TRAGIC ENCOUNTERS
THE TRAGIC SAGA OF NATIVE AMERICANS AND EUROPEAN SETTLERS’ WESTWARD EXPANSION IS TOLD WITH DRAMA AND AUTHORITY
Author: Page Smith Publisher: Amberley Publishing Price: £20 Released: Out now
Page Smith needs no introduction to the majority of readers of American history. The author’s monumental eight-volume account of the United States, from the earliest days to the 20th century, is a ground-breaking work composed of a continuous narrative loosely organised around the themes present in each age or period. Smith was the first modern historian to produce a full-scale treatise of America, which he titled a “people’s history”. The objective was to attach Americans to what he called “their antecedents, their roots”.
Smith believed that academic history remained silent about the spiritual and moral dimension of events, and this belief transcended into his story of Native Americans, which he likewise defined as a “people’s history”. The manuscript of Tragic Encounters was only discovered after Smith’s death in 1995, some three decades after the widespread ‘rediscovery’ of Native American cultures that took place in the 1960s.
The reasons for the sudden prominence of Native Americans, Smith claimed, was related to a reawakened environmental ethic and the need to love and preserve the land. He wrote, “Contributing to the elevation of the Indian is, doubtless, a kind of modern primitivism, a weariness with a world of technological wonders, a desire to return to a womb of innocence, to recapture the instinctual life of the natural man and woman.”
Smith noted that the term ‘Native American’ is grounded in the historical fact that their presence on American soil long predates the arrival of the first European colonists. In the same breath, he emphasises the fact that, according to opinion polls, most Native Americans preferred the term ‘Indian’.
The author pointed out that far from leading a bucolic existence, many tribes were in conflict with one another when Europeans set foot on the continent. With few exceptions, Native American cultures were based upon a perpetual state of war – even their newborn were dipped into cold water in the belief that this would set them on the path to becoming hardened warriors.
The European colonists committed a fateful, though almost inevitable, blunder by forging links with the tribes that inhabited their settlements: to befriend one tribe was to make inveterate enemies of its enemies. On the other hand, this could also work in the settlers’ favour. Tribal hatreds made common action against the whites almost impossible, except in certain instances of alliances, like the powerful Sioux and the Cheyenne. It was common for Native Americans to join with settlers in hunting a common enemy.
It was not long before the settlers found themselves embroiled in pitched battles with the tribes, who rightly interpreted the Europeans’ westward expansion as a blatant invasion. The most important theatre of military operations was in the area today known as the Midwest: battles raged continuously with the Shawnees and Cherokees.
More than three centuries of conflict, starting with the battles between the Powhatan Confederacy and the English colonists in the early 17th century, came to an end in 1924 with the Apache Wars west of the Mississippi. For Smith, this long period of warfare remains the most tragic saga in American history, with the exception of slavery. It is a tale told with authority and drama.
“TRIBAL HATREDS MADE COMMON ACTION AGAINST THE WHITES ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE, EXCEPT IN CERTAIN INSTANCES OF ALLIANCES, LIKE THE POWERFUL SIOUX AND THE CHEYENNE”