Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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This study concentrates on the nineteenth century history of the Indians of the Greater American Southwest. The year “1863” receives special note, but only as a “hook” or focal point that allows the reader and scholar to experience and interpret the events that took place before and after that date. The events of that year are not necessarily a precursor to those that follow, or the consequence of what went before. The year “1863” is simply one window into the past where one can see several locales and tribal groups and events associated with those locales. As for the geographical area, it is called the Greater Southwest, a region that extends beyond the current boundaries of Arizona and New Mexico to include the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, and reaches as far as the northern boundaries of California, Nevada, and Utah (as well as the Great Basin area of southern Idaho). These two ideas will be further developed in the introduction.

With the exception of the Prologue, the subject matter is organized around several case studies in which the narrative is developed from early historical times through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following the Prologue, the first chapter focuses on the topic of Indian slavery and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The subject of Indian slavery is not simply a digression, but part of the argument that the so-called “Great Emancipator” paid no heed to the problem of “de facto” Indian slavery and as such one more reminder of his lack of empathy for the Indian people. This chapter introduces the reader to the general environment of the Civil War era in which Lincoln’s lack of an Indian policy led to the precedents of relocating Indian people from Minnesota to the Missouri country, and depended upon the military to enforce the removal plans. Preoccupied with restoring the Union, Lincoln did little to control the western volunteers’ anti-Indian zeal. His main concern was to create treaties so that land could be acquired by and for the advancing white frontier. After the Minnesota relocation the Numa or Paiutes were removed from the Owens Valley, the Navajo from Arizona, and the Mescalero relocated to Bosque Redondo. The massacres at Bear River and Sand Creek were the unintended results of a policy designed to wrestle land and resources from the Indian people.