Robert Aquinas McNally - "The Modoc War" Launch Party Nov. 19

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Quick Links

"California Sun Podcast" features "Cast out of Eden"

Host Jeff Schechtman asks terrific questions about what he calls "an unflinching look at John Muir" in the episode he names one of the five best of the year (25:56).

"Cast out of Eden" featured on National Public Radio

Chris Cherniak of "This Green Earth" on Park City, Utah's KPCW interviews me about John Muir, Indigenous peoples, and the American wilderness (19:40).

"Cast out of Eden" on C-SPAN Book TV

My Commonwealth Club conversation about the book with Anthony Dudley of Earth Live independent media network is available for viewing on demand.

Journeys of Discovery: "Cast out of Eden"

NPR award-winning podcast host Tom Wilmer declares the book's revelations "game changing." Likely, Muir would agree.

A Book & Its Author: "Cast out of Eden"

In this podcast release I talk with host Mark Oxoby about how Cast out of Eden grew out of The Modoc War and what it means to take a journalistic approch to reporting and writing history.

On Judging a Book by Its Cover

Keep in mind that commonplace saying, "You can't tell a book by its cover." Like a lot of things we've been told, that's just plain wrong

A Book & Its Author: "The Modoc War"

In this March 2023 issue of the podcast, I talk with host Marc Oxoby about the war and the California genocide and read a sample of what is always a gripping narrative of a most disturbing tale.

Five Questions with Robert Aquinas McNally

In this feature from California Sun, I make the leap from Lava Beds National Monument as center of the created universe over the best burger in my hometown to dinner with John Steinbeck and friends. Scroll down.

Little Indian War Goes Big

The few ups and many downs of the Modoc War of 1872–73: gunfights, battles, hangings, decapitations in the name of science, all played out against the backdrop of California's state-sponsored genocide of Native peoples. A hard and necessary story.

Answers to Writing Questions You May Never Have Thought of

Carpentry is a good metaphor for explaining the difference between being a writer and being an author, for example. You'll also learn why backpacking with sons Darren McNally and Brian McNally is way cool, and how it is that partner Gayle Eleanor and I prefer wild places to cities.

A Dark History Hits Home (240 KB)

California's governor apologizes for the state's Native genocide before a gathering of tribal leaders and takes a first step toward healing a complex and bloody legacy. This article appears in the winter 2019 issue of California History.

California's Genocide Steps into the Light

In only the two years since The Modoc War was published, this state's extermination of Native peoples has lost its news value. More and more people, including non-Natives, have heard of it. There's a reason, and it's likely other than what you think.

Harte for the Wiyots

A young journalist working along the northern coast of California, Bret Harte found out how dangerous it could be to confront the genocidal reality behind a massacre of local Wiyot Indians.

California Governor Opens the Door on Native Genocide in the State's Closet and Apologizes

In an unprecedented move in front of a gathering of tribal leaders, Gov. Gavin Newsom took responsibility for California's state-sponsored attempt to wipe out its Native peoples in the second half of the 19th-century. He went on to apologize for this atrocity and to establish a Truth and Healing Council to address the genocide's unresolved justice issues.

Telling the Truth About the Modocs

Sometimes the book you set out to write differs from the book you finish. The truth may be other than what you imagined. Here's the backstory.

Selected Works

Nonfiction

Cast out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples, and the American Wilderness

Telling the long-neglected part of Muir's story, Cast out of Eden lays out his take on the tribal nations he encountered and his embrace of an ethos that forced those tribes from their homelands. Although Muir questioned and worked against Euro-America's distrust of wild spaces and its deep-seated desire to tame and exploit them, his view excluded Native Americans as fallen peoples who stained the wilderness's pristine sanctity. Fortunately, in a transformation that a resurrected and updated Muir might approve, this long-standing injustice is beginning to be undone, as Indigenous nations and the federal government work together to ensure that quintessentially American lands from Bears Ears to Yosemite serve all Americans equally.

The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age

Robert Aquinas McNally tells the wrenching story of the Modoc War of 1872–73, one of the nation’s most dramatic conflicts against North American Indigenous peoples. The book won a 2018 gold medal from the Commonwealth Club as the year's best nonfiction focused on California.

Poetry

Songs of the Two Names

"… sheer elegance, impeccable craft, and… authority"

Simply to Know Its Name

"… a guide into how specifics of Nature reveal a constant presence of the Other…"

"The Modoc War" Launch Party Nov. 19

October 10, 2017

That’s a Sunday, the time 3–5 p.m., and the place Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, 55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek, CA 94596. Beverages and finger foods, a short reading from the book, and the opportunity to buy a copy if you so desire. Of course, I’ll autograph it. Headcount helpful, so RSVP here.

Upcoming Events

• Friday, Nov. 3, 2017, 2–4 p.m. Signing event for The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age. University of Nebraska Press exhibit booth at the Western History Association annual conference, Hilton San Diego Resort & Spa, 1775 E. Mission Bay Dr., San Diego, CA 92109. Conference details and registration on the WHA website.

• Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017, 7 p.m. Reading and signing, The Modoc War. Klamath County Museum, 1451 Main Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97626.

• Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017, 3–5 p.m. The Modoc War launch party. Beverages, finger foods, and author autographs. 55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek, CA 94596. RSVP.

• Sunday, Nov. 26, 2017, 1–3 p.m. “Thanksgiving Nightmare: America’s Native Genocide.” Presentation on how European settlers disposed of the Indigenous peoples of this continent, using the Modoc War as a brutal case in point. Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, 55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek, CA 94596. Enrollment information available on the MDUUC website. Cost $15, all proceeds to MDUUC.

The Herky-Jerky Way The Modoc War Came to Be

In a manner of speaking, this book took 40 years. Not because I was actually writing it all that time, but because it happened in fits, starts, and stages, metamorphosing like butterfly from caterpillar again and again. In the end, the book I finished was not the one I started.

Which is just fine. Surprises are a sign that the writer is getting out of the way and letting the material goes where it must.

“Telling the Truth About the Modocs: The Long Road to the Real Story” dives into the evolution of The Modoc War. You'll find a link to this essay at the top of the Quick Links section of my website's right-hand column.

A Little Bit on Something Big: Genocide

In a purely lexical way, the crime didn’t exist until 1944. That was the year when it was coined by international lawyer Raphaël Lemkin, who combined the Greek genos, meaning “race,” with the Latin cide, meaning “killing.” Lemkin went on to lay the legal foundation for the United Nations’ definition of genocide as a crime in 1948. He was, of course, thinking of Nazi Germany’s extermination campaigns, but he was quick to point out that the Holocaust was nothing new. Rather, it was “an old practice in modern development.” Indeed, when Lemkin died, he was working on a book about historical genocides, including the Native peoples of North America.

By legal definition, genocide comprises acts “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by killing, causing serious physical or mental harm, creating conditions of life calculated to destroy, and preventing births. As you’ll see in The Modoc War, that’s what happened to the Modocs. And it befell many other nations, tribes, and communities of Native Americans as well.