Description
Book SynopsisMemory Wars is an ethnographic study that explores how commemorative sites and patriotic fanfare marking the mission of General John Sullivan into Iroquois territory during the Revolutionary War continue to shape historical understandings today.
Trade Review"Beginning with the question of how settlers dealt with the knowledge that their presence on particular lands resulted from others' dispossession, Smith examines an array of diverse, often overlooked primary sources and places them into conversation with theoretical studies on memory work and historical consciousness. The result is a much-needed intervention in early American studies."—J. W. Parmenter,
Choice“A. Lynn Smith demonstrates the power of combining history and ethnography in the study of historical consciousness. At once a history of commemoration and an ethnography of remembrance, the book illuminates long, tangled histories of both settler and Native understandings of events at the heart of the American origin story.”—Geoffrey M. White, author of
Memorializing Pearl Harbor: Unfinished Histories and the Work of Remembrance“Important and timely.
Memory Wars is relevant to public historians, museum professionals, and others who study, create, and dismantle narratives consumed by the public at interpretive sites. It makes a contribution to early American history by challenging the interpretations of the Sullivan Expedition and its commemoration and the erasure of intra-settler conflicts. Finally, the research makes a significant contribution to Native American history.”—Dawn G. Marsh, author of
A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman“An excellent case study of historical memory formation that is relevant to contemporary debates over commemorations and the legacy of settler colonialism grounded in especially fascinating fieldwork. This is a very engaging read.”—Andrew Newman, author of
On Records: Delaware Indians, Colonists, and the Media of History and MemoryTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Terminology
Introduction: The Stories We Tell
Part I: Origins: Settler Colonial Public Memory
Pennsylvania: In the Shadow of Wyoming
1. Yankee Insurgency and the Battle of Wyoming
2. Patriotic Women Celebrate Sullivan
3. Pennsylvania’s 1929 Sullivan Series
New York: Replacement through Just Warfare
4. Ambivalent Festivities and the Newtown Centennial of 1879
5. Inventing “Sullivan-Clinton” for New York
6. Celebrating Sullivan in Indian Country
7. The 1929 “Pageant of Decision”
8. A Tale of Two States
Part 2: Reverberations: The Revolutionary Past in Contemporary America
9. Dueling Celebrations
10. Pennsylvania
11. New York
12. Changing the Narrative
Part 3: Interventions: Indigenous Histories of Settler Colonialism
13. Haudenosaunee Historical Consciousness
Epilogue
Bibliography
Notes
Index
