The following is the third of a three-part series. The first can be found here, the second here. The entire article appears in the fall 2022 issue of The New Polis Journal.
Through the various methodist episcopal annual conference journals, it is possible to trace RM’s movement from church to church through indiana and then illinois to kansas city and back to indiana before moving to the colorado annual conference in 1890. Given the nature of life in the frontier communities of the colonial conquest, the only preservation of the book would have been for RM to pack it up each year with his earthly belongings to trek to a new town and a new ecclesial assignment. Hence, it is quite apparent that the book carried a triumphal treasured status for RM. Ever the faithful itinerant servant of the methodist church, his gift of the egregious book to iliff seems almost natural in retrospect—as awful as the gift might seem to us today—or might especially seem to American Indian Peoples. And RM wrote his own inscription on the inside cover of the book at the time of his gift. An explanatory note accompanied the display of the book, possibly taken from a later (perhaps 1930s) newspaper item. It reiterates the inscription itself:
Denver January 2. A book titled “History of Christianity” in the library of the Iliff School of Theology is bound in the skin of an Indian killed more than 200 years ago in combat with a Virginia general. An inscription on the inside cover, and dated Sept. 16, 1893, reads:
The book was published 150 years ago and is covered with the skin of an Indian who was killed after a desperate struggle by General Morgan, proprietor of Morgantown, West Virginia and presented to my father, William Barns M.D. by the hand of General Morgan himself.
Both the newspaper introduction to the inscription and RM’s inscription itself are clearly rooted in the fictive frontier romance narrative of conquest. The Indian was “killed after a desperate struggle by general morgan, proprietor of morgantown….” Of course, that is the eurochristian framing of the incident which elevates the murder david morgan to the status of hero. The reality, as I have explained in a prior publication, is that morgan only saw one Indian and willfully shot him in cold blood, a clear act of murder. Only then did morgan discover that he was in trouble as a second Indian man emerged to revenge the death of his colleague, and morgan was left with an empty muzzle-loader and no time to reload. It was mere luck that morgan was able to survive that combat alive and to have murdered a second Indian.[1]
Moreover, while david morgan was known as a “good shot,” he was no military officer, let alone a general. This morgan was a civilian squatter in Indian territory, an invasive eurochristian making his claim to ownership of Indian Land. The misidentification, however, allowed for the mythic expansion of the story to heroic proportions implying the involvement of a different morgan, general daniel morgan, the virginia colonialist of a military unit called the virginia riflemen who served with the continental army. The fanciful mythic legend then expands to a narrative of the general, enraged at the murder of his wife and daughter, taking time off from the revolutionary war for three years to hunt down the imagined perpetrator in order to revenge their deaths. This narrative is impossible on two counts.
First, daniel was a command officer in the continental army and fully engaged in the war strategy of the so-called revolutionary war. He would certainly not have had three years of leisure time to engage a vengeance hunt to track down a particular Indian—the specific point in the legend. Nor were eurochristian colonialists very interested in particular Indian personalities. Their main concern was to rid the Land of all Indian resistance to eurochristian taking of the Land, which meant simply killing whatever Natives stood in the way.[2] Besides genocidal wars of conquest and domination, these eurochristians in the blink of an eye engaged in what Barbara Mann calls serial murder and fractal genocide of Native people. That became a way of life, demonstrated in the likes of eli morgan, lewis wetzel, or jesse hughes.[3] Secondly, daniel was married only once, and his wife outlived himself, facts marking this story as pure fabrication.
Still, the narrative is rousingly entertaining for advancing the dominant strain of White-supremacy and the romantic frame it imposes on history. Indians are evil pro-forma; White men are both morally good and superior in every way—even though the story is patently false. That is, none of it happened the way it is told or the way that RM’s articulation of it might suggest. Certainly, daniel morgan was not from western virginia and may or may not have been (distantly?) related to the actual perpetrator. daniel and david evidently came from entirely different welsh immigrant morgan families.[4] Subsequent mythic history does at times elevate this civilian, david, to some “commissioned” military rank,[5] but the truth is that he was a civilian squatter on Indian Land.
Moreover, the morgan in RM’s inscription was certainly not the “proprietor of morgantown.” That would have been david’s brother zackquill, a fellow colonialist squatter who fenced in a large property some fifteen miles downstream from his brother. Having chosen the more genteel colonialist path, zachquill platted his squatters claim and converted it to profitable township lots. Hence, morgantown, north of david morgan’s small enclave across from prickett’s fort. Yet it was zackquill’s own son who chose the more romantic frontier life of “Indian killer” and far outdid his uncle david in tallying “kills.” He is reputed to have killed more than one hundred Indians during his lifetime, matching the infamy of his contemporaries jesse hughs and lewis wetzel, whose legends give rise to melville’s chapter, “the metaphysics of Indian hating.”
