Shadows At Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History

(Paperback)

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In April 1871, a group of Americans, Mexicans and Tohono O'odham Indians surrounded an Apache village at dawn and murdered near 150 men, women and children in their sleep. In the past century the attack, which came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre, has largely faded from memory. Now drawing on oral histories, newspaper reports and the participants' own accounts, prize-winning author Karl Jacoby brings this perplexing incident and tumultuous era to life, painting a sweeping panorama of the American Southwest.

Reviews

"Absorbing, brilliant . . . One of the best studies ever of the long conflict between tribes and races, soldiers, citizens, killers and victims, in the wild unregulated Southwest."
-Larry McMurtry
a"Shadows at Dawn" is an absorbing, brilliant study of the Camp Grant Massacre in 1871. Karl Jacoby sees this terrible event in its full complexity. His is one of the best studies ever of the long conflict between tribes and races, soldiers, citizens, killers and victims, in the wild unregulated Southwest.a
aLarry McMurtry
aIn this landmark book about a tragic collision of multiple cultures, Karl Jacoby subverts a thousand Westerns by showing us that the West was not a sepia- toned world of cowboy or Indian, villain or hero, white hat or black. The West so carefully re-imagined in Shadows at Dawn was a far more complicated placeaa place that lived and died in a surprising gamut of hues.a
aHampton Sides, author of "Blood and Thunder"
a"Shadows at Dawn" is the fascinating storyaactually four stories, a Southwestern Rashomonaof the massacre of Apaches near Tucson on April 30, 1871, by Anglos, Mexicans, and other Indians. Extending over four hundred years, centering on that awful event, this book is impressively researched and a major contribution to the history of clashing cultures and memories of the desert frontier.a
aWalter Nugent, author of "Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion"
aA brilliant narrative writer and gifted historian, Karl Jacoby rescues the Camp Grant massacre not simply from the forgetfulness of the past but from the all- too-human urge to simplify the tangled complexity of our motivations, interactions, histories, and memories. This book should be required reading for polemicists and apologists alike, and for anyone wanting to think deeply and well about the meanings of that curious thing we call ahistory.aa
aPhilip J.Deloria, author of "Indians in Unexpected Places"
a"Shadows at Dawn" is western history at its best! Karl Jacoby has judiciously uncovered the many hidden layers as well as legacies behind one of the darkest moments in America's pastathe ethnic cleansing of its indigenous peoples. In the process, he restores the Camp Grant Massacre to its rightful place at the center of Arizona's traumatic 19th century past. A wonderful and moving achievement.a
aNed Blackhawk, author of "Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West"
aJacobyas story-telleras ear listens to the tales that have swirled around the Camp Grant Massacre since the spring of 1871 and draws them into a conversation thatalike it or notais long overdue. Studied with a cool eye and open heart, the perspectives merge into a kaleidoscopic vision of the American West that remind us that we may be done with the past, but it is seldom done with us.a
aJames F. Brooks, author of "Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands"

Author Bio

Karl Jacoby is an associate professor of history at Brown University and the author of Crimes Against Nature- Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden History of American Conservation, which was awarded the Littleton-Griswold Prize by the American Historical Association for the best book on American law and society and the George Perkins Marsh Prize by the American Society for Environmental History for the best work of environmental history.