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Author: Kelly J. Dixon
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 080618552X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
The Donner Party is almost inextricably linked with cannibalism. In truth, we know remarkably little about what actually happened to the starving travelers stranded in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–47. Combining the approaches of history, ethnohistory, archaeology, bioarchaeology, and social anthropology, this innovative look at the Donner Party’s experience at the Alder Creek Camp offers insights into many long-unsolved mysteries. Centered on archaeological investigations in the summers of 2003 and 2004 near Truckee, California, the book includes detailed analyses of artifacts and bones that suggest what life was like in this survival camp. Microscopic investigations of tiny bone fragments reveal butchery scars and microstructure that illuminate what the Donner families may have eaten before the final days of desperation, how they prepared what served as food, and whether they actually butchered and ate their deceased companions. The contributors reassess old data with new analytic techniques and, by examining both physical evidence and oral testimony from observers and survivors, add new dimensions to the historical narrative. The authors’ integration of a variety of approaches—including narratives of the Washoe Indians who observed the Donner Party—destroys some myths, deconstructs much of the folklore about the stranded party, and demonstrates that novel approaches can shed new light on events we thought we understood.
Author: Kelly J. Dixon
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 080618552X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Donner Party is almost inextricably linked with cannibalism. In truth, we know remarkably little about what actually happened to the starving travelers stranded in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–47. Combining the approaches of history, ethnohistory, archaeology, bioarchaeology, and social anthropology, this innovative look at the Donner Party’s experience at the Alder Creek Camp offers insights into many long-unsolved mysteries. Centered on archaeological investigations in the summers of 2003 and 2004 near Truckee, California, the book includes detailed analyses of artifacts and bones that suggest what life was like in this survival camp. Microscopic investigations of tiny bone fragments reveal butchery scars and microstructure that illuminate what the Donner families may have eaten before the final days of desperation, how they prepared what served as food, and whether they actually butchered and ate their deceased companions. The contributors reassess old data with new analytic techniques and, by examining both physical evidence and oral testimony from observers and survivors, add new dimensions to the historical narrative. The authors’ integration of a variety of approaches—including narratives of the Washoe Indians who observed the Donner Party—destroys some myths, deconstructs much of the folklore about the stranded party, and demonstrates that novel approaches can shed new light on events we thought we understood.
Author: Bill Markley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493053361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
In Standoff at High Noon, the sequel to Old West Showdown, coauthors Kellen Cutsforth and Bill Markley again investigate ten well-known, controversial stories from the Old West. Through their opposing viewpoints, learn more about notorious figures and infamous events, including the controversial death of Davy Crockett at the Alamo; the life and death of Sacagawea who assisted Lewis and Clark on their Corps of Discovery Expedition; the tragic fate of the Donner Party snowbound in the Sierra Nevada; the assassination of Wild Bill Hickok; Arizona’s Lost Dutchman Mine; and the controversy over Butch Cassidy’s death in South America. No matter whose side you are on, there’s always something new to discover about the mythic Old West.
Author: Michael Wallis
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871407701
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575
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Book Description
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award A Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick “A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.... Superb.” —New York Times Book Review "WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. With The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” (Washington Post) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” (True West) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America’s most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a “fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring” (Oklahoman) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.
Author: Mark Warner
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496200373
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The mythic American West, with its perilous frontiers, big skies, and vast resources, is frequently perceived as unchanging and timeless. The work of many western-based historical archaeologists over the past decade, however, has revealed narratives that often sharply challenge that timelessness. Historical Archaeology Through a Western Lens reveals an archaeological past that is distinct to the region—but not in ways that popular imagination might suggest. Instead, this volume highlights a western past characterized by rapid and ever-changing interactions between diverse groups of people across a wide range of environmental and economic situations. The dynamic and unpredictable lives of western communities have prompted a constant challenging and reimagining of both individual identities and collective understandings of their position within a broader national experience. Indeed, the archaeological West is one clearly characterized by mobility rather than stasis. The archaeologies presented in this volume explore the impact of that pervasive human mobility on the West—a world of transience, impermanence, seasonal migration, and accelerated trade and technology at scales ranging from the local to the global. By documenting the challenges of both local community-building and global networking, they provide an archaeology of the West that is ultimately from the West.
Author: Seth Mallios
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789203481
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Spectacular recent discoveries from the Nathan Harrison cabin site offer new insights and perspectives into the life of this former slave and legendary California homesteader. “In many ways, it is a quintessential American story because of the fact that slavery was the American story.”—Julia A. King, St. Mary’s College of Maryland Few people in the history of the United States embody ideals of the American Dream more than Nathan Harrison. His is a story with prominent themes of overcoming staggering obstacles, forging something-from-nothing, and evincing gritty perseverance. In a lifetime of hard-won progress, Harrison survived the horrors of slavery in the Antebellum South, endured the mania of the California Gold Rush, and prospered in the rugged chaos of the Wild West. From the introduction: According to dozens of accounts, Harrison would routinely greet visitors to his remote Southern California hillside property with the introductory quip, “I’m N——r Nate, the first white man on the mountain.” This is by far the most common direct quote in all of the extensive Harrison lore. If it is possible to get past current-day shock and outrage over the inflammatory racial epithet, one can begin to contextualize and appreciate the ironic humor, ethnic insight, and dualistically crafted identities Harrison employed in this profound statement.