This origination narrative that accompanied the book when Iliff received the “gift” is patently false, then, on at least two levels, recording a muddled family memory that has lost its anchorage in any historical reality. Misinformation abounds in RM’s short gifting note in the book, but maybe he is to be somewhat excused for muddling family history since he was so young when his father died. It is not clear that RM ever visited western virginia where his dad grew up. Yet it seems irrefutable that the gift to william barns indeed came from the hand of david morgan himself.
One can only wonder how the narrative became jumbled in the transmission. Did that happen already in the mind of RM’s father william—after receiving the book from david morgan? Or had morgan as an old man already himself muddled the story that he told and retold about the incident that had happened decades earlier? And certainly, rebecca could have introduced her own variants as a very young woman. She would have been only nineteen herself when her father died and when she presumably became the holder of the treasured artifact.
At the death of his mother, RM became an orphan at almost twelve years old.[6] Yet, he seems to have been reasonably well-educated and widely read for his era. In the memoir he wrote for RM, his colleague cyrus brooks wrote that despite being orphaned RM made his way “through public school and into a university.”[7] He had at least a year of study at indiana asbury university (now depauw university). And he appears to have both known some latin and some greek, since there are marginal notes written on pages in this latin book, including handwritten notations in greek. On the other hand, his methodist minister and educator brother-in-law ezra marsh boring also read greek and latin and would have had access to the book while rebecca held possession of it, so these notations might possibly be his rather than RM’s.[8]
RM became a methodist minister (a probationer) in 1854 and had served methodist churches throughout the midwest, appointed to churches in Indiana, where he began public ministry, in illinois, and in kansas city for three and a half decades before shifting his focus further west to colorado. RM was well known and widely respected as a preacher and for his deep commitment to the work of mission. Two methodist colleges gave him honorary degrees. depauw, his alma mater, gave him an honorary master’s degree listing him among “honorary alumnae” in 1874.[9] Then in 1883 RM was honored at illinois wesleyan university with a doctor of divinity degree, a dozen years before his older brother-in-law was likewise honored at depauw.[10]
Since these honorary degrees were never given out willy-nilly, we can presume that RM came from a family that valued educational achievement. As I have already suggested, an unanswered question is whether RM spent time living with rebecca and boring? At age twelve, he must have had some adult caregiver after his mother died. From the archival research I have engaged, it is not yet clear who took the young man in, but someone managed to raise him in a context of a reasonably good education. Even at RM’s death, cyrus brooks of the colorado annual conference wrote that “…he ever kept in touch with the progress of events and changes of lines of thought…. Broad-minded, clear-visioned, sunny-hearted, he was an inspiration and help to all.”[11]
Essentially framing has nothing to do with critical analysis or inherently with historical actuality, i.e., truth. When done successfully, framing nevertheless creates a truth value, even if that truth is highly subjective. That is to say, it becomes widely held as true, whether the facts bear up to that truth or not. Politically, both conservatives and liberals in a social whole engage in framing techniques in order to bolster their own political agendas. And usually, the best framing wins the day, whether in an election or in a legislative decision. While the court system in any modern democratic society might be the highest adjudication, even that decision making process is shaped by successful framing.
Whether one is guilty or innocent might depend on who tells the best story about the pertinent events. We American Indians have seen this play out around issues called “federal Indian law” persistently. There is nothing Indian about federal Indian law; rather, federal Indian law is a colonialist narrative intended to both control Indian Peoples and still give the eurochristian invader population a (completely undeserved) sense of fairness about their own usurping of some legal right to ownership of Native homelands. As such, federal Indian law is a useful colonialist framing device and has nothing at all to do with ascertaining fairness or justice, per se. For instance, when Indians do go to court, we understand that the discourse of justice will be entirely conducted in the cognitive categories of the colonizer and that the outcome will, in one way or another, serve the purposes of that colonizer and not American Indians.
Barns did not erect statues to david morgan or other Indian killers important to the conquest of American Indian Land.[12] Nevertheless, he played his part just as decisively in this process of framing the narrative about American Indians and about the eurochristian conquest. Intentionality? No, RM was not an intentional white supremacist in the way that modern “proud boys,” the “oath keepers,” or the neo-nazis are deeply embedded in self-conscious idolizing of Whiteness. Today that radical supremacy is more commonly associated with “White nationalism.”
