Karl Jacoby’s account of the 1871 Camp Grant massacre fits within the broad sweep of the “New Western history” a movement that arose in the 1980s, headed by scholars such as William Cronon, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and Richard White. In their reexaminations of Western history the West became a darker place, where and the violence of conquest and the ignominious glory that accompanied it defined the expanding American nation. Jacoby’s history is a narrative, though he has task in retelling the story of the massacre through the eyes of its perpetrators and victims. He aims to correct the distortions of the event that have built up over the intervening decades and to hold power up to scrutiny.
Early in the morning on April 30, 1871, in Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon, 60 miles northeast of Tucson, a large force attacked an Apache encampment. In 30 minutes the attackers shot, clubbed, or captured 29 people and killed 144. Nearly all the victims were sleeping women and children. The killers were Mexicans and Americans from Tucson, aligned with Indians called the O’odham, long standing enemies of the Apache, or Nnee. Jacoby makes a point to use indigenous names to affirm that categories such a names tend to shift in history, just as the attack at Aravaipa Canyon quickly became the Camp Grant Massacre, named for the nearby military fort. Jacoby states that the slaughter was not the largest in the West during the period of American expansion and Indian marginalization, but he notes that the massacre came just as President Ulysses S. Grant was heavily promoting peace with Indian tribes, offering rations and farmland in exchange for cooperation and the cessation of hostilities. Just as Miles seeks to revise the image of Cherokee slaveholders, Jacoby looks to reexamine Western Apaches, a people he sees as too often cast as villains, thieves, and raiders. For Jacoby the attack in 1871 was an act of classical violence: a moment of clear madness, followed by a tangled, even bungled, attempt to explain. To tell the story of the massacre effectively, Jacoby avoids a single narrative. Instead, he presents each group (O'odham, Spanish, Anglo, and Western Apache) as an individual entity and follows the arrival of each in the southwest borderlands. Each group tells their version of the massacre over the same repeated timeline. Jacoby begins with “Violence,” as each group describes their view of the Apache in turn. …show more content…
The O’odham saw Apaches as enemies, but they also disliked Mexicans and Americans. The Mexicans, or Vecinos (neighbors) as Jacoby calls them, were mixed Spanish-Indian blood. Unable to end Apache raids, they countered them, often capturing children and selling them into slavery. The Americans (many from a defeated Confederacy) saw Indians targets for extermination. Meanwhile, the United States army, fresh off four years of Civil War promised protection on reservations but instant genocide if the Apaches strayed.
Behind this cruelty, Jacoby suggests, is the conviction that Indians only understand violence and, as indigenous people, are headed for extinction anyway. Much like Miles, Jacoby attempts to understand the motivation for violence. The American view changed when Eastern liberals called for reform of Indian policy. Settlements like Camp Grant became safe havens for the Apache, though they still posed a threat to many in the region. Jacoby comes last to the
Early in the morning on April 30, 1871, in Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon, 60 miles northeast of Tucson, a large force attacked an Apache encampment. In 30 minutes the attackers shot, clubbed, or captured 29 people and killed 144. Nearly all the victims were sleeping women and children. The killers were Mexicans and Americans from Tucson, aligned with Indians called the O’odham, long standing enemies of the Apache, or Nnee. Jacoby makes a point to use indigenous names to affirm that categories such a names tend to shift in history, just as the attack at Aravaipa Canyon quickly became the Camp Grant Massacre, named for the nearby military fort. Jacoby states that the slaughter was not the largest in the West during the period of American expansion and Indian marginalization, but he notes that the massacre came just as President Ulysses S. Grant was heavily promoting peace with Indian tribes, offering rations and farmland in exchange for cooperation and the cessation of hostilities. Just as Miles seeks to revise the image of Cherokee slaveholders, Jacoby looks to reexamine Western Apaches, a people he sees as too often cast as villains, thieves, and raiders. For Jacoby the attack in 1871 was an act of classical violence: a moment of clear madness, followed by a tangled, even bungled, attempt to explain. To tell the story of the massacre effectively, Jacoby avoids a single narrative. Instead, he presents each group (O'odham, Spanish, Anglo, and Western Apache) as an individual entity and follows the arrival of each in the southwest borderlands. Each group tells their version of the massacre over the same repeated timeline. Jacoby begins with “Violence,” as each group describes their view of the Apache in turn. …show more content…
The O’odham saw Apaches as enemies, but they also disliked Mexicans and Americans. The Mexicans, or Vecinos (neighbors) as Jacoby calls them, were mixed Spanish-Indian blood. Unable to end Apache raids, they countered them, often capturing children and selling them into slavery. The Americans (many from a defeated Confederacy) saw Indians targets for extermination. Meanwhile, the United States army, fresh off four years of Civil War promised protection on reservations but instant genocide if the Apaches strayed.
Behind this cruelty, Jacoby suggests, is the conviction that Indians only understand violence and, as indigenous people, are headed for extinction anyway. Much like Miles, Jacoby attempts to understand the motivation for violence. The American view changed when Eastern liberals called for reform of Indian policy. Settlements like Camp Grant became safe havens for the Apache, though they still posed a threat to many in the region. Jacoby comes last to the