theory attracted a substantial following among white settlers in British colonies and the Cape was no exception. Local scientific thinking about race focussed on phrenology, a popular science of character analysis based on the configurations of the brain and skull. But phrenology had differential appeal for British colonial intellectuals according to their broader political affiliations. While humanitarian liberals were critical of new‐fangled theories of cerebral determinism that might contradict their cherished belief in the immediate transformative powers of religion and education, anti‐liberal ideologues, and especially medical men, used the new racial science to buttress their hostile attitudes towards Africans. The Xhosa Wars of the 1830s and 1840s proved a particularly fertile terrain for sowing the seeds of scientific racism. Frontier violence generated both Afric...

Shane (Novel and Film) at Century's End

Six years ago, I conducted a lecture-discussion on Jack Schaefer's novel Shane for the public library in Durham, North Carolina. The audience was made up of middle-aged and/or retired people. They liked the book, and we had a lively evening's interchange. Recalling that evening as I made plans for a course in the American novel, I decided that I would sneak Shane on the syllabus. It was 1993, the centennial year of Frederick Jackson Turner's pronouncement on the significance of the frontier in American history, and I thought it appropriate to emphasize frontier experience in literature. Shane would help me do that. It would also serve as a counterpoint to Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth-so very New York and civilized and (as several students complained later) so very long. I'd give the class a quick read, one with a plot marked by classic economy.1 There were other reasons for my semester plan. Like many Americans, I was giving much thought to the violence prevalent in our society. Emblematic of the issue was the beating of Rodney King by policemen in Los Angeles, imprinted on the nation's mind by the numerous replays of an amateur video on the television screen. Then came the first trial of the officers and the acquittal by jury (no blacks) from middle-class Sima Valley and the ensuing riots and deaths in L.A. Truck driver Reginald Denny narrowly escaped with his life; the nation watched numerous replays of the vicious assault on him. Other instances of violence were abundant in the newspapers and nightly news programs. Children frequently were victims of random gun fire. So numerous were shootings everywhere that it seemed likely that the National Rifle Association might no longer have the last word on legislation to control unregulated purchases of guns. Responding to public pressure, politicians everywhere were making crime a major theme. But, as David Zucchino has observed, the American historical memory is short: Violence has plagued our republic throughout its history. By many measures, this decade has not been the most violent in American history.2 But in the centennial Turner year, course attention to a violent history and justice was definitely in order. I wanted to do more than give the chronological sweep that plays off romance and novel, novel of manners and naturalism; I taught the traditional major figures in the course, but even those I handled somewhat differently. Instead of Moby Dick, I chose Benito Cereno and Billy Budd. For Mark Twain, I chose Pudd'n Head Wilson; for Faulkner, I took The Unvanquished, frontier as well as Southern. My endpoint was Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident. Schaefer's Shane would lead up to Clark's powerful account of frontier violence and thwarted justice. Because memorable films had been made of both Western novels, I arranged for screenings. Like many other Western novels and films, they foreground violence and gunplay. Could those classic Western texts help us better understand contemporary America? It was appropriate to include Shane for historical reasons, as well. Jack Schaefer had died on January 24, 1991, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at age 85. Tribute seemed in order-especially since so little note had been taken of the writer's death. The Western Literature Association's journal, Western American Literature, which usually has memorial tributes for winners of the Association's Distinguished Achievement Award, carried no memorial tribute to Schaefer, who had received the award in 1975. The course was populated by juniors and seniors, including many majors-bright people who certainly had some sense of multi-culturalism, cultural criticism, and challenged canons. I thought of those dimensions as I watched the Shane video with the class and in our discussions about it and the novel. The culture that produced those and the culture of my class sometimes seemed very remote from each other. I was about the age of my students when I first viewed Shane in the 1950s. …

Desert, Garden, Margin, Range: Literature on the American Frontier ed. by Eric Heyne