Rather, RM’s White supremacism was that deeply embedded communal sense of natural right, an instinctive framing: the perceived absolute right to dispossess Natives, by killing them and squatting on Native Land. That sort of White supremacy was almost automatically embraced, consciously or subconsciously, by all eurochristian americans. It was this perceived right that allowed david williamson’s brigade to vote overwhelmingly to coldly execute their non-combatant prisoners at Goschocking in 1782, crushing their skulls one by one (men, women, and children) after these christian Lenape victims spent the night praying inside their little church. RM’s gift of this book, then, underscores this instinctive (perceived natural) right of eurochristian conquest and domination of Native Land across Turtle Island.[13]
Ultimately the genocide of American Indians can never be reduced to single event episodes of genocide like the scandalous Goschocking event or the equally shameful 1864 Massacre at Sand Creek. Rather genocide was a process that includes all these events and the serial murders across the continent, what barbara mann calls fractal genocide. The american Genocide, then, is processal rather than evental; yet, it is a process of events that in an act of framing get glorified by the invader one-by-one as savory victory—even if individual events along the way might be conceded as genocidal. Mann uses the metaphoric analogy of a tsunami and its “wave train” to describe fractal genocide. Just as “endlessly repeating yet smaller wavelets” combine to build the huge and massively destructive tsunami wave, the endlessly repeating small massacres and serial murders committed by eurochristian squatters across Turtle Island combine to destroy the Native Peoples of the Land so that the Land could be turned into property and venerated as christian victory.[14]
From the top of Tava, renamed col. zebulon pike’s peak by the colonialist victors, katharine lee bates opined, “america, the beautiful…, god shed his grace on thee,” a song in virtually every american hymnal and now sung at every major league baseball game. Like bates’ famous hymn, the morgan/barns book, covered in the skin of a murdered Lenape man, served as a framing device to sweep eurochristian evil under the carpet. It became just another wavelet in the american Genocide of Native Peoples. And like bates’ song composed as a victory dance atop a conquered mountain, the iliff book became a colonialist trophy of chrisitan conquest.
As roger green indicates, “mann’s work significantly attends to the overlapping ideological affordances glossed over by seeing violence against indigenous peoples as isolated events. When we combine these emphases on process with tinker and newcomb’s stress on …idealized cognitive models, we get something more nuanced than the charge of genocide as a crime. We get a glimpse that the attempted erasure of indigenous peoples across both continents is endemic to a eurochristian religious poetics of sacrifice.”[15] Thus, the Iliff book is NOT a singular event of indiscretion but is part of the wholistic genocide project of the eurochristian invasion and ultimately the erasure of Native Peoples, wherein the book, with its egregious cover, serves to frame a narrative of rightful Native erasure.
RM’s contribution to White supremacy, then, is his gift of this egregious book to Iliff. His is not the nazi-fied White nationalism of today’s republican party right wing. Rather his is the everyday variety of white supremacy that evolves into american exceptionalism. Spectacle gazers who came to view this book saw violence normalized; this was a gift from a good minister, and thus it must be not just alright but an unmitigated good. One look into that old iliff library case with its display of a trophy that combines the conquest of the ohio valley with the history of christianity would automatically confirm for the viewer the supremacy of White people in america. Of course, it endured “as a priceless vestment for the teachings of brotherly love!”[16] At least it is a siglum of the love that eurochristian people have for each other now that they have dispatched with the Native Peoples of the Land! This is love rooted in conquest and domination. Conquest and domination that makes the Land theirs. And now that the Land is theirs (by legal definition according to laws that they themselves have written) they are free to love without losing their “property.”[17]
White supremacy and eurochristian dominance are reinforced by the ceremonial placarding of “non-controversial” monuments, like statues of george washington across the continent—to say nothing of confederate generals and their statues. But these are always acts of framing. For most americans, eurochristian americans at least, washington’s statue merely reinforces the american romance narrative of the origination of a new eurochristian republic, a new form of government that results in the united states today. For Native Peoples, however, we are constantly reminded of domination, our domination at the hands of the wealthiest of all u.s. presidents.
George washington, we remember, was the bloody colonialist who hounded Native communities in western new york and the ohio valley. The clear fact is that washington’s wealth was in no small part built on illegal Land speculation in Indian homeLands long before the so-called revolutionary war, suggesting that his creation of scorched earth warfare in the west, a second front in that war, was intended to protect his and other’s speculative Land investments. We know, for instance, that washington died still holding “legal” property titles to some 49,000 acres of Indian Land in the ohio valley.
