The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History

Kass Fleisher. The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History. New York: State University of New York Press, 2004.352 pp. Paper, $25.95.

Laura Woodworth-Ney, Idaho State University

What may be the largest single episode of genocide in American history took place in present-day southeastern Idaho when Union-affiliated troops from California attacked a Northwestern Shoshone band in January 1863, raping, mutilating, and slaughtering upward of 280 Native people along the Bear River. Why, Kass Fleisher asks in this provocative book, has this tragic episode received so litde attention from historians and the public? "I will posit that the fault lies with how we make, and how we read, history itself," Fleisher argues (xi). What follows is a postmodernist critique of the ways historians frame questions, interpret sources, and construct narratives. Fleisher eschews traditional citation methods, adhering to the view that formal citations unfairly enhance the "presumed accuracy of one's presentation" (xiv). Fleisher's lively prose makes this book a pleasurable read, even for a western historian (Fleisher is hard on us).

The first section of the book, "What (We Think) Happened," provides the only available synthesis of secondary perspectives on the Bear River Massacre available in print. The strengm of the book, however, lies in the section "The Making of History." Fleisher describes how the Bear River story "came...