72 WesternAmerican Literature Richard Brautigan’s The Hawkline Monster, E. L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times,John Hawkes’ TheBeetleLeg, and Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid as gothic Westerns. In his analysis of these, Davis is strongest on Brautigan and Hawkes; Ondaatje’s work seems too complex to be adequately dealt with in afew pages, and while Davis objects to Doctorow’s “bad version”of the West, he does not explain his objections clearly enough. But this chapter, as well as the one on science fiction Westerns, would be useful to a reader unfamiliar with these forms. (One note:Jack Schaefer’s name is misspelled on page 79.) With an excellent discussion ofMel Brooks’BlazingSaddleshighlighting the final chapter, “The Reader as Cowboy: Postmodern Westerns,” Davis ends the book strongly. Overall, Playing Cowboys can be recommended for bringing together material on a variety of seemingly incongruous types of Westerns. CANDYKLASCHUS University ofHartford Desert, Garden, Margin, Range: Literature on the American Frontier. Edited by Eric Heyne. (New York: Twayne, 1992. 182 pages, $25.95/$12.95.) The ten essays of Desertexamine the variety of ways in which literature has explored the frontier. The first five selections discuss traditionally canonical works by such writers as Cooper, Hawthorne, and Sandoz, while the second set of five concentrates on marginalized texts by Chicano, Native American, Cana­ dian, and women writers. Heyne’s introduction discusses how our understand­ ing of the frontier and its role in literature has changed in the last twentyyears. A number of such collections have appeared recently, and Heyne’s has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as the others. Disparate topics, brief discussions, and an imbalance of qualitywork against all such groupings. Those problems are most evident in Part I of Desert, with the exception of Louise Barnett’s discussion of “Speech in the Wilderness” in Cooper’s Deerslayer and Reginald Dyck’s focus on “Frontier Violence in the Garden of America.” But Part II, “Exploring New Territories,” is well worth the time of any reader of American narrative. These essays combine variety and insight with sufficient length on topics not previously explored—MaryJemison’s captivity narrative, Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, and three Native American “Narratives of Con­ tact,”for example, are superb. Eric Heyne’s Introduction is intelligent and useful but perhaps promises more than the collection delivers. All in all I was pleased to have access to these essays and think other readers will have a similar response. CARL BREDAHL University ofFlorida ...

Research in Western American Literature: 1990–1991

JAN R O U S H Utah State University Research in Western AmericanLiterature: 1990-1991 An examination of the twenty-six theses and ninety-six dissertations written during the pastyearwhich have some bearing on western Ameri­ can literature reveals a dramatic increase in topics related to Native Americans. Of the five most frequent subjectswritten about, discussions of some aspect of Native American literature, history, or culture led the way with a total of thirty-four, compared to thirteen on women or gender issues, eight concerning landscape or nature, and twelve each devoted to a discussion of the works by a single author: Twain and Cather. The remaining theses and dissertations covered the usual wide spectrum of topics, some esoteric: Splittingin the Thirties:A Psychoanalytic Study ofRoth, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Slesinger, some more mundane: The Quest for Freedom in the Changing