Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington's Sullivan Expedition of 1779
Jul 2023 · U of Nebraska Press
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446
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About this ebook
Named a 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Memory Wars 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. The 1779 expedition was planned and ordered by General George Washington. It was a massive enterprise composed of four forays involving thousands of men who were sent on a scorched-earth campaign, obliterating nearly sixty Iroquois and other Native villages, including homes, crops, and stored foodstuffs. For Indigenous residents it was a brutal invasion. For settlers who eventually moved onto razed village sites, it meant land and fortunes beyond measure.
Memory Wars 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. The 1779 expedition was planned and ordered by General George Washington. It was a massive enterprise composed of four forays involving thousands of men who were sent on a scorched-earth campaign, obliterating nearly sixty Iroquois and other Native villages, including homes, crops, and stored foodstuffs. For Indigenous residents it was a brutal invasion. For settlers who eventually moved onto razed village sites, it meant land and fortunes beyond measure.
The Sullivan Expedition has long been fixed on the landscape of Pennsylvania and New York by a cast of characters, including amateur historians, newly formed historical societies, and local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Asking how it is that people continue to “celebrate Sullivan” in the present day, Memory Wars underscores the symbolic value of the past as well as the dilemmas posed to contemporary Americans by the national commemorative landscape.
Named a 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Memory Wars 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. The 1779 expedition was planned ...
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About the author
A. Lynn Smith is a professor of anthropology and sociology at Lafayette College. She is a coauthor of Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (Nebraska, 2016) and author of Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France.
A. Lynn Smith is a professor of anthropology and sociology at Lafayette College. She is a coauthor of Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (Nebraska, 2016) and author of Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France.
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