Indian Massacre at Wilkes-Barre shows a motif common in nineteenth-century
lithographs: Indians invading the sanctity of the white settlers’ homes. Actually,
whites were invading Indian lands and often Indian homes, but pictures such as
this, not the reality, remain the archetype.
Our history is full of wars with Native American nations. “For almost two
hundred years,” notes David Horowitz, “almost continuous warfare raged on
the American continent, its conflict more threatening than any the nation was to
face again.” American Indian warfare absorbed 80 percent of the entire federal
budget during George Washington’s administration and dogged his successors
for a century as a major issue and expense. Yet most of my original twelve
textbooks barely mentioned the topic. The American Pageant still offers a
table of “Total Costs and Number of Battle Deaths of Major U.S. Wars” that
completely omits Indian wars. Pageant includes the Spanish-American War,
according it a toll of 385 battle deaths, but leaves out the Ohio War of 1790-
95, which cost 630 dead and missing U.S. troops in a single battle, the Battle
of Wabash River.^69