Description: From the end of Pontiac's War in 1763 through the War of 1812, fear--even paranoia--drove Anglo-American Indian policies. In Red Dreams, White Nightmares, Robert M. Owens views conflicts between whites and Natives in this era--invariably treated as discrete, regional affairs--as the inextricably related struggles they were.
Brief description:
Robert M. Owens is Professor of History at Wichita State University. He specializes in colonial U.S. history and the Early Republic. He is the author of Mr. Jefferson's Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy, his articles have appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic and the Journal of Illinois History.
Review Quotes: "Robert M. Owens locates the explosion of Indian-hating on the part of U.S. officials and Anglo-American settlers, and their anxiety over a possible general war with Native peoples in trans-Appalachian North America, in an all-consuming psychology of fear. In this provocative and powerful telling, American expansion was less about civilization, destiny, or dominance than about an overwhelming obsession with security."--Andrew Cayton, coauthor (with Fred Anderson) of The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-1800