On the air in Ireland.

This story starts a few years ago but got derailed when Covid shut the world off for a time. A radio producer from Ireland contacted me to say he lived and worked in County Kerry, homeland of Patrick Edward Connor. Connor was the army commander behind the Massacre at Bear River (promoted from colonel to brigadier general following the atrocity), the Father of Utah Mining, and was involved in other military and business pursuits here in the West.

The man from Radio Kerry, Jerry O’Sullivan, wanted to create a radio documentary about Connor, was coming to Utah, and wondered if he could interview me. Then came Covid.

But all things must pass, and early this summer he contacted me to say he was on his way. We spent some time at the remnants of Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, including a spell at Connor’s gravesite in the cemetery there to record the interview. O’Sullivan interviewed other people here, then went back to Ireland to put the program together. It aired on Radio Kerry in early August, and “Glory Hunter” is now available on Spotify. (Just click on “Glory Hunter” and you’ll go there.)

O’Sullivan also wrote a commentary on Connor, the connections between Ireland and the USA, and the way we remember history. That article appeared recently in the Salt Lake Tribune. (Again, a click should get you there.)

Connor was an interesting man of many accomplishments—not all of them laudable. It will be worth your time to hear—and read—what Jerry O’Sullivan has to say about him.

My Favorite Book, Part 4

Plenty of historians pooh-pooh Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, complaining, among other things, it’s one-sided.

Two things about that.

First of all, Brown’s stated intention was to present the history of westward expansion from the perspective of the Indian tribes, which he did.

Second, it’s not as if the histories scholars had given us until that time were in any sense balanced. In fact, virtually no historian gave a fig about the Indian side of things until Brigham Madsen started researching and writing about it back in the 1950s. And very few followed suit until Brown’s book popularized the approach.

All that aside, Brown’s book opened the eyes of many Americans when it was released back in 1970. It certainly opened mine when I read it a year or two later while in college. (I wore out the mass-market paperback I bought back then and years ago upgraded to a trade paperback edition.) It was—and is—fascinating reading. Engaging, certainly, and informative. Even entertaining, though not in the traditional sense.

If you haven’t read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee do so. It’s still in print and readily available all these years later.

And don’t worry if you find it not exactly balanced—there are shelves full of history books that upset the scales in the other direction.