The iliff book is far less “non-controversial” since it participates in the desecration of the dead. News reports of the desecration of the dead by u.s. troops in afghanistan and iraq continues to disturb us today. Why would the desecration of the dead by u.s. army troops at Sand Creek following their Massacre of a Cheyenne and Arapaho community in 1864 or the treasuring of a book of christian history bound in the skin of a slain Indian murder victim in 1779 be any less repelling?[18]
Citing mann, green points to the eurochristian poetics of sacrifice as vested in ongoing ceremonial violence that shows up in “seemingly secular acts such as monikers and monuments.” These he connects to the wavelike patterns of eurochristian violence against American Indians that mann calls fractal Genocide.
… mann (Onondawaga / Seneca) has termed the wavelike patterns of eurochristian violence against American Indians as “fractal genocide.” So many eurochristians’ civic identities are framed within the windy energy of a desert storm god. As she details… YHWH fused with the invader Odin perpetuates “desert medicine” across “running-water Hahnunah (Turtle Island).”[19]
White supremacy is the pervasive expression of that wavelike tsunami that surfaces in cultural value across the u.s. (and across all europe), coming from the dominance of Whiteness through the long period of eurochristian colonialism and conquest that perdures to the now. The value of domination is so deeply embedded in public consciousness that even the dominated seem too often to readily accede to it. It is the everyday foundational normativizing of Whiteness and eurochristian categories of discourse, including the normativizing of eurochristian colonial conquest. One has merely to notice the pervasiveness of the colonizer’s flag of conquest at virtually every Indian powwow, usually danced in by a Native military veteran in uniform; or the numbers of Indian participants who step forward to dance in what the powwow mc announces as a veterans song. As Taiaiakai Alfred (Kahnawake Mohawk) insisted some years back, young Native folk need to rethink enlisting in military service of the same institution that participated in the Genocidal devastation and domination of our Nations.
While gov. harrison’s dictum in 1801 dare not excuse RM or the university of denver or iliff school of theology for its indiscretion for heroizing this murder, it does explain how good christian american citizens could fall so easily into such a pattern of living. The truth of the eurochristian invasion and the resulting Genocide of American Indians is difficult to live with both at the time of the murder and even today. So, eurochristians had to devise some narrative to excuse their extreme violence towards the Natives who inhabited the Land they so coveted for themselves. Of course, “some narrative” became a national narrative intended to diminish the inherent cognitive dissonance generated by the fractal Genocide of American Indian communities.
In talking about White supremacy, we are not yet talking about the rise of contemporary White nationalism. That is merely one radical extension of the everyday variety of White supremacy but one most White supremacists would totally disavow as scandalously inappropriate—even as it plays out before our eyes in our contemporary world. Interestingly enough, in this environment of growing christian nationalism, I saw a twenty-ish young eurochristian man with his middle-aged mother in a denver suburban grocery store wearing a dark t-shirt emblazoned with the logo: “faith, family, and firearms”—no doubt a good christian with his ar15 close at hand.
I suspect he might have been first in line for a viewing of this book back in its prime, with its cover intact in that iliff display cabinet. The january 6 insurrection mob (with its bible verses) seemed perfectly intent on lynching members of congress and killing whatever capitol police got in their way. For some murder is still a useful way of implementing the will of their god, just as it proved useful for establishing eurochristian occupation of most of this continent, including the monongahela / ohio river valley. Indeed, it is this 19th century impetus that gave rise to american exceptionalism in the 20th century and inspires White rage / christian nationalism in the 21st.
As Iliff deals productively with its own history of involvement in its placarding of this book and looks to the future involved in a very different relationship with American Indians, murder, violence, White rage, and christian nationalism will all be called into accountability. And even though he never acted alone in this matter, poor RM barns, who meant so well by his gift to iliff, must live now with the embarrassment as a lone exemplar of this nasty eurochristian poetics of sacrifice that brought this egregious book to iliff.
Nor is iliff a lone participant in its displaying of the book. But both RM and iliff are prominent examples that help explain how pervasive the Genocide and erasure of Native Peoples from Turtle Island has been. Murders, massacres, armies and frontiersmen, the development of a legal discourse to disenfranchise Natives and establish so-called settlers[20] on the Land, and icons of celebration are all participants in this Genocide. Museums across Turtle Island are filled with their lucre. But RM barns and iliff school of theology, along with the book of christian history that once sported the tanned hide of a Lenape murder victim, are the immediate focus here.
