Donis Review of Parkinson’s Heart of American Darkness

H-Early America just ran Jay Donis’s review of Robert G. Parkinson’s new book, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier.

Donis writes:

the Yellow Creek Massacre of April 30, 1774, and Logan’s Lament, once saturated the minds of the American public and “had become fixtures in early American culture” (p. 328). Millions of copies of educational books, such as Caleb Bingham’s American Preceptor (1811) and William McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers (1836/37) revealed the story to new generations of Americans well into the twentieth century. And yet, a search for “Yellow Creek” and “Logan’s Lament” in the flagship journals of early American history reveals few results, with the exception of a Robert Parkinson article in a 2006 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.[1]

In short, Parkinson’s latest book restores the spotlight to an incident that once played a pivotal role in shaping how many Americans understood the nation’s history. How Parkinson restores this event, through the inclusion of Native actors and Native voices, is important as well. Based around the incident at Yellow Creek, the book examines the historical links and paths of the Cresap and Shickellamy families from the 1730s to the early twentieth century, focusing primarily on the mid to late eighteenth century. . . .

During the massacre, a party of white men murdered several members of Shickellamy’s family and other Natives, leading Soyechtowa, one of Shickellamy’s sons, to craft the speech that became known as Logan’s Lament. Part 3 examines the changing depictions of Michael Cresap and Logan’s Lament in national memory from the Revolutionary War through the twentieth century.

Although it may seem odd for a book to focus on the Cresap family, a family not present at the Yellow Creek Massacre, Parkinson explains why this choice is necessary. Most early Americans, including Soyechtowa, mistakenly believed that Michael Cresap orchestrated the murder of Native Americans at Yellow Creek. To be sure, Cresap did not like Native peoples and he threatened to kill, if not actually killed, Natives in April 1774 on the Ohio River, but he was miles away from Yellow Creek on the fateful day of the massacre. As a result of this confusion, the Cresap and Shickellamy families became linked in the minds of many Americans for generations. Parkinson masterfully untangles this link throughout the book.

A significant portion of the review concerns how to define and understand “settler colonialism.” That’s a relatively recent historiographical term, coined by Patrick Wolfe in the 1990s. I remember being puzzled by how authors seemed to expect readers to be familiar with the phrase when I’d never seen it before, so I was reassured to find it postdated my college years.

While we can productively discuss the nuances, at a basic level the value of distinguishing “settler colonialism” is easy to understand. The concept addresses an issue I’d puzzled over back in high school: a “colonial subject” in the context of the American struggle for independence is quite different from a “colonial subject” in the context of the Indian struggle for independence.

“Washington’s Riflemen” in Cambridge, 16 Mar.

On Thursday, 16 March, I’ll speak at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge. This is the latest in a series of annual talks about some aspect of Gen. George Washington’s work there in 1775 and 1776.

This year my topic will be “Washington’s Riflemen: Heroes or Headaches”:

Soon after Gen. George Washington came to Cambridge in 1775, a new kind of Continental soldier started to arrive: the rifleman. Recruited in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, the rifle companies did more than signal how those colonies were committed to New England’s war. They were touted as deadly marksmen, the key to quickly driving the British out of Boston. But those newcomers were also frontiersmen, many recent immigrants, far from home and rebellious. Soon Gen. Washington realized the riflemen were not his biggest weapon but one of his biggest problems to solve.

To show what sort of high expectations those riflemen engendered, here’s part of a letter that appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette on 16 Aug 1775. It came from a gentleman visiting Frederick, Maryland, at the start of that month, who had watched the company commanded by Capt. Michael Cresap put on a shooting demonstration:

Yesterday the Company were supplied with a small Quantity of Powder from the Magazine, which wanted airing, and was not in good Order for Rifles; in the Evening, however, they were drawn out to show the Gentlemen of the Town their Dexterity in shooting;

a Clapboard, with a Mark the Size of a Dollar, was put up; they began to fire off hand, and the Bystanders were surprised, few Shot being made that were not close to or in the Paper; when they had shot for a Time in this Way, some lay on their Backs, some on their Breast or Side, others ran 20 or 30 Steps and firing, appeared to be equally certain of their Mark—

With this Performance the Company were more than satisfied, when a young Man took up the Board in his Hand, not by the End but the Side, and holding it up, his Brother walked to the Distance and very coolly shot into the white; laying down his Rifle, he took the Board, and holding it as it was held before, the second Brother shot as the former had done.—By this exercise I was more astonished than pleased.

But will you believe me when I tell you that one of the Men took the Board and placing it between his Legs, stood with his Back to the Tree, while another drove the Center.

What would a regular Army, of considerable Strength in the Forest of America do with 1000 of these Men…?

Of course, not everyone was equally impressed. A correspondent to Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette on 15 November noted that report from Maryland and responded, “it is no more than what has been frequently done by the Virginia riflemen.” (As John Adams was fond of saying, “Virginian geese are always swan.”) One company of the Virginian riflemen was commanded by Capt. Daniel Morgan, shown above.

This talk is scheduled to start at 6:30 P.M., after on-street parking becomes available nearby. It is free and open to the public.