Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heartpor Rhoda R. Gilman
Ninguno Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Congressman, governor, military leader, and senior statesman--no person played a longer, more influential, or more varied role in the shaping of Minnesota than Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-91). Yet Sibley's history reveals universal tensions about the duality of the nineteenth century frontiersman who is at once an accommodating trade partner of the Indian/European/Metis worlds and the conquering government official of the ever-expanding West. Rhoda Gilman has spent over thirty years examining Sibley--through hints and fragments of stories that Sibley himself left in articles, an unfinished autobiography, and scores of family letters--and uncovers in this perceptive and balanced biography the complexities of a man who embodied these clashing extremes. As Gilman writes in her preface,On the broader stage of national history Sibley's life spanned nineteenth-century America. Rooted in the political and social establishment of the old Northwest Territory, he witnessed the colonizing of a continent and its people, the closing of the frontier, the agony of civil war, and the explosive birth of an urban, industrial society. He was keenly conscious of what he conceived to be the nation's destiny, and he identified closely with it. An heir to the Indian policy of Lewis Cass, who had managed to dispossess the Great Lakes tribes without war, Sibley belonged to the generation that was left to pay the price of that betrayal in blood and shame. And unlike Cass, he had personal ties to the Dakota people that placed him in a deeply ambiguous position. Gilman sets the controversial but altogether human Sibley against the tapestry of trade, politics, frontier expansion, and intercultural relations in the Upper Mississippi valley, and reminds us that throughout his life Sibley was poised to become a national figure but always chose to remain in the place he loved and had helped to name "Minnesota." No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNinguno
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)977.6History and Geography North America Midwestern U.S. MinnesotaClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
In addition to his regular, middle-class family he had a daughter with a Dakota woman, a daughter that he openly acknowledged, and whom he supported throughout her life. He lobbied extensively for rights for mixed-bloods (the popular contemporary term) yet was a key player in a trading and trapping enterprise that was destroying the livelihood and forcing indentured servitude upon the native peoples. He is most well known for his role in negotiating key treaties that forced Native American populations off lands in demand by white settlers. Less well known is that he advocated earlier for not simply a "reservation," but a separate, constitutionally recognized state for Native Americans. He is also well known for hunting down native Americans without mercy following the Dakota uprising of 1862. Yet he also delivered a speech to Congress whose stinging denunciation of the bad intentions that had always underpinned the nation's Native American policy could have been penned by a present-day activist for native American rights.
Gilman demonstrates an impressive range and depth of scholarship here that the book nevertheless wears very lightly. Even when detailing and sourcing some of the complex political and personal machinations surrounding, for example, the difficult transition from territory to state, Gilman retains a strong narrative through-line while still incorporating fascinating asides. The result is a book that left me troubled and thoughtful, which is what I want from my biographies. ( )