To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band, Indian Guerrillas of Reconstruction (Iroquois and Their Neighbors)

Rating:
Summary: The only professional work on Lumbee history
Review: Evans is the only author ever to conduct historical research on the ancestors of the present-day Lumbee tribe at a professional level of ability and accomplishment. Other authors writing on the Lumbees have been either anthropologists (such as Sider and Blu) or else amateurs in either status and/or ability. Evans researched a plethora of primary sources, and his historical fact-finding will probably never be surpassed. Evans has written a competent and well-sourced narrative.

But there are serious flaws. By beginning the book with the murder of the Lowry relatives, Evans contextualizes the gang's story as a revenge tale. The book's organization thus obscures the fact that the Lowrys had already committed two murders themselves, prior to their enemies' murder of their father. Obviously there is more going on than a simple revenge motive. Evans fails to make clear that the Lowry gang episode is really about Radical political terrorism in opposition to the Conservative political terrorism of the KKK. While Evans does report elements of the Lowrys' political motivations (although he missed a number of sources that would have expanded this aspect), he emphasizes the revenge motivation. Ultimately, Evans has succumbed to and is reproducing stereotypes of "Indian" violence. Evans never acknowledges that there is little to no evidence that the Lowrys saw themselves as Indian warriors. In fact, the Lowry gang was a multiracial political coalition--not an outbreak of ethnic conflict.

Those caveats aside, this is the most professional work ever done on Lumbee history, and certainly the best researched. All the pieces of the story are here, and it is a fascinating story indeed.