"Haunted America"

I like the idea of a historical revisionist. Someone who retells history a little more objuectively, and usually, and bit uglier than we would like to see it. When something is first written, it is sometimes written from a biased viewpoint, perhaps unintentionally, but biased all the same, with a favorable slan to one side or another. If this version correlates with how we ourselves were brought up to see an event or how we would like to see an event, than it's sometimes hard to hear a dissenting opinion, or at least to trust it. That's what's so interesting about people llike Limerick who take something as complex as the conflict between the Indians (or Native Americans if you prefer, although neither really seems to fit for me, one too politically incorrect, although i guess "savages" would be worse, and the other overly PC as labels in the age seem to be; too friendly and vague to be taken offensively as is the hope of those who create them, but becoming exactly that to me because of that.) and the White settlers on this continent and breaking it down to see the fault, ignorance, and manipulation of both sides from those who should have known better on each side.
It's easy to pick on the Indians, and say well hey, they would have just killed each other anyways (i actually said this when i was about ten or eleven; luckily my dad was didn't freak out but instead calmly explained why thinking that way needs to be questioned just as much as oversympathizing; i had no idea what he meant at the time.) just as it's easy to say that the whites were all evil or greedy or manipulative. It's also easy to say that the whites were trying their best and a few things went out of control, or that the Indians were completely taken advantage of. There is a little truth in all of these statements, Indians did have brutal battles against each other for various reasons, White people did take advantage and break agreements and such, some Whites really did want peace and coexistence; the trick is figuring out how much truth to apportion to each statement and attempt to see things as they really were.
At the end of this, as Limerick points out, we start to see patterns and common threads weaving in and out of each story. Where some people only see differing points of view, the trained eye can point out themes and use these to decide what was really going on throughout a complex situation like that between the white settlers and the Modocs.
We generally look at events as an outsider in history it seems, and thus we are able to see from a god-like point of view where things went wrong, and we begin to make judgements of people based on this; yet sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the middle of the situation and it seems only when we truly understand what it's like to be there, as well as understand where it all breaks down; this is the real point where we can stop bad history from repeating, and prevent bad history from occuring by looking objectively and subjectively at the events around the actual one in question.
I am reminded of how many people i've run into think that the german people were all idiots for trusting adolf hitler. I used to think "yeah, that is weird that so many people could follow someone like that."
Is it really so hard to imagine though? Germany was arguably the highest educated country in the world at the time, with many leading world philosophers and scientists coming out of Germany at the time who all supported hitler and national socialism. When national socialism was on the rise it was usually the most educated and idealistic who jumped on board first. No lies were really told either to the public, everything was pretty much spoken of from the beginning although you could say ideas and action are completely different things. No these weren't idiots, these were people desperate for an ideal to get behind and who actually believed that their cause was justified. Of course there was propaganda and such but where isn't there propaganda. Just turn on CNN or Fox News or any media outlet and you'll find tons. No they weren't idiots, just enthusiatic and misled, poorly misled. Couldn't the same be said for any of us?
I bring this situation up because until we look at these catastrohic events in history more from the point of view of those involved as well as from our after-the-fact knowledge we still run the risk of terrible repeats. I believe that this is the point of the revisionist.