West of Edward Abbey and Larry McMurtry. At a time when preparations have begun for revising The LiteraryHistory oftheAmerican Westand discussion focuses on whether the old format with its initial outlining of general themes and subsequent treatment by regions is sufficient to withstand the revision, it is interest­ ing to note that research trends, at least as reflected in theses and dissertations, reveal little need to substantially revise the format except in this one area of Native American literature. COMPLETED MASTERS THESES American Literature Lerma, Panfila Pamela Women in Their Realities. (M.A.) Texas A&I University, 1990. (Discusses three short stories by Willa Cather: “Coming, Aphrodite!” “Old Mrs. Harris,”and “The BestYears.”) Li, Bo The Chinese as Portrayed in the Writings of Several Prominent American Authors. (M.A.) Stephen F. Austin State University, 1989. 344 Western American Literature Hall, Robert Lee Natural Innocence in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Nick Adams Stories, and The Old Man and the Sea. (M.A.) University of North Texas, 1990. Tokkonen, Tellervo Orvokki Europe in Mark Twain’s Travel Writing. (M.A.) Florida Atlantic University, 1990. American Studies Anderson, Michael Taylor The Life and Tools of the Rocky Mountain Free Trapper. (M.A.) Tarleton State University, 1990. Architecture Chappel,Jill A. Homestead Ranches of the Fort Rock Valley: Vernacular Building in the Oregon High Desert. (M.S.) University of Oregon, 1990. Canadian History Hewlett, Lorraine Louise Development, Decay, Re-development: The Politics of the Northwest Terri­ tories. (M.A.) Carleton University (Canada), 1990. CulturalAnthropology Bulette, Elizabeth Anne Crossing the Water: An Interpretation of Six Indian Women Educated in the West. (M.A.) Michigan State University, 1989. Claeys-Shahmiri,Janet Suzanne Ethnohistorical Investigation of the Battle ofVillage Creek, Tarrant County, Texas, in 1841. (M.A.) The University ofTexas at Arlington, 1989. Fast, Phyllis Ann. Naatsilanei and Ko’ehdan: A Semiotic Analysis of Two Alaska Native Myths. (M.A.) University ofAlaska Anchorage, 1990. Ford, Susan Wise Lorenzo D. Creel and the Purchase of Land for Washoe Colonies, 1917. (M.A.) University of Nevada, Reno, 1989. Research 345 Joy, Mary E. Traditional Medicine at an Indian Reserve. (M.A.) Michigan State University, 1990. Kerisit, Michele Feathers, Furs, and Fringes: A Semiological Analysis of Powwow Regalia. (M.A.) Carleton University (Canada), 1989. United States History Beaumont, Philip,Jr. One Man’sValiant Efforts to Negotiate for His Crow People: The Outcomes in Decades to Follow. (M.A.) The University ofArizona, 1991. Brown, Vanessa Lee Payre John Moore Shannon: The Legacy of a West Texas Sheepman, 1883-1928. (M.A.) The University of Texas at Arlington, 1989. Cashion, Peggy Mullarkey Women and the Mexican War, 1846-1848. (M.A.) The University of Texas at Arlington, 1990. Cashion, Robert Tyrus An Examination of Frontier Violence at Fort Griffin, Texas. (M.A.) The University of Texas at Arlington, 1989. Daniels,John David The Political Philosophy of Sam Houston. (M.A.) University of North Texas, 1990. Golda,John Frederick Nelson A. Miles’ Winter Campaign of 1876/77 and the Battle of Wolf Mountain. (M.A.) SanJose State University, 1990. McGraw, Ursula Gerta RobertJustus Kleberg: Founding Father. (M.A.) Texas A&I, 1990. (Discusses the frontier experience of Texas pio­ neers, the Texas Revolution, and the Civil War and Reconstruction.) Mellis,Jana Elaine White Canyon, Utah: A Place and Its People. (M.A.) California State University, Fullerton, 1989. Oberg, Michael Leroy National Politics, the Supreme Court...

