Black Robes and the Book of Heaven
A Nez Perce delegation arrived in St. Louis in 1831, but Protestants and Catholics tell very different stories about them.
Lessons in whiteness
Even well-meaning opinions by voices presuming to be immune from the racist elements of their whiteness cannot avoid the histories embedded in their language, attitudes, and perspectives.
A Civilized Savagery: Rev. Stanley’s ruminations on his way to Yellowstone
Rev. Edwin J. Stanley’s 1873 tour of Yellowstone made him a witness to “the scepter of the irrepressible white man” in the divine right of Manifest Destiny.
Columbusing Yellowstone
Nathaniel P. Langford and other members of the 1870 Washburn-Doane expedition “Columbused” Yellowstone by “discovering” it as a “park.”
Warren Angus Ferris, Yellowstone’s first tourist
Warren Angus Ferris visited Yellowstone in 1834 as the first tourist to experience the thermal features, and the first person known to use the Icelandic word “geyser” to describe them.
Mesa Wisdom of the Hopi People
Though a product of colonial violence, Frank Waters’ Book of the Hopi offers an alternate vision and a critique of our ultimately self-destructive assumptions, values, and modes of living.
Chasing Dreams Beyond the Rainbow
An ancient pictograph in a place called Tsegi, what is now Canyon de Chelly National Monument, shows people chasing animals over a hill or maybe a rainbow.
The complex interweavings of American racial histories
The Bear River Massacre occurred in the same month as Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation; killing Indians had a strategic purpose in the war to end slavery.
Joe Meek in Yellowstone
Mountain man Joe Meek’s first summer of fur trapping in 1829, which put him among the earliest of non-indigenous people to enter Yellowstone.
Commemorating Custer’s Defeat
Recent posts about Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn; western mountain Indians traveling to St. Louis in 1831 to ask for religion; and religion in Yellowstone National Park. ♨
Yellowstone pilgrimage in 1866 by Jesuit ‘Black Robe’ Missionary
A Piegan hunting party took the Jesuit missionary Francis Kuppens to Yellowstone in 1866. Awestruck by the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, amazed by the steaming fountains of geysers erupting skyward and the brilliant colors of scalding hot springs, the young Black Robe understood the glory of a God who had created such a magical and mysterious land of wonders. ♨
Thanksgiving Celebrations: Remembering the Legend
The legend of the first Thanksgiving presents a beneficent, benign colonialism made possible by the hospitality and generosity of Indians not a bit bothered by these zealous sycophants come to claim the native homelands. Of course, the story we tell ourselves does not bother with how this all looked from the perspective of the Wampanoag people. ♨