Groundless : rumors, legends, and hoaxes on the early American frontier /

Today we have grown so used to having boundless information at our fingertips that we can easily forget the practical limits on reliable news that both natives and European settlers faced in early America. Beyond what one could see or hear at the instant, one could only make surmises based on what o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dowd, Gregory Evans, 1956- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2015]
Series:Early America.
Subjects:

MARC

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245 1 0 |a Groundless :  |b rumors, legends, and hoaxes on the early American frontier /  |c Gregory Evans Dowd. 
264 1 |a Baltimore :  |b Johns Hopkins University Press,  |c [2015] 
264 4 |c ©2015 
300 |a ix, 391 pages ;  |c 24 cm. 
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490 1 |a Early America : history, context, culture 
504 |a Includes bibliographical references and index. 
505 0 |a Gold : the legend in black -- Pox : the blanket truth -- Slaves : colonial fear -- Panic : rumors deployed, 1751 -- Father : rumors unmanaged, 1757 -- Bonds : sexual assault and slavery -- Solidarity : fugitive rumor, modern legend -- Scalps : charged revolutionary rumor -- Hoax : Franklin's forgery -- Slavery : south to freedom -- Extirpation : disease and removal -- Murder : mystery, rumor, and removal -- Conclusion: "Tears of the Indians." 
520 |a Today we have grown so used to having boundless information at our fingertips that we can easily forget the practical limits on reliable news that both natives and European settlers faced in early America. Beyond what one could see or hear at the instant, one could only make surmises based on what others reported or reportedly said, etc. In a real sense, rumor ruled. Historians have known about this problem of information and wondered about how stories of far-off deeds, plans, or intentions could develop and then travel about from place to place, crossing various lines of authority and changing in every telling. Here Greg Dowd, an established student of Native Americans and their encounters with white settlers, makes a determined effort to examine the phenomenon itself. Using about a dozen case studies, organized in parts that alternately deal with overarching themes and groups of specific episodes, he asks on what basis rumors or legends emerged in the first place and why they grew as they did and reached the level of credibility they did. The Spanish belief that the interior of America hid huge supplies of gold will be familiar to readers, as will the white practice of using tainted blankets to spread smallpox among the natives (this before the germ theory of disease). Others, like stories of Washington's use of rumor and Franklin's worries about counterfeit currency and the role of bad information in the Indian-removal campaign of the Andrew Jackson presidency may surprise. 
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650 0 |a Frontier and pioneer life  |z United States.  |0 http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008104193 
650 0 |a Rumor  |x Social aspects  |z United States  |x History. 
650 0 |a Legends  |z United States.  |0 http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008106891 
650 0 |a Hoaxes  |z United States. 
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