Monuments And Memories: Irish, Polish, And Haudenosaunee Engagements With The Heritage Narratives Of The Revolutionary War

Summary

Examining memorializations of the Revolutionary War is fruitful in tracing how important events are crafted into founding national mythologies.  However, such analyses underplay the presence of ethnic groups that utilized monuments and commemorative ceremonies to gain wider acceptance in American society or challenge the dominant heritage narratives. This paper examines Saratoga monuments dedicated to Polish-American Engineer Thaddeus Kościuszko, the Saratoga monument to Irish-American Timothy Murphy, the Joseph Brant monument in Brantford, Ontario, and the Oneida Nation’s participation at commemorative events at the Saratoga Battlefields. I argue that these memorializations, which scholars have rarely compared, function to integrate the ethnic groups into the mainstream American heritage narrative or, in the case of the Joseph Brant monument, challenge the American heritage narrative.  An analysis of monuments contributes to scholarship that examines how ethnic groups engage with nationalistic heritage narratives by emphasizing their own sacrifice, martial valor, and devotion to the nation’s causes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Monuments, Commemoration, and Heritage: New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Cemeteries and Commemoration   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 660