Pushed

Ana Maria Spagna

Description

• Co–op available
• Pre–pub review coverage from major trade outlets (Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus)
• Galleys to national and local review media
• Outreach to historical societies and environmental organizations/media outlets for promotion and partnerships
• Electronic postcard sent to publisher and author contacts announcing publication and relevant reviews
• Regional Pacific Northwest tour and virtual events; publicity and promotion in conjunction with events

• Contemporary resonance: Spagna's investigation into the racially motivated murder of Chinese miners illuminates historic roots of the recent spike in hate-driven violence against Asian Americans.
• Historical lessons for today: Her careful examination of the often-harmful myths of the American West and the erasure and/or stereotyping of minorities in historical accounts is a timely contribution to the current conversation around environmental and racial justice.
• Praise: Early endorsements from Chris La Tray, Paisley Rekdal, and Laura Pritchett.
• Regional appeal in the Pacific Northwest.

A personal investigative journey into the so-called Chelan Falls Massacre of 1875.

Amid the current alarming rise in xenophobia, Ana Maria Spagna stumbled upon a story: one day in 1875, according to lore, on a high bluff over the Columbia River, a group of local Indigenous people murdered a large number of Chinese miners—perhaps as many as three hundred—and pushed their bodies over a cliff into the river. The little-known incident was dubbed the Chelan Falls Massacre. Despite having lived in the area for more than thirty years, Spagna had never before heard of this event. She set out to discover exactly what happened and why.

Consulting historians, archaeologists, Indigenous elders, and even a grave dowser, Spagna uncovers three possible versions of the event: Native people as perpetrators. White people as perpetrators. It didn't happen at all. Pushed: Miners, a Merchant, and (Maybe) a Massacre replaces convenient narratives of the American West with nuance and complexity, revealing the danger in forgetting or remembering atrocities when history is murky and asking what allegiance to a place requires.

Sujets

• Public Policy
• Historical
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Río Columbia
• State
• Pacific Northwest
• Chinese American
• United States
• Columbia River
• Local
• Immigration

