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Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee. By Roger L. Nichols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. Pp. x, 184. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-6864-7.)
Roger L. Nichols's most recent book, Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee, is exactly what the title suggests: a chronological overview of ten massacres perpetrated by white Americans against Native peoples over the course of the nineteenth century. Few historians would disagree that violence accompanied almost all dealings between American Indians and the early United States. Yet Nichols is clear that his interest lies specifically with massacres, meaning "battles in which U.S. military forces killed large numbers of Indian women and children during the fighting, killed unarmed Indian men trying to surrender or escape from the battle, committed atrocities during or after the combat, and confiscated or destroyed the villagers' food and property" (p. 1). Although Nichols includes some context regarding the Native peoples involved in such events, his book is primarily a critique of what he terms the "national schizophrenia" of U.S. Indian...