rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Groundless
    sub title: rumors, legends, and hoaxes on the early American frontier
  name:
    name part: Dowd, Gregory Evans
    name part: 1956-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: mdu
    date issued: 2015
    copyright date: 2015
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: ix, 391 pages ; 24 cm.
  abstract: 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.
  table of contents: 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."
  note: Gregory Evans Dowd.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    geographic code: n-us---
  subject:
    geographic: United States
    topic: History
    topic: Errors, inventions, etc
  subject:
    topic: Frontier and pioneer life
    geographic: United States
  subject:
    topic: Rumor
    topic: Social aspects
    geographic: United States
    topic: History
  subject:
    topic: Legends
    geographic: United States
  subject:
    topic: Hoaxes
    geographic: United States
  subject:
    topic: HISTORY / United States / General
  classification: E179 .D685 2015
  classification: 973
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Early America
  identifier: 9781421418650
  identifier: 1421418657
  identifier: 9781421418667
  identifier: 2015010721
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 150731
    record change date: 20170928110502.0
    record identifier: in00003612658