Governor harrison reminded us in 1801 that settler-farmers, so-called, considered “the murdering of the Indians in the highest degree meritorious.” How is it that chrisitan would-be-farmers came to consider murder to be a chrisitan value, a virtue? It is only when we address this question that we can begin to understand how a prominent chrisitan minister could value such a murder-trophy as the iliff book with its shocking cover. Only then can we begin to understand how murder became an intrinsic part of the historical chrisitan/national romance narrative in the united states. How that history of violence continues to fuel national political imagination in the u.s. awaits another discussion.
Tink Tinker is wazhazhe, a citizen of the Osage Nation. For 33 years he was a professor of American Indian studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, where he still holds the title emeritus professor. During most of that time, Tinker also was the (non-stipendiary) director of Four Winds American Indian Council in Denver. Tinker has abandoned christianity as a colonialist and Genocidal imposition on Indian Peoples in favor of recapturing the traditional worldview of Native Peoples. Although Tinker was trained in eurochristian theology and bible, he has come to see the Native experience of the interrelationship of all life and our ideal of cosmic balance and harmony as totally incompatible with eurochristian colonialist imaginary of hierarchy, one that sees reality as a manichaean hierarchical struggle of good versus evil. He is the author of American Indian Liberation (Orbis, 2008).
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[1] “damn it, he’s an injun.”
[2] It should be noted that daniel morgan was not involved in extensive campaigning against American Indians during this war during his six and a half years of military service. Moreover, he served on active duty until june 30, 1779, two full months after the murders in western virginia. HIs command was key to the american forces victory in the battle of saratoga in northeastern new york, 18 months prior to the western virginia incident.
[3] mcwhorter nuances the passing of elias hughes: “Like his brother, jesse, captain hughes died in indigency. His life had been devoted to the trail and the chase; and his wants measured only by his present needs, were supplied from the forest and streams. For two-score years his supreme joy had been a saturnalia of blood, and not until the loss of his sight and when there were no more “Injuns to kill,” did his thoughts turn to the “future life.” Captain hughes is buried near the center of the cemetery at utica, ohio. At the interment crossed cannons were discharged over his grave, which is yearly decorated with flowers. A gray, flat stone marks the last silent camp of the ”Last of the border warriors.” Lucullus virgil mcwhorter, the border settlers of northwestern virginia, from 1768 to 1795: embracing the life of jesse hughes and other noted scouts of the great woods of the trans-allegheny. (republican pub. co., 1915), 245. But elias died at the advanced age of 97, comfortably ensconced in the very center of the new state of ohio in 1847. One can say that the modern colonialist states of ohio and west virginia are in part his own legacy and that of his brother.
[4] Morgan is a very common surname for families in glamorganshire, one of the historic counties in wales.
[5] In a letter written about morgan and gifting the infamous book to the iliff school of theology, e. e. meridith, vice-president of the marion county historical society and a writer for the fairmont times (aka times west virginian), refers to the perpetrator as david morgan, but suggests that “gen. daniel morgan” may have been involved in some similar encounter. While the letter is undated, it can be internally referenced as having been written sometime after 1933 but before the death of l.v. mcwhorter in 1944. Meredith’s letter, deposited in the iliff archives, is dated feb. 24 but without a year. And we should add that there is no other record of daniel morgan being involved is such an incident.
[6] Jane Dixon Graham Barns – LifeStory (ancestry.com). jane dixon graham barns died 8-22-1842 in georgetown, ohio, a week before RM’s twelfth birthday. His father, william barns, died nine years prior, 8-11-1833: see ancestry.com: William Barnes – LifeStory (ancestry.com). Note also rev. cyrus a. brooks’ “memoir” (obituary notice for RM) published in the yearbook and official minutes of the colorado conference of the methodist episcopal church, fifty-second session held at la junta, sept 9-14, 1914, p. 349.
[7] Cyrus brooks, 349.
[8] After serving churches in kentucky, boring was converted to abolitionism and was finally able to name the evil of slavery, forcing him to move north of the mason-dixon line back into ohio. He, like his younger brother-in-law, was relatively well educated and became himself an educator, serving short stints in a couple of methodist educational institutions before returning to the itinerant profession of “preaching.” We are told that he read greek, hebrew, and latin and used these language abilities through his career.
