Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition of 1779
This book explores the public memory of the “Sullivan Expedition,” an expedition that led to the destruction of some forty Indigenous villages. Who has celebrated the expedition and why? How do residents of Pennsylvania and New York commemorate this Revolutionary War campaign today? How is the story told differently at Native American cultural centers in the vicinity of “Sullivan’s Trail”?
Smith contrasts settler accounts with the ways the Sullivan story is presented at Haudenosaunee cultural centers, calling into question dominant understandings of George Washington and the Revolutionary War.
Smith’s previous books include the award-winning Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France (2006, Indiana); and Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (Nebraska, 2016). She is currently working on a book on the public memory of the 1737 Walking Purchase Lenape land treaty in Pennsylvania.
PRAISE FOR MEMORY WARS
A. Lynn Smith demonstrates the power of combining history and ethnography in the study of historical consciousness. At once a history of commemoration and an ethnography of remembrance, the book illuminates long, tangled histories of both settler and Native understandings of events at the heart of the American origin story.
—Geoffrey M. White, author of Memorializing Pearl Harbor: Unfinished Histories and the Work of Remembrance
Important and timely. Memory Wars is relevant to public historians, museum professionals, and others who study, create, and dismantle narratives consumed by the public at interpretive sites. It makes a contribution to early American history by challenging the interpretations of the Sullivan Expedition and its commemoration and the erasure of intra-settler conflicts. Finally, the research makes a significant contribution to Native American history.
—Dawn G. Marsh, author of A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman
An excellent case study of historical memory formation that is relevant to contemporary debates over commemorations and the legacy of settler colonialism grounded in especially fascinating fieldwork. This is a very engaging read.
—Andrew Newman, author of On Records: Delaware Indians, Colonists, and the Media of History and Memory
UPCOMING & RECENT EVENTS
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The Horseheads Historical Society Book Signing
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Bradford County Historical Society
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Revolutionary War Roundtable
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Clarks Summit, PA Book Signing
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Dietrich Theatre
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Franklin & Marshall College
October 11, 2023
Franklin and Marshall College
Lancaster, PA
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Buffalo Street Books
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SUNY Cortland
October 3, 2023, 4:15 PM
SUNY Cortland
Old Main Colloquium, Room 220
Cortland, NY
Dr. A. Lynn Smith is a historical anthropologist whose research explores settler colonialism, memory and forgetting, colonialism and place-loss.
She is professor of anthropology at Lafayette College in Easton, PA.