Great Lakes Lumber Towns and Frontier Violence: A Comparative Study

Previous articleNext article No AccessArticlesGreat Lakes Lumber Towns and Frontier Violence: A Comparative StudyJeremy W. KilarJeremy W. Kilar Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 31, Number 2April 1987 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/4005000 Journal History This article was published in the Journal of Forest History (1974-1989), which was continued by Forest & Conservation History (1990-1995). © 1987 Forest History Society, Inc. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Prairie Fire: the 1885 Rebellion by Bob Beal and Rod Macleod, and: The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach by Charles and Cynthia Hou

Reviews 89 People of the Moonshell. By Nancy M. Peterson. (Frederick, Colorado: Renaissance House, 1984. 166 pages, $14.95.) The Moonshell is an early Indian name for the river we know as the Platte. It was through the valley of the Platte and along its two branches that most of the explorers, trappers, gold-seekers and settlers moved to the Rocky Mountains and beyond during much of the nineteenth century. And many miles of the Overland Trail, the Pony Express and the first transcontinental railroad followed this wide, sluggish river across the Great Plains. The present book adds nothing to what we already know of western history and it does not pretend to. It is more a contribution to western litera­ ture, in that it concentrates on character more than events. What it gives us is a beautifully written account of the adventures and hardships of some of the more colorful people who moved or settled along the Platte. Some of these people are as well known as Francis Parkman and Robert Louis Stevenson; others as obscure as the couple homesteading in Nebraska in 1880. A number of them are women;some are Indians. What theyhave in common iscourage and endurance of a sort rarely seen in America today. The forty chapters encompass 160years—from the firstview of the Platte by Spanish explorers in 1720 until the end of the pioneer period in 1880. Perhaps the most interesting of the people of the Moonshell is the Scottish gentlewoman Isabella Bird, who reached the sources of the river in the high Rockies in 1873, travelling by horseback and often alone. Each chapter is illustrated by one or more appropriate sketches by Asa Battles, which add much to the book’s flavor. A very ample bibliography includes journals and memoirs of the subjects aswell asearly newspaperitems. ROBERT D. HARPER Estes Park, Colorado Prairie Fire: the 1885 Rebellion. ByBob Beal and Rod Macleod. (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1985. 384 pages.) The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach. ByCharles and Cynthia Hou. (Vancouver: Tantalus Research, 1984. 162 pages.) It is the frequent boast of Canadians that the exploration and settlement of the western plains in their country constitute a tranquil and ordered chronicle, in contrast to the violent saga of the American frontier past. There is, however, at least one prominent exception to this generalization: the Northwest or “Riel” Rebellion of 1885, when the French-speaking half-breeds, or “Metis,” and the Cree and Blood Indians of Saskatchewan took up arms against the Canadian government. The rebellion was small, localized, and relatively brief by comparison to the Indian wars of the United States, yet it has come to be seen as one of the most important events in Canadian history. The questions of federal-provincial relations and aboriginal rights which pro­ 90 Western American Literature voked the outbreak have continued to vex Canadian social and political life to the present day. In the last ten or fifteen years, a number of works of history and fiction have been inspired by the rebellion, many of them focusing on the charismatic Metis leader, Louis Riel. Two new books, obviously released by their Canadian authors and publishers to mark the rebellion’scen­ tennial in 1985, attempt to review and analyze the people, events, and conse­ quences of the nation’s most dramatic example of western frontier violence. Thanks largely to the improvisations of Cecil B. DeMille in his 1940 Hollywood epic North-West Mounted Police, a generation of North American school children were led to believe that the 1885 uprising was caused by halfbreed outlaws, and suppressed by a small but heroic contingent of Mounties. Historians have been trying for years to set the record straight, and Charles and Cynthia Hou’s The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach isthe latest effort to clarify the subject for young readers. This soft-cover, slick-paper handbook might even make suitable reading for adults who are completely unfamiliar with the subject, or who dimly remember DeMille’s movie. Pro­ fusely illustrated with maps, drawings, and rare archival photographs, it is a comprehensive record, but its biographical structure—each chapter centers on one of the principal rebels, military leaders, and politicians involved—■ makes for...

Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface 1. The Esmeralda Excitement 2. No Goodee Cow Man 3. Politics, the Civil War, and the Boundary 4. Robbery, Rowdyism, and Combat 5. The Daly Gang 6. The Last of the Old-Time Mining Camps 7. Violence and the Minorities 8. Women, Juveniles, and Violence 9. In Illegal Pursuit of Wealth 10. Rough and Rowdy 11. The Badmen of Bodie 12. Vigilantism 13. The Heritage of the Trans-Sierra Frontier Appendix: Scholarly Assessments of Frontier Violence Biblography Index

Frontier violence: Ethnohistory and aboriginal resistance in California and New South Wales, 1770–1840∗

Frontier violence: Ethnohistory and aboriginal resistance in California and New South Wales, 1770–1840∗

Frontier Violence and the American Mind

Richard Slotkin. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier 1600-1860. Middle- town, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. 670 pp. Michael Paul Rogin. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and The Subjugation of the American Indian. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. 373 pp. W. Eugene Hollon. Frontier Violence: Another Look. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. 279 pp. During the relatively placid decade of the 1950's historians tended to stress the underlying unity and cohesiveness of American history. Then a period of racial strife, campus turmoil, political assassination, and Viet Nam sparked research into new themes. Those which received attention included violence in America, the white man's treatment of the Indian, and a new look at the importance of the frontier. All three books under review share these concerns. Slotkin and Rogin follow similar intellectual paths while Hollon sets a divergent course.

Review: Frontier Violence: Another Look, by W. Eugene Hollon

Review: <i>Frontier Violence: Another Look</i>, by W. Eugene Hollon

The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West

The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West

Frontier Violence: Another Look

Book Review| January 01 1975 Frontier Violence: Another Look Frontier Violence: Another Look, W. Eugene Hollon. Barton C. Olsen Barton C. Olsen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utah Historical Quarterly (1975) 43 (1): 91–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/45059457 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barton C. Olsen; Frontier Violence: Another Look. Utah Historical Quarterly 1 January 1975; 43 (1): 91–92. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/45059457 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressUtah Historical Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Copyright 1975 Utah State Historical Society1975 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.