[9] Martha j. ridpath, editor, alumnal record, depauw university (published by the university, 1920), 532. Rev. r. m. barnes is listed under “VIII. honorary alumnae. 1. masters of art” with the date of 1874.[9]
[10] Twenty-fifth Annual Catalogue of the Illinois Wesleyan University: https://archive.org/stream/twentyfifthannua00illi/twentyfifthannua00illi_djvu.txt. dr. boring received a DD from depauw university in 1885. 53rd session of the rock river annual conference of the methodist episcopal church, october 1892 (monitor publishing, 1892), 65f.
[11] year-book and official minutes of the colorado conference of the methodist episcopal church, 1914, 349.
[12] There are indeed statues to david morgan (in fairmont, wv) and to eli morgan (in morgantown) celebrating their hero status as Indian-killers in that part of the world.
[13] This is what jennifer mccurdy identifies as a “process of relieving one’s cognitive dissonance through the changing of narratives to fit” a communal sense of an ideal/good self-image. Personal communication.
[14] Mann argues that massacre (and perforce serial murder) is the micro level of Genocide, which is the macro phenomenon. She writes, “Unlike genocide, which from the perspective of history, is big and obvious, each massacre looks small, encapsulated, tidy, and ultimately harmless. One must stand back to take in the panorama before the sweep of the repeating pattern emerges. As fractals, massacres replicate the appearance of genocide, except repeatedly and in miniature. The fractal wavelets of massacre in the tsunami of genocide can be graphically conceptualized [in the painting] ‘Great wave off kanagawa’, by hokusai. The great wave is composed of endlessly repeating yet smaller wavelets obvious in the white caps, each taking the form of the main, large wave, rushing to its landed conclusion. By the same token, massacres fractally join with their fellow wavelets of massacre, each mimicking full genocide, but in miniature. Taken singly, each massacre can appear negligible, even innocuous. Some are so small that they might be easily missed in the rush of the larger events, yet were each fractal massacre not present, the wave of genocide as a whole would collapse.” Barbara mann, “Fractal massacres in the ‘old northwest,’” 167.
[15] Green, Rhetorical Erasure, Indian Slavery, And The Doctrine Of Discovery, Part 1 (Roger Green) – THE NEW POLIS. Poetics of sacrifice is a metaphor rooted in the technical discourse of rhetoric. Poetics references a structured form of discourse that brings together in this case all the “ceremonial” markers of the eurochristian conquest and domination of Turtle Island. That is, a poetics that celebrates the Genocide of the Native inhabitants of Turtle Island in order to allow for eurochristian occupation of Native Land. It is “religious” in that it is a litany of statures, plaques, geographical names, songs (e.g., america the beautiful), recitations (e.g., the pledge of allegiance), and the like, all of which are widely affirmed by eurochristian americans. And american participation continues, from singing the songs to tourist pilgrimages to (patriotic) historic sites and monuments.
[16] This is the bizarre claim of elizabeth kuskulis, a local denver reporter, writing about the iliff book in 1934: “iliff has old book bound in slain Indian’s skin,” the rocky mountain news (1934): iliff library archives: “Iliff Library Has Old Book Bound in Slain Indian’s Skin,” The Rocky Mountain News Article | Iliff Digital Collections. This, too, is a marker in the poetics of sacrifice.
[17] Two of my recent publications detail the creation of the artificial concept of property in terms of our Grandmother, the Land. “How the eurochristian invasion of Turtle Island created the environmental crises: focus on an early ‘immigration’,” in Displacement climes: shifting climates, shifting people, edited by miguel de la torre (pilgrim press, 2022), 19-30; and “Relationship—not ownership: indigenous Lands and colonial occupation,” Tribal studies (2021). Also, “The Land, creation, sovereignty, and property,” T&t clark companion to the doctrine of creation, edited by jason garoncy (t&t clark) is forthcoming.
[18] Denver newspapers proudly reported the parading and display of Cheyenne and Arapaho body parts by soldiers returning from Sand Creek in 1864.
[19] Green, Rhetorical erasure, Indian slavery, and the Doctrine of Discovery, part 1 (roger green) – THE NEW POLIS. Green is referring to mann’s chapter “imposter god: de-christianization,” in the colonial compromise: the threat of the gospel to the Indigenous worldview, edited by miguel de la torre (lexington books, 2021), 103-116.
[20] The word “settler” in this context is entirely too sanguine, a euphemism that conceals every crime of colonial invasion and conquest. Settler-colonialism sounds far too innocuous; it is a liberal soft-sell job.