Western American history is dominated by violence toward Native Americans, most notably the Bear River Massacre of the Shoshone Indians of 1863, the Sand Creek Massacre of the Cheyennes and Arapahos in 1864, and the Wounded Knee Massacre of the Lakotas in 1890. However, one massacre that has not attracted much attention until recently is the 1871 Camp Grant massacre in the Arizona borderlands. Unlike the other incidents, there were more sides than whites and Indians. On April 30, 1871, a force of Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, and Tohono O’odham Indians attacked a camp of Apache Indians near Tucson, killing scores of women and children. All of the parties involved had a history of conflict with the Apaches. Jacoby (Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation) deftly presents each side’s historical point of view of the events, going back, in the case of the Tohono O’odham, to the first Indian encounters with the Spanish in the late seventeenth century. The area where the Camp Grant massacre occurred, part of the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, remained a tenuous borderland governed by three separate entities (Spanish, Mexican, American). After the purchase the United States initiated conflicts with the Apaches (who had long fought the Tohono O’odham and the Spanish) during the Civil War. Following the war, the federal government launched its “Peace Policy” towards Indians, which incensed many white Arizona settlers, leading to the 1871 massacre. Jacoby provides many insights into each side’s story. For example, the Apache repeatedly stole free-ranging Spanish livestock (a source of conflict), which the Indians did not view as private property and instead saw as wild game. Although Americans believed the Apache to be one unit (as the Indians called themselves “The People,” or Nnee), they were actually a group of distinct communities possessing no formal organization. What is interesting is the interpretations of the events by each side. Many 19th-century white Arizonans refused to call the 1871 events a “massacre” and defended the killings as necessary to usher in a new era of “civilization.” The Mexican Americans and Tohono O'odham Indians had their own separate narratives as well. Shadows at Dawn is a very well written book with a clear message that there are many voices in history with different stories needing to be heard. The same applies with the peoples of the Southwest and the Camp Grant massacre. Jacoby, Karl, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.
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CategoriesAuthorTom Schmidt lives in Prescott Valley, AZ. Archives
October 2018
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October 2018
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