Absaraka: Home of the Crows Margaret Carrington This book was written by Margaret Carrington (1831-1870), the wife of the Commanding Officer Colonel Henry B. Carrington, at Fort Philip Kearny. This novel was written from her own journal about her time spent traveling to the outpost up to her return to Fort Laramie. The book reads initially as a guide to prospective travelers on the Virginia City road, and finishes in the same fashion. In between are her first hand accounts of the troubles experienced at Fort Kearny between eighteen sixty-six and eighteen sixty-seven. The years are significant because miners were responding to the news that gold had been discovered in Montana. The resulting influx of prospectors forced the United States government to deal with the Sioux Indians in order to protect its citizens along the fore mentioned trail. Mrs. Carrington's wrote this to be a pocket travel guide for travelers on the Virginia Rode. She starts the story at Fort Laramie describing the surrounding territory. It is worth mentioning that her initial descriptions take into account that the land belongs to the Crows. She is particularly fond of them and announces proudly in the first chapter that Absaraka is "the Home of the Crows." The initial descriptive nature of the book takes away from some of the more valuable information that could be discussed. The treaty between the tribes residing along the road would have been valuable information to the reader. This lack of detailed information reflects her position as a woman of the time period, however, detracts from her position as an Officer's wife. Mrs. Carrington leads the reader through the plains skirting the Rocky Mountains as she describes the land. Most notably she re... ... middle of paper ... ...e did not delve deeply into the facts, she did see to it that the military investigation of the massacre be included in an appendix. While the book could have stood on its own, the appendix helps the reader understand the events leading to the massacre. We tend to take for granted the history of the west. Most view the west with romanticism. This could be the furthest thing from the truth. The author's experience has helped me appreciate the conditions in the west. Carrington's extremely useful portrait of Colonel Fetterman and the events has added to our understanding nineteenth century conditions in the west. Her work is historically valuable. Moreover, her care to place the Fort Kearny experience in a domestic context has enriched the story. Bibliography Carrington, Margaret. Absaraka: Home of the Crow University of Nebraska Press, 1989 Lincoln and London
Panzeri, Peter. 1995. Little Big Horn 1876: Custer's Last Stand. 8th Ed. New York, NY: Osprey Publishing.
Withers, Alexander Scott., Reuben Gold Thwaites, and Lyman Copeland Draper. Chronicles of Border Warfare: Or, a History of the Settlement by the Whites, of Northwestern Virginia, and of the Indian Wars and Massacres in That Section of the State, with Reflections, Anecodotes, &c. Parsons, WV: McClain Print., 1961. Print.
Shurbutt, Sylvia Bailey. “Burning Bright: The Language and Storytelling of Appalachia and the Poetry and Prose of Ron Rash.” Shepard University. 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
The book starts out with a chapter called “Over the Mountains”, which in my opinion for this chapter the author wanted the reader to understand what it was like to live on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. This is where he brings out one of the main characters in this book, which is Henry Brackenridge. Mr. Brackenridge is a cultivated man in Pittsburgh. He was wealthy and he was there to ratify the Constitution. He was a Realist. He was a college friend of James Madison at College of New Jersey. He was also in George Washington’s post as a chaplain for the Revolutionary War. He believed that Indians needed to be assimilated into the American culture. “… ever to be converted into civilized ways, their legal rights were to be protected” (Hogeland 19). He will become one of the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion.
Tapper, J. (2012). The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor. New York: Little, Brown. Retrieved November 05, 2010, from books.google.co.ke/books?isbn=0316215856
The small community of Hallowell, Maine was no different than any other community in any part of the new nation – the goals were the same – to survive and prosper. Life in the frontier was hard, and the settlement near the Kennebec Valley was no different than what the pioneers in the west faced. We hear many stories about the forefathers of our country and the roles they played in the early days but we don’t hear much about the accomplishments of the women behind those men and how they contributed to the success of the communities they settled in. Thanks to Martha Ballard and the diary that she kept for 27 years from 1785-1812, we get a glimpse into...
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
The Taming of the West: Age of the Gunfighter: Men and Weapons of the Frontier 1840-1900.
There has been much written about Isabella Lucy Bird being a unique individual, bold traveler, talented descriptive writer, and great example to women. These are all great ways to describe the well known traveler, however, there have been few efforts to proclaim her as the luminary of Christian faith that she is. In A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains Bird paints an awe inspiring picture of the harsh life and beautiful landscape of the Rocky Mountains in the early 19th century. Throughout her book, Bird gives grand descriptions of the breathtaking natural scenes she experiences along her travels in Lake Tahoe, Estes Park, Colorado City, Denver, Boulder and other areas within the great mountain range. Bird also recounts the hard way of life
Our first introduction to these competing sets of values begins when we meet Sylvia. She is a young girl from a crowded manufacturing town who has recently come to stay with her grandmother on a farm. We see Sylvia's move from the industrial world to a rural one as a beneficial change for the girl, especially from the passage, "Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at the all before she came to live at the farm"(133). The new values that are central to Sylvia's feelings of life are her opportunities to plays games with the cow. Most visibly, Sylvia becomes so alive in the rural world that she begins to think compassionately about her neighbor's geraniums (133). We begin to see that Sylvia values are strikingly different from the industrial and materialistic notions of controlling nature. Additionally, Sylvia is alive in nature because she learns to respect the natural forces of this l...
To understand Jackson’s book and why it was written, however, one must first fully comprehend the context of the time period it was published in and understand what was being done to and about Native Americans in the 19th century. From the Native American point of view, the frontier, which settlers viewed as an economic opportunity, was nothin...
Ward, Geoffrey C., Ken Burns, and Ric Burns. The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York: Knopf, 1990.
George Browm Tindall, David Emory Shi. American History: 5th Brief edition, W. W. Norton & Company; November 1999
Foner, Eric and John A. Garraty. The Reader’s Companion to American History. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991).
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...