Haunted America
...an see Limerick clarify that whatever innocent notions we have of the past are obviously untrue. The writer is trying to illustrate that due to the straightforwardness, and plainness of the many accounts of the Indian-white wars we are unable to understand the true horror of these events. Limerick states that although the stories of these feuds are complicated, due to the simplicity of these historians narratives, “every ounce of the complexity disappears” (499). She then goes on to say that due to this plainness, “the diversity of white people and their responses to war are gone” (499). These statements insist that accounts of history are so muddled that it is arduous for people to see the complexity and fierceness of these battles. This is an important lesson for people to understand that terrible crimes of humanity have happened throughout history. Although there are people who believe that in the eighteenth and nineteenth century people were more civilized, by looking at the terrible atrocities that were committed during the white/Modoc war and other battles we comprehend that even people centuries ago acted in a savage fashion. Limerick goes on to state that, “if you compare a nineteenth century death of torture and mutilation to a twentieth-century death by a comparatively quick and impersonal shooting, the terribleness of violence may seem to be shrinking over time” (496). This statement furthers the fact that the nineteenth century was not the honorable time period that a lot of people would like to believe. Kliskey 3 Another way that Limerick shows the usefulness of the history of the white/Modoc war is when she makes the connection between the white/Indian war and Vietnam. For her eighth pattern, the author states that, “the fact that the Indians knew the landscape, terrain, food supply, and water sources put the whites at a considerable disadvantage”(487). In the war between the whites and Indians, they fought on the land which the Indians knew best so it was difficult for the whites to fight them. The whites were not comfortable on the land they were fighting on, and they often had difficulty communicating with each other. Although their technology was far superior to the Indians, it was useless because they had no idea how to use it to their advantage on the unknown terrain. The whites went into the war with a feeling of supremacy, but soon realized that the Indians also had their own strengths which the whites were unable to match. This directly resembles the Vietnam war that our country was part of only a few decades ago. “In the jungles of Southeast Asia, Americans finally had to recognize the crippling disadvantages of being the intruders and strangers, trying to impose their will in a terrain the natives knew far better.” Limerick in this statement fully illustrates the striking similarities that these two wars have with each other. She then states that, “contemplating the Indian-white wars, one cannot avoid the conclusion that much of what we have taken to thinking of as the lessons of Vietnam was available for learning a century or more ago.” With this statement, Limerick ponders why the people of the twentieth century would let our men go into Vietnam; If we would have only looked back to the white/Modoc war we would see that armies fighting on an unknown terrain had a difficult time winning. This was true even if they had superior technology compared to their enemy. Kliskey 4 Once more, Limerick presents the usefulness of history stating that no matter which side of the conflict the whites or Indians were on, they both serve as a building block of our history. In her essay she states that “There is, today, no longer any point in sorting out these passions and memories into starkly separate forms of ownership. Whether the majority who died at any particular site were Indians or whites, these places literally ground Americans of all backgrounds in their common history” (50...