Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier

Gregory Evans Dowd. Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. 408 pp. Cloth, $34.95.

What is the basis of rumor, hoax, and legend? Are these mistruths an aberration to be excluded from history, or are they of historical significance? In Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier, Gregory Evans Dowd focuses on the role of rumor and hoax and their traction in the form of legend in shaping impressions of early North America. Highlighting well-circulated perceptions, Dowd explores the relationship between the Indigenous inhabitants of North America and the European invaders. He accessibly conveys the immediate historical context and clearly articulates the fallacy or truth embedded in the originating rumor. Noting that in some cases a rumor was not deliberately constructed to misinform but was groundless nonetheless, Dowd explains the rationale for rumor as a coalescing force for solidarity in both Indigenous and European communities and makes explicit the significance of unquestioning, intergenerational transmission of historical perceptions in the establishment of legend.

Across the text's six parts, Dowd attempts to provide a balanced perspective by relaying the role and substance of rumor spread by both the invading colonists and the Indigenous inhabitants. His twelve chapters include an exploration of the legend of gold in the North American interior, the transmission of smallpox from colonists to the Indigenous inhabitants, and the rumored use of scalping by invaders and Indigenous inhabitants alike, as well as the related hoax of Benjamin Franklin and other topics. In detailed discussion employing extant news, memoirs, and...