BATAVIA – The year is 1722. A pair of colonial Pennsylvania fur traders fight with a Native American hunter and leave him for dead. Rival investigations by Indigenous leaders of multiple Native nations, colonial officials from several colonies and members of the British Board of Trade follow.
The investigations result in fierce debates about the true nature of justice – and the positions taken in those debates may surprise you.
Nicole Eustace, a professor of history at New York University, will present the case Feb. 1 in the opening lecture of the “Historical Horizons” spring season at Genesee Community College, 1 College Rd., Batavia.
Eustace’s program is called “Murder and Mercy on the Susquehanna: Captain Civility of Conestoga Teaches Pennsylvania Colonists Native Principles of Justice.”
While settler colonists immediately jailed the accused killers and argued in favor of capital punishment in the case of conviction, Native spokespeople advocated a diametrically opposed approach. The leading local diplomat, a Susquehannock man named Taquatarensaly (who was known to colonists as “Captain Civility”) urged compensation and condolences for the victim’s friends and kin and clemency for the accused. The murdered man’s kin among the Haudenosaunee Confederacy agreed with this approach as did his Shawnee widow and leaders of her community.
In an era when Native nations remained powerful forces in colonial affairs, Captain Civility’s position won.
Indigenous peoples and settler colonists’ rival ideas on how to manage the aftermath of murder have much to teach us today, Historical Horizons organizers said in a news release.
The lessons? Whereas settler colonists confronting criminal offences emphasized legal retribution against individuals, Indigenous peoples believed in economic restitution, emotional reconciliation, and social reintegration of the whole community.
Eustace is the author of “Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America,” which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in history, the Francis Parkman Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
The lecture is one of four to be featured during the spring session of “Historical Horizons,” an initiative of the History Club at GCC that seeks to promote historical literacy and the preservation of local heritage. The series feature presentations, readings and other live events.
“Historical Horizons” resumed presentations during the fall semester following a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All events begin at 7 p.m. and will be in room T102 of the Conable Technology Building on GCC’s Batavia Campus. All presentations are free and open to the public.
Other upcoming lectures include:
n March 1: “Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War” with Dr. Brian Matthew Jordan.
A groundbreaking investigation examining the fate of Union veterans who won the war but couldn’t bear the peace. For well more than a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative. These veterans tending rotting wounds, battling alcoholism, campaigning for paltry pensions tragically realized that they stood as unwelcome reminders to a new America eager to heal, forget and embrace the freewheeling bounty of the Gilded Age.
Dr. Brian Matthew Jordan is an assistant professor of history and director of graduate studies in history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the American Civil War, Reconstruction, and the philosophy of history.
“Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2015),” a narrative history of the men who won the war but couldn’t bear the peace, was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History and, in its dissertation form, won the George Washington Egleston Prize for best U.S. history dissertation at Yale and Yale’s John Addison Porter Prize. “Marching Home” also received the Governor John Andrew Award of the Union Club of Boston.
In 2020, Jordan co-edited “The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans” (Louisiana State University Press). A volume co-edited with Lincoln scholar Jonathan White, “Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves,” is due out in 2023 from University of Georgia Press.
n April 19: “The Wedding of the Waters and Grand Celebration of the Opening of the Erie Canal: the history of ritual and the ritual of history” with Dr. Marla Segol and historian Dan Hamner
Nearly two hundred years ago, the Erie canal was opened with a month-long aquatic processional and series of celebrations led by a flotilla of barges, steam galleys and other boats who were met along the way by local parades, ceremonies, and fireworks, culminating in a “Wedding of the Waters.” The ceremony mixed mythic imagery, masonic symbolism and a new vision of a prosperous American future.
This lecture will explore the political purpose of the ritual, the elements of its performance, and how they worked together to transform people and place.
The discussion will be led by state University at Buffalo professor and scholar in religious studies Marla Segol and historian and Genesee Community College adjunct professor of history Dan Hamner, who are expected to marry their own disciplines of history and religion for a deep dive into the importance and the meaning of this ritual.
n May 3: “Man of Fire: William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War” with GCC associate professor Derek D. Maxfield
Sherman has been accused of “studied and ingenious cruelty.” By turns he has been called a savior and a barbarian, a hero and a villain, a genius and a madman. But whatever you call William Tecumseh Sherman, you must admit he is utterly fascinating, says Maxfield.
“Man of Fire: William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War” tells the story of a man who found himself in war – and that, in turn, secured him a place in history. Condemned for his barbarousness or hailed for his heroics, the life of this peculiar general is compelling-and thoroughly American.
A brief book talk by Maxfield will be followed by a panel discussion with authors of the appendices of the book, including Jess Maxfield, and GCC associate professors Tracy Ford and Michael Gosselin.
Maxfield is an associate professor of history at GCC and author of “Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp – Elmira, NY.” Maxfield has written for Emerging Civil War since 2015. In 2019 he was honored with the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2013 he was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.
For more information about the Historical Horizons lecture series, contact Derek Maxfield at ddmaxfield@genesee.edu.
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