Jo N Miles

There's more than one way to cover up a tragedy.

The story of the European colonization of the Pacific Northwest echoes that of the rest of North America, only faster. The various native tribes had been exposed to European diseases in the early nineteenth century, and the mortality had hit them so hard that they no longer had enough population to occupy all their land. This made it particularly easy for the U. S. government to come in in the 1850s and shove them onto reservations. Bad enough.

Worse came when, just two weeks after the treaties were negotiated, and before they had been ratified by the American Senate or the promised compensation paid, settlers from the east started encroaching on Indian land. It was shameful (nothing new there); it was also pointless, since other land was available! What's more, a lot of these people were hunting for gold, so they were mostly single white men with big senses of entitlement and small levels of intelligence -- so they started abusing the Indians, especially their woman.

Eventually, a lot of the tribes (not all) decided they had had enough. Although several nations were involved, the shorthand for this conflict is the "Yakima War," and Kamiakin the best-known leader. Hence the title of this book.

Author Miles is clearly in sympathy with the Indians, but he doesn't do a good job of explaining what happened. The book has a lot of detail about the various battles in the war (if fights involving a few dozen soldiers can be dignified with the name "battle"), but there is no overview.

For example, the Americans basically fought as two separate forces, the regular army forces under General John Wool and a bunch of volunteers scraped together by the territorial governor and others. They fought in different areas and for different objectives, but it's not clear from this book how their various battles affected the success of the other force.

Or take one of the battles in the war, the Battle of the Cascades. The Cascades of the Columbia were a vital strategic area -- in effect, the only crossing point between two separate battle zones divided by mountains. The side that held the Cascades could reinforce either area; the side that did not could not get forces from one area of conflict to the other. So the Indians attacked the Cascades at two separate points, and forced the local settlers back into a few strongpoints, but were eventually repulsed by reinforcements from around Washington Territory.

I would assume that this was vital to the American success in the war. But you can't tell from this book, because there is no strategic overview. It's just a bunch of battles -- here a fight, there a fight, everywhere a fight-fight, e-i-e-i-o.

I managed to keep my grip on what was going on up through about the Battle of the Cascades, but after that, I got so lost that I eventually gave up. I came in with a little knowledge of the conflict, and a desire to know more, but this was so disjointed that I'm going to have to read another book to give me enough background to interpret this book. And it's really too bad, because this is a part of American history that we really ought to remember, if only to remind us that America is not always a beacon to the world. Instead, author Miles, in trying to tell of this tragedy, has effectively hidden it away.… (mehr)