The Wild Frontier: Atrocities During the American-Indian War from Jamestown Colony to Wounded Knee

Beginning with Indian attacks on Jamestown in 1622 and ending with the massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in 1890, Osborn chronicles, often in lurid detail, the battles, skirmishes, raids and massacres perpetrated by whites and Indians on each other. The familiar names are hereDLittle Big Horn, Sand Creek, Fort Mims, Wyoming ValleyDas well as now-forgotten minor actions that resulted in atrocities. Along the way, Osborn examines American attitudes toward Indians, perceptions of Indian culture (including warfare tactics, prisoner taking, religious beliefs and ideas about property) and resulting policies, and the effects of disease among Native Americans. Two appendices list in chronological order intertribal wars and deaths caused by settler and Indian atrocities. Osborn has calculated that for each of these 268 years of warfare, there occurred an average of 60 incidents per year, perhaps 16,000 incidents in total. Osborn, a retired Indiana lawyer whose Massachusetts ancestors had their house burned by members of an Indian tribe, has written this book as an attempt to understand the barbarity to which both sides resorted. He finds that hatred, revenge and cruelty all play varying roles, and he does not take the meanings of those terms for granted, offering example after example. Although not scholarly in terms of background and analysis, his stark journalistic approach will shock even those who have some knowledge of the ferocity of American frontier warfare. (Jan. 9) Forecast: Most Americans do not view the years 1622-1890 as the period of a 268-year war. After reading Osborn's book, they may. While not groundbreaking scholarship, this study could provoke heated discussion if taken by the media as a pretext for discussing America's relationship to terrorism.