19 July 2017 - Mr. Peter Cozzens

No epoch in American history is more deeply shrouded in myth than the Indian Wars of the American West. According to author Peter Cozzens, the past 125 years of American popular history, academic scholarship, film, and fiction have depicted the era as a struggle between absolute good and evil, changing the roles of heroes and villains to accommodate the shifting national consciousness. In this lecture, Mr. Cozzens illuminates the wars and the U.S. Army’s role in the destruction of one culture enabling another to flourish, and examines the most pervasive and pernicious of the myths surrounding the Indian Wars. He also addresses the nature and limitations of the U.S. Army during the era of the Indian Wars, a period he believes represents the nadir of the American military establishment.

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