Settler colonialism and the Revolutionary War: New York’s 1929 “Pageant of Decision”
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Abstract
- The centerpiece of New York State’s 150th anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition
of 1779 was a pageant, the “Pageant of Decision.” Major General John Sullivan’s
Revolutionary War expedition was designed to eliminate the threat posed by Iroquois
allied with the British. It was a genocidal operation that involved the destruction of over
forty Indian villages. This article explores the motivations and tactics of state officials as
they endeavored to engage the public in this past in pageant form. The pageant was
widely popular, and served the state in fixing the expedition as the end point in settler-
Indian relations in New York, removing from view decades of expropriations of Indian
land that occurred well after Sullivan’s troops left.
| Title | Settler colonialism and the Revolutionary War: New York’s 1929 “Pageant of Decision” |
|---|---|
| Creator | Smith, Andrea L. |
| Publisher | Public Historian |
| Academic Department | Anthropology & Sociology |
| Division | Social Sciences |
| Organization | Lafayette College |
| Date Issued | November 2019 |
| Date Available | 2019-12-12 |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Keyword | Revolutionary War |
| settler colonialism | |
| collective erasure | |
| memorializing genocide | |
| New York State | |
| Bibliographic Citation | Smith, A. L. (2019 Nov) "Settler colonialism and the Revolutionary War: New York’s 1929 'Pageant of Decision'." Public Historian 41 (4): 7–35. |
| Standard Identifier | Handle 10385/m900nt97k |
| DOI 10.1525/tph.2019.41.4.7 | |
| Permalink | http://hdl.handle.net/10385/m900nt97k |
| Rights Statement |
In Copyright
|
| Rights Holders | The Regents of the University of California |
| The National Council on Public History |
Contains
| File | SmithAndrea-PublicHistorian-vol14-2019.pdf | Uploaded 2019-12-12 | Public | Download |
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