Category: Bear River Massacre

Indians and the Civil War


From the Pequot War forward, Alvin Josephy wrote in a 1979 article in The Indian Historian, 

Whites gave the Native Americans three options. The first was that they could stop being Indians and turn themselves into Whites. They would have their hair cut, wear White men’s clothes, become Christians, live in White men’s houses, become farmers or mechanics, and adopt the White men’s language, customs, ways of living, values, society, and culture. In other words, they would become assimilated and disappear as Indians. If they refused, they would have to be pushed away, westward to a safe distance, where they would have no contact with White society. They would continue as “wild” Indians, unconquered, but neither a physical or cultural threat to the Whites. If they refused to move or become assimilated, they had a third option: extermination.

For most of American history, Alvin says in several places, assimilation has been
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On the way to the academy

Back in April, I got notice that the theme for the Pacific Northwest History Association’s fall meeting in Tacoma, Washington was to be “The Civil War and Civil Rights.” As it happened, I was reading Alvin J’s The Civil War in the American West at the time, and remembered a passage in the Introduction claiming that the Civil War probably saw the decimation of more Indian tribes and the takeover of more Indian lands than any comparable period in American history. The conference’s prospectus didn’t mention Indians, so I wrote them a proposal saying I wanted to talk about Alvin, the War, and Invisible Indians.

And they accepted! All was well. It was on my calendar—six months and a summer-full of activities away. As things got closer, I assumed I would reread the Civil War book and miscellaneous other Josephy and Civil War material and prepare an outline, head to Tacoma next week, and talk for 25 minutes and leave
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