[R-G] Re discussion of Sand Creek / Kass Fleisher's fine book on Bear River Massacre

[Hunter Gray]

I am posting this -- from a discussion on Bear Without Borders -- on about a
dozen other lists which today carried my initial post on the Sand Creek
Massacre .  H

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:

Kassie's just sent solid post on the Bear River Massacre did not include
mention of her own very fine and recent work on that signal atrocity.  This
is an excerpt from an earlier post of mine, "From an Idaho Window," April
2004.  She has done, as always, an excellent job. Anyone genuinely
interested in "sanctioned genocide" will find invaluable The Bear River
Massacre and the Making of History.  H

--------------------------------

The week hasn't gone too badly in some respects.  The snow is good news for
droughty Idaho.  And Monday saw the most welcome arrival of Kass Fleisher's
very fine and just out book:  The Bear River Massacre and the Making of
History [Albany:  State University of New York Press, 2004.]  Kass is a
former [excellent] student of mine and now a long-time and very productive
English prof in her own right.  This important book deals with the massacre
of almost 300 Northwestern Shoshoni Indians at the hands of essentially
Union troops on January 29  1863 on the southeastern Idaho border region
adjoining Utah.  She has done a splendid job of not only resurrecting this
atrocity -- which ranks on the sanguinary scale with Sand Creek [eastern
Colorado, 1864] and Wounded Knee [South Dakota, 1890] -- but also in
pursuing the many significant, but until now often shadowy ramifications and
implications of the terrible affair.

And it's extremely well written.

I was privileged indeed to be one of a handful of readers selected by SUNY
Press at the beginning of the process and a statement from my glowing report
is one of four carried on the back cover:

"The most intriguing dimension is the thrust, from a fascinating variety of
viewpoints, to achieve redemption -- a great and signal effort encompassing
and, however awkwardly, transcending race and ethnicity, religion and
non-religion, tribal generations and tribal factions and, very basically,
the skeletal hand of History."

While I was rereading this fine work, the almost three pound can of Chase &
Sanborn arrived yesterday via Fed Express.  It's a truly handsome can --
bright blue background, clean white lettering, daguerrotypes of Messrs.
Chase and Sanborn -- and a historical note that explains this great coffee
started in 1862 at Boston and was the first to spread to both East and West
coasts.

"That's one helluva attractive can," said I to admiring family members.
"Almost makes one want to hurry up and get cremated."

But, of course, I didn't really mean THAT.


HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR]   Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
 Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
 www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
 and Ohkwari'

Check out Surprise Tribute:
http://www.hunterbear.org/special_tribute_page_for_hunter.htm

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]