Bones on the Ground by Elizabeth O’Maley (review)

The late Elizabeth O’Maley begins her work by recalling when, as a young girl, she found an arrowhead in her family’s garden. This prompted her to ask a deceptively simple question: “What happened to the Indians?” Specifically, what happened to the American Indians who once lived in Indiana?

O’Maley sets about answering this question through a series of vignettes and fictional firsthand accounts of noteworthy Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Sauk people who lived during the turbulent years between the American Revolution and the implementation of the Removal Act of 1830. As she makes plain, the absence of American Indians from Indiana resulted from the tremendous violence inflicted upon them by Anglo Americans. While tribal members were determined that their bones should rest among those of their ancestors, “the Long Knives” were even more determined to drive them out. The extraordinary killing that attended the implementation of the American policy to clear the West for settlement left thousands of “bones on the ground,” and O’Maley wants to ensure that young people remember that.

This work is intended for a young adult audience, who, like O’Maley, may be fascinated with the indigenous people whose traces remain on the landscape but who have largely disappeared from our national narrative. By presenting the perspective of American Indians through fictional statements by Little Turtle, Maconaquah (Francis Slocum), Apekonit (William Wells), and others, O’Maley hopes to make their reasons for resisting clear. For young people who have not critically examined American history or have thought of American Indians only as passive recipients of unethical policies, O’Maley’s work will give them pause and reveal a more balanced and more human group of people.

Young adults who read this book should be prepared for some gruesome content. O’Maley opens with the slaughter of ninety-six Moravian converts at Gnadenhutten and the retaliatory torture and burning of William Crawford in 1782. Throughout the work she favors accounts of violence. She examines the military campaigns of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne, the battles of Tippecanoe and Mississinewa, and the killing of numerous civilians. Occasionally, O’Maley introduces the reader to individuals, such as William Conner and Jean Baptiste Richardville, who seem able to transcend the stark racial divide and endemic savagery of the era. The choice of conflict as the central theme for the work has the additional effect of amplifying the voices of war chiefs and military leaders, while relegating the voices of women, missionaries, and peace advocates to secondary importance.

Some weaknesses detract from the potential of the book. The page-and-a-half preface, unfortunately, does little to help the reader understand the lessons she wants us to learn. O’Maley intends the “collage of stories” to create a “coherent narrative” (ix) of the conflict in the Old Northwest. Yet, it is up to the reader to decide why she begins her work in 1782 or how she chooses the individuals for whom she presents mini-biographies. This seems a peculiar deficiency given her intended audience’s presumed unfamiliarity with the historical context. O’Maley’s portrayal of the dreadful violence that marked the eras during and after the American Revolution could be understood as the natural outcome of a clash of civilizations for those unversed in the broader history.

Also missing from the preface is an explanation of the sources of the first-person accounts that comprise the largest section of each chapter. Although she writes that “I have let the major characters…speak for themselves” (x), and although these have the appearance of authentic speeches or reminiscences, complete with italicized text and dates, she, in fact, crafted them herself. It is easy enough to understand her reasoning: telling the story of this episode of American history is more effective and dramatic when told from the mouths of those who lived it. And to be fair, the book is categorized as juvenile literature.

The technique creates two complications, however. Since...