Winter Lecture Series with Professor Dan Breen

The Hundred Years War: A Century of Native American Resistance 1790-1890

Professor Dan Breen will present a lecture series on the American Indian wars of the 19th century.  Most Americans have some awareness of the disastrous effects of advancing white settlement on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but the persistence and determination of native American attempts to slow or halt that advance are less well known.  We will try to tell the story of some examples of that resistance, beginning with the Ohio campaigns of the 1790s and ending with the Apache War of the 1880s.

The six session series begins on Sunday January 27th at 2 pm in the library meeting room.  The lectures continue on Sundays into March.  (February 3rd, 10th, 24th, March 3rd, 10th) .

DETAIL ADDED ON JANUARY 28:

FEB. 3  Part II: The Second Seminole War (1835-1842)
Rather than agree to removal to Oklahoma, Florida’s Seminoles wage a seven year war with the United States. Using brilliant guerrilla tactics, and led by the great Osceola, who was defeated only by treachery, they managed to hold their own against an army that outnumbered them by a factor of 10:1.

FEB. 10  Part III:  The Modoc War (1873)
 In a war fought amidst one of the strangest landscapes in the West, 52 Modoc warriors defended their base in the lava beds of southern Oregon for six months against hundreds of US troops. The war featured the only general to die in the Indian Wars and ended with the hanging of the man held responsible for his death.

There is no lecture on February 17 because of President’s Day weekend

FEB. 24  Part IV:  The Great Sioux War (1876)
 No episode in the long struggle of the Plains Indians against the US government looms as large in the popular imagination as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. We will tease out the details of that momentous confrontation, along with the famous Horsemeat March that followed in its wake.

First lecture: Sunday, January 27th at 2pm in the Library Meeting Room

The Ohio Campaign:

“In its first major conflict after the Revolution, the infant United States Army suffers a series of disastrous defeats at the hands of the Shawnee and their allies–and in the process, encounters one of the most brilliant of all its foes, Tecumseh”.

Dr. Daniel Breen is a professor of Legal Studies at Brandeis University. In the past twelve years,  Dan has lectured at the Library about World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, the American Revolution, Prohibition, Supreme Court cases, the Civil War, the Roosevelts, the Space Race and presidential campaigns. Dr. Breen has both a JD from the University of Georgia and a PhD in History from Boston College.

 Thanks to the Friends of the Bedford Free Public Library for sponsoring this program. Free and open to the public.