Persistent vanishings: Linda S. Thomas, ‘The Persistence of the Vanishing Indian in the Massachusetts Merrimack Valley: The Passaconaway Monument’, in Joanna Wojdon, Dorota Wiśniewska (eds), Public in Public History, Routledge, 2021
Abstrcat: This chapter critically examines the Passaconaway Monument erected in 1899 by the Passaconaway Tribe of the Improved Order of Red Men (IORM) in the Edson Cemetery in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts. In considering public monuments, one must ask which publics are involved in both production and consumption. While the general consuming public may misinterpret this statue as “honoring” the area’s Native American past, in fact, this monument is an example of a white-male-only fraternal organization solidifying and centering its own group’s replacement narrative. As the trope of the vanishing Indian became accepted as truth among settlers in the Northeast, it created a self-fulfilling prophecy for those engaging in public history activities: Native Americans could not be consulted if they were not there. In the case of the Passaconaway Monument, the IORM’s rhetoric of Indian extinction had a secondary effect of creating a missing public.
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