THE BEAR RIVER MASSACRE AND THE MAKING OF HISTORY

Rating:
Summary: A Must-read for Native and US History
Review: Fleisher's strategy is threefold: first, a sweeping survey and synthesis of histories and historical materials. This is less the work of an historian than of an accomplished prose stylist and original social thinker. (Historian Brigham D. Madsen's "The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre" (U of Utah P, 1985) provides the cornerstone for Fleisher's efforts here.) Readers will leave this first narration with a firm grasp of those historical contingencies that have complicated scholarly and public reception of the Bear River massacre and rape. In particular, Fleisher untangles the complex interweaving of Mormon and Shoshone (and Civil War) histories to illustrate how the blur of incontestable facts and competing fictions becomes crucial to the relatively muted reception (until now) of this seminal event. Next, in a startling move, Fleisher recommences her narrative to explore the circumstances that led her to embark on this intellectual journey. This second movement entails both an autobiographical account of the author's academic trappings -- and liabilities attending thereto -- as well as a journalistic archive of efforts underway to commemorate Bear River as a National Historic Site. In a provocative third movement, Fleisher then musters the resolve to scrutinize her own historical authority, asking why she feels compelled to insert herself into Shoshone and Mormon histories, being neither Shoshone nor Mormon. This leads to an astute reflection on the terms of her "busybody" historiography, including a review, at once graceful and witty, both of more popular 19th- and 20th-century representations and of the authorizing role of the historian as a teller of historical tales.

Ultimately this is a book of subjects, then, and of subjects often subjected to neglect. Despite the fact that the book is expertly researched -- clearly the product of years of work -- and includes an excellent bibliography and index, Fleisher's controversial decision not to employ footnotes (save for a sly, solitary footnote explaining her rationale!) will doubtless raise the ire of more fastidious scholars, while pleasing those of us who would sacrifice such notation for an enhanced measure of readability. Even more, the absence of footnotes -- and this is Fleisher's carefully measured ethical point -- forces readers to confront rather directly the question of accuracy, and whether historians' customary prerogative, their tacit claim to objectivity, does not in fact smooth out those rough edges of reality that a more bracingly essayistic (and autobiographical) approach can productively foreground. But as Fleisher's effort is one of recuperation, if not redemption -- public redemption, or the redemption of public consciousness -- her challenge to accuracy and authenticity cedes, at least in theory, the very authority she must wield in order to make a convincing argument. At any rate, if Fleisher's book occasions a debate about such matters, this will be owing less to any particularly novel textual maneuver or documentation controversy than to the sheer conviction bodied forth throughout, which conviction brings with it an insistence on critical reflexivity of the sort one finds in the writings of Robert Coles.

If this is a flawed book, it is no less for that a remarkable book, a necessary book, and a book that goes a long way toward demonstrating why history is never a done deal, and how the interpretive endeavor can be, at its postmodern best, the stuff of social reckoning.

Rating:
Summary: Should Be Required Reading
Review: Sometimes a little distance gives an author the ability to see a subject clearly-the historical distance, for example, necessary to see how past events predict contemporary consequences, how war is always brutal and dirties both its victims and victors no matter how many yellow ribbons we hang around it-and I couldn't help but be reminded of this while reading Fleisher's analysis of the Bear River rape and massacre at the same time that stories of American soldiers "abuse" of Iraqi prisoners were coming to light.

At its heart, this book is about the making of history itself: that is, how an event generates competing explanations that clash, and are either accepted as truth, alter each other, or fall out of memory. It is about how "truth" is made. Specifically, Fleisher focuses on the massacre of one Shoshoni village by U.S. troops, or rather she focuses on the competing agendas feuding over how this one event should be remembered today. Though there is some disagreement on some details (such as the body count), there isn't much disagreement on the essential fact that on that day U.S. soldiers murdered a village of Shoshoni Native Americans, committing rapes and other atrocities in the course of wiping out survivors. Like others historians, Fleisher assembles all the historical evidence: details, for example, like the fact that the attack was planned to take place at dawn when the village would be asleep and people could be killed in their tents, during the winter when the Shoshoni would all be gathered together, while the snow was deep so women and children couldn't run away. Unlike most historians, she questions how historians themselves remember this event, examining their methods, their own political agendas, wondering for example, why some cast the massacre as a military victory instead of an act of genocide.

But what makes this book remarkable, and distinguishes it from the conservative historians who have written about the event before her, is that she portrays the event not as some dusty artifact, but as an ongoing story that involves us all. For we all are involved: how we remember this story, or not, determines "what happened" that day and will contribute to what can happen tomorrow. Like an investigative journalist she interviews living descendants of the original massacre, both Native Americans and the white ranchers who still live on the land. Most remarkably she includes herself as part of the problem/solution with this story (sort of as the voice of the common man) and shows how all of us, ordinary American citizens, have a stake in how the event is remembered. Should the park service erect a memorial commemorating the brave actions of our men in uniform in a military victory against Indian warriors? Should the rapes that were committed be erased? Should no marker be erected? Or should we remind ourselves that war is brutal? That even our side commits atrocities, especially when expediency is at stake? That is, she asks if by white-washing history we make it easy for history to repeat itself, e.g. go to war lightly, convinced we will be remembered as virtuous no matter what we do?

I had no particular interest in Native American history before reading this book. But afterwards I realized that that was equivalent to saying I had no particular interest in my own history as an American, and by implication no particular interest in why my country behaves as it does today. The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History should be required reading for everyone, but especially for anyone who thinks they are patriotic. An important book.