Author: Christopher Knüsel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134677979
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 753
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Book Description
If human burials were our only window onto the past, what story would they tell? Skeletal injuries constitute the most direct and unambiguous evidence for violence in the past. Whereas weapons or defenses may simply be statements of prestige or status and written sources are characteristically biased and incomplete, human remains offer clear and unequivocal evidence of physical aggression reaching as far back as we have burials to examine. Warfare is often described as ‘senseless’ and as having no place in society. Consequently, its place in social relations and societal change remains obscure. The studies in The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict present an overview of the nature and development of human conflict from prehistory to recent times as evidenced by the remains of past people themselves in order to explore the social contexts in which such injuries were inflicted. A broadly chronological approach is taken from prehistory through to recent conflicts, however this book is not simply a catalogue of injuries illustrating weapon development or a narrative detailing ‘progress’ in warfare but rather provides a framework in which to explore both continuity and change based on a range of important themes which hold continuing relevance throughout human development.
Author: Ronald K. Wetherington
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806146028
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Battles and massacres are intimate affairs for combatants and others involved, their physical and emotional violence often stemming from fervor and fear. Although mass killing characterizes both battles and massacres, the two are profoundly different. Battles take place between armed forces; massacres are one-sided events in which the dead are mostly innocent victims. Yet the fog of war shrouds both massacres and battles in a functional amnesia. Participants remember what exactly happened during such a violent encounter only imperfectly, and later clarity cannot always rectify accounts thus rendered. Even naming the events as battles or massacres already imposes an interpretive framework upon them. This unique study centers on four critical engagements between Anglo-Americans and American Indians on the southwestern frontier: the Battle of Cieneguilla (1854), the Battle of Adobe Walls (1864), the Sand Creek Massacre (1864), and the Mountain Meadows Massacre (1857). Editors Ronald K. Wetherington and Frances Levine juxtapose historical and archaeological perspectives on each event to untangle the ambiguity and controversy that surround both historical and more contemporary accounts of each of these violent outbreaks. Both disciplines, the contributors make clear, yield surprisingly similar narratives and interpretive agreement; and the lessons learned from these nineteenth-century killing fields about wartime reporting and command failures remain relevant today. Contributions by T. Lindsay Baker, J. Brett Cruse, Will Gorenfeld, Shannon A. Novak, Lars Rodseth, Douglas D. Scott, and Joe Watkins
Author: Allan Wolf
Publisher: Candlewick
ISBN: 0763663247
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
In powerful, vivid verse, the master behind The Watch That Ends the Night recounts one of history’s most harrowing—and chilling—tales of survival. In 1846, a group of emigrants bound for California face a choice: continue on their planned route or take a shortcut into the wilderness. Eighty-nine of them opt for the untested trail, a decision that plunges them into danger and desperation and, finally, the unthinkable. From extraordinary poet and novelist Allan Wolf comes a riveting retelling of the ill-fated journey of the Donner party across the Sierra Nevadas during the winter of 1846–1847. Brilliantly narrated by multiple voices, including world-weary, taunting, and all-knowing Hunger itself, this novel-in-verse examines a notorious chapter in history from various perspectives, among them caravan leaders George Donner and James Reed, Donner’s scholarly wife, two Miwok Indian guides, the Reed children, a sixteen-year-old orphan, and even a pair of oxen. Comprehensive back matter includes an author’s note, select character biographies, statistics, a time line of events, and more. Unprecedented in its detail and sweep, this haunting epic raises stirring questions about moral ambiguity, hope and resilience, and hunger of all kinds.
Author: Christopher M. Stojanowski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107073545
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
Highlights the role of anthropologists in revealing the histories and contemporary social facts that are reflected in dead bodies.
Author: Gordon Chang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503609251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 702
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Book Description
Essays examining the Chinese worker experience during the construction of America’s Transcontinental Railroad. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America’s entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the Transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90 percent of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The Railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible. This landmark volume explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West. Praise for The Chinese and the Iron Road “This timely and essential volume preserves the humanity of the often-ignored and forgotten immigrant worker, while also uncovering just how important Chinese American railroad workers were in the making of America and its place in the world.” —Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America “Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s meticulously researched and beautifully written book fills [a] critical gap in our nation’s history. The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the stories of workers who defied incredible odds and gave their lives to unite these states into a nation.” —David Henry Hwang, Tony Award–winning playwright of The Dance and the Railroad and M. Butterfly “Destined to become the go-to resource about Chinese railroad workers in the American West.” —Madeline Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority “Deeply researched and richly detailed, The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the Chinese immigrants whose work was essential to the railroad’s construction.” —Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History
