Shoshone Mike: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:21, 25 February 2011

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110219/NEWS/302190002/-1/CARSON/Shoshone-Mike-New-theories-emerge-100-years-after-last-massacre- Shoshone Mike: New theories emerge 100 years after 'last massacre'

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110219/NEWS/302190001/-1/CARSON/Massacre-story-often-oversimplified-author-says Massacre story often oversimplified, author says

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 "In the case of the Indian women and children, I'd go as far as to say it also was murder."
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+* http://www.rgj.com/article/20110219/NEWS/302190001/-1/CARSON/Massacre-story-often-oversimplified-author-says Massacre story often oversimplified, author says
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+By Frank X. Mullen Jr. • fmullen@rgj.com • February 19, 2011
+As a boy, Frank Bergon, Nevada author of "Shoshone Mike: a Novel," first heard of the 1911 case as "the last Indian battle."
+The story seemed incredible, he said, because it involved free-roaming Indians in the 20th century who were chased down by a posse on horseback across the wilds of Nevada. He spent 10 years doing research for his novel, first published in 1987.
+The characters included the members of the Indian band, a gang of rustlers, the lawmen and buckaroos in the posse, Capt. J.P. Donnelley of the Nevada State Police, Humboldt County Sheriff Ralph Lamb and his wife, Nellie. Bergon said he found the story was more than a cowboys-and-Indians tale.
+"The massacre certainly couldn't have occurred if otherwise good and normally civil people like Nellie Lamb didn't think as they did -- that these Indians were savages," he said.
+In a Western, he said, writers often demonize or romanticize one side or the other. But he said the Shoshone Mike case is haunted by "a sense of sadness and tragedy" for all involved. The four stockmen, who left families behind, were senselessly murdered. The Indians were tracked down and unarmed women and children were killed.
+"There are tragic dimensions on both sides," Bergon said.
+Three of the four children taken captive died within a year or two, records show.
+Last survivor
+The last survivor of the captives, Mary Jo Estep, a baby in 1911, died in a nursing home in Washington state in 1993 where she was recovering from a broken hip. She had planned to attend a birthday party when she was given medicine meant for another patient. Her condition was reversible, but because she had a living will, a doctor let her die. Washington state regulators fined the doctor $2,500, records show.
+Her case has become a nationally known example for advocates of stricter regulations concerning the interpretation of living wills and their use in nursing homes.
+In 2005, the Bureau of Land Management refused to allow Estep's name to appear on a memorial plaque set up by Reno Boy Scouts in Little High Rock Canyon. At the time, the BLM archaeologist declined to explain the omission to the Reno Gazette-Journal.
+Newspaper stories written about the massacre over the past 20 years have drawn letters from critics who said the Indians got what they deserved and that the past should not be re-examined.
+Bergon said history is not carved in stone and myth often vies with facts. He said the stories that come down to us never involve people who were all good or all bad.
+"It shows how this kind of thing can occur when people think in stereotypes ... heros and villains," Bergon said. "This story is much more complicated than that, and as a result, much more tragic. It even suggests to us that perhaps the story hasn't ended in many ways. The story of Shoshone Mike, at least the story of the survival of Indian culture, goes on."
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Shoshone Mike: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:21, 25 February 2011

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