Informations

• Publié par: Torrey House Press
• Date de parution: 07 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781948814706
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Pushed
“1875, Chelan Falls, Washington: 300 Chinese miners were pushed off a cliff into the depths of the Columbia River. Or were they? Spagna invites readers to sleuth with her as she investigates an obscure alleged massacre and the mysteries surrounding it. In her quest for answers, Spagna also explores how xenophobia shaped U.S. history, particularly in the American West. Spagna dispels the myth that white people were the only colonizers in the West and gives a more rounded view of the time period and the experiences of those who lived it. A thoughtful, well-written addition to any history collection.”
— BOOKLIST
“ Pushed is a mystery, a personal investigation, and an attempt to de-mythologize the American West. Spagna’s dedication to locate the real people at the heart of this tale is a moving reminder that the West was settled not only by white colonizers, but also Chinese miners, railroaders, and sojourners: people who survived and thrived in America and can’t be imagined only as victims. Pushed is as personal as it is historically informed, and a lively reminder that the American history we teach ourselves can be as much fantasy as fact.”
—PAISLEY REKDAL, author of Appropriate: A Provocation
“A surprising twist-filled journey…this gorgeous book is more than the story of one event—it is a retelling of a history that has been wildly incomplete, and by filling in some of the gaps, Spagna helps us see place with renewed clarity and understanding. Again and again, Spagna has proven herself to be one our country’s most thoughtful nonfiction writers, and this new book is no exception.”
—LAURA PRITCHETT, PEN USA winner and author of Stars Go Blue
“The records are scant and the stories contradictory, but Spagna embraces the ambiguities of her adventure. What she finds is not so much the definitive truth of this history, but rather the deep stories behind Chinese exclusion, Indian campaigns, and Manifest Destiny, an emotional terrain that undergirds the xenophobia of our times.”
—TEOW LIM GOH, author of Islanders
“ Pushed grounds us in a landscape, and then explores—in vivid detail through the eyes and heart of a compassionate and curious narrator—what the land holds: the history, the questions, the bridge of shared references, and the silences. Spagna masterfully lets the reader experience an unfolding mystery alongside her, providing an in-depth snapshot of a particular place she loves in Washington State that holds a complex historical conflict, as she turns and turns the story to trouble the nature of ‘truth’ and ask what remains.”
—SONYA HUBER, author of Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day
“Spagna takes us sleuthing to uncover the facts surrounding the story of hundreds of Chinese miners being killed in late 1800s Chelan, Washington. We read of her adventurous traveling for interviews, examining microfilm, finding newspapers, looking at survey maps, and there is even grave dowsing as we are brought yet closer through artful speculation to the more complex truth of massacres and the xenophobic history of the Pacific Northwest. Spagna crafts this investigation with great care; all of this becomes a recounting of the highest order.”
—ALLEN GEE, author of My Chinese-America
“Spagna brings a storyteller’s gifts to bear in unearthing the truth of a tragic event mostly forgotten…if it happened at all. The specifics of who did what and when aren’t even all that important; what is important is that, so typical to the ‘heroic’ narrative of the West, the larger story relates to the treatment of a people most western mythmakers would prefer we forget, prefer we not engage with and rectify. Pushed is Spagna’s heart-full effort in making certain this injustice will not be overlooked.”
—CHRIS LA TRAY, author of One-Sentence Journal
PUSHED
M INERS , A M ERCHANT, AND ( MAYBE ) A MASSACRE
Ana Maria Spagna
TORREY HOUSE PRESS
Salt Lake City • Torrey
First Torrey House Press Edition, February 2023
Copyright © 2023 by Ana Maria Spagna
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.
Published by Torrey House Press
Salt Lake City, Utah
www.torreyhouse.org
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-948814-69-0
E-book ISBN: 978-1-948814-70-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021952947
Cover design by Kathleen Metcalf
Interior design by Rachel Buck-Cockayne
Distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
Torrey House Press offices in Salt Lake City sit on the homelands of Ute, Goshute, Shoshone, and Paiute nations. Offices in Torrey are on the homelands of Southern Paiute, Ute, and Navajo nations.
Table of Contents Prologue PART I : O VER THE E DGE Chapter One MASSACRE: VERSION I Chapter Two WALLA WALLA Chapter Three WONG SAM Chapter Four AH CHEE Chapter Five EARTHQUAKE Chapter Six CHEE SAW PART II : N OT V OICES E XACTLY Chapter Seven MASSACRE: VERSION II Chapter Eight XENOPHOBIA TAKES ROOT Chapter Nine UP THE LADDER Chapter Ten DOWSING Chapter Eleven FORGET JOHN WAYNE Chapter Twelve WHOSE HERITAGE? Chapter Thirteen BACK TO THE STORE PART III : W HAT I F ? Chapter Fourteen MASSACRE: VERSION III Chapter Fifteen NEARLY UNANIMOUS Chapter Sixteen THE PROBLEM WITH MAKE-BELIEVE Chapter Seventeen AGAINST AMNESIA Chapter Eighteen BONES References Acknowledgments About the Author
Notes on terminology
At the time when the Chelan Falls Massacre (may have) occurred, Indigenous people in the American West were referred to as “Indians,” a misguided moniker and a particularly stubborn remnant of colonialism. When quoting historical sources, I’ve left the word in place. In contemporary cases, with the generous input of members of the Federated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and others, I’ve used specific labels preferred by local Indigenous peoples and/or individuals (e.g. the Chelan and Entiat Tribes, the Osoyoos Indian Band). When speaking in my own voice, and/or in more general terms, I’ve turned for guidance to Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples by Gregory Younging. I apologize in advance for any missteps, and I welcome dialogue.
The word Okanogan, a place name, is spelled with an o in the United States, but confusingly with an a in Canada, Okanagan. The Indigenous nation also spells the name Okanagan.
Prologue
Ten miles from the head of Lake Chelan—the “landing” as we call what passes for town—a high bridge spans the Stehekin River where it charges through a narrow gorge of lichen-stained gneiss. Firs and ferns root in tiny crevices of vertical rock. On a hot July day, pre-run, I stand on the bridge watching the blue-green churn, the roiling waves. We’re in a strange season, mid-pandemic—time is compressed and urgent at once—and the temperature today is predicted to top 105 degrees. Twigs and cones snap underfoot, so wildfires can’t be far off, but somehow, right here, right now, it’s possible to feel removed. If you kick the dust and focus your eyes, you can find shards of obsidian from hundreds of miles away, evidence of Interior and Coast Salish people who’ve trekked these mountains for thousands of years. A cool morning breeze lifts off the snowmelt water. Dogwood and cedar limbs bob lazily. Death counts mount.
I’ve always said I want my ashes scattered here. This is where my wife, Laurie, and I met some thirty years ago when we lived as roommates in the historic ranger cabin under the pines where the roar of the river lulled us to sleep. We had no running water, no electricity, but plenty of wine and Van Morrison on cassette. We eventually built our own home five miles down the road, and we still drive or ski or walk this dirt road regularly to gaze down at the midstream boulder that disappears in floodwater and protrudes during drought. In fall, kokanee salmon spawn orange, a carpet in the eddy. In winter snow pillows pile high. I like to think my ashes will wash up one day on the icy banks of the river, clotted on rocks with rotted fish and cedar drift, or maybe travel farther to the deep cold lake and on to the once-mighty Columbia, slowed by dams and polluted by quicksilver and plutonium, rich with sturgeon and lamprey, osprey and cranes. And history.
Some people have a passion for genealogy, and I get it. I’ve seen traces in myself of ancestors I never, or barely, knew: my archbishop great-uncle, a cerebral diplomat, my Italian great-grandparents with meaty dirt-callused palms, my Irish grandmother with an easy wide-mouthed laugh who played a mean game of Scrabble. My people were earnest newcomers, careless encroachers, faithful believers in a murderous faith, writers of words, singers of songs, builders of buildings, ambitious vulnerable misguided energetic stubborn sad joyous humans. I recognize them in the mirror, and I’m grateful to them. Still, I’ve never felt a strong desire to retrace their steps.
My attention, which sometimes leans closer to devotion, has always turned to the land. For a long time, I nurtured it by moving farther and farther from other people, toward wilderness and the transcendence that books promised I’d find there. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe it wasn’t books so much, or anything as ethereal as transcendence. When I walked alone on an unnamed ridge cloaked in red heather, or skied through the silent forest after new snow, I felt a visceral tug sure as caffeine coursing after coffee or euphoria after exercise or the heart-softened gush when you look in a newborn’s eyes, something physically undeniable. For many years I worked as a seasonal laborer, maintaining hiking trails in the backcountry, ten hours a day with hand tools. Just to be out there. Eventually, I fell in love, bought land, and built a cabin. Even when I did, I didn’t like to say I owned land. Instead, I’d say something like this: There’s a way a place comes to own you.
To talk about this region, you need a mental