Southern Reflections: Evolving Attitudes on Race and Region in Indian Territory

Scholars attribute conventional violence in a nuclear South Asia to a phenomenon known as the “stability/instability paradox.” According to this paradox, the risk of nuclear war makes it unlikely that conventional confict will escalate to the nuclear level, thereby making conventional confict more likely. Although this phenomenon encouraged U.S.-Soviet violence during the Cold War, it does not explain the dynamics of the ongoing confict between India and Pakistan. Recent violence has seen Pakistan or its proxies launching limited attacks on Indian territory, and India refusing to retaliate in kind. The stability/instability paradox would not predict such behavior. A low probability of conventional war escalating to the nuclear level would reduce the ability of Pakistan's nuclear weapons to deter an Indian conventional attack. Because Pakistan is conventionally weaker than India, this would discourage Pakistani aggression and encourage robust Indian conventional retaliation against Pakistani provocations. Pakistani boldness and Indian restraint have actually resulted from instability in the strategic environment. A full-scale Indo-Pakistani conventional confict would create a significant risk of nuclear escalation. This danger enables Pakistan to launch limited attacks on India while deterring allout Indian conventional retaliation and attracting international attention to the two countries' dispute over Kashmir. Unlike in Cold War Europe, in contemporary South Asia nuclear danger facilitates, rather than impedes, conventional confict.

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Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas.

Journal of American History ◽

10.2307/2081246 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 81 (2) ◽

pp. 681

Author(s):

Daniel C. Littlefield ◽

Kevin Mulroy

Keyword(s):

Indian Territory

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Indian Territory

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190903053.013.13 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 186-202

Author(s):

Clarissa W. Confer

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

American Indians ◽

American Civil War ◽

Human Suffering ◽

Indian Territory ◽

Economic Interests ◽

Military Action ◽

Sovereign Nations ◽

The Individual

American Indians residing in Indian Territory fought for both the Union and the Confederacy in the American Civil War. When war came to the region in 1861, the Five Nations—Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole—made choices derived from their cultural, political, and economic interests as sovereign nations. Military action ebbed and flowed through Indian Territory over four years, which displaced significant portions of the population at different times. At war’s end the Natives found themselves on opposing sides, both between and within the individual nations. The external as well as internal civil war deepened tribal divisions and caused substantial physical destruction and considerable human suffering.

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Dressing the Part: Evolution of Indian Dress in Faulkner

Faulkner and the Native South ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496818096.003.0005 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 66-92

Author(s):

Patricia Galloway

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Civil War ◽

Charles Dickens ◽

Indian Territory ◽

Indian People ◽

Indian Land

Charles Betts Galloway’s first charge as Methodist bishop in 1886 was Indian Territory. The bishop’s grandfather had held slaves and taken up Indian land; his father had served in the Civil War; he overlapped with Faulkner’s first twelve years; and his daughter’s son shared a desk with Faulkner in elementary school. Galloway’s hope for Indian people was that they would be converted to Christianity. He saw the Indian people he met as dignified and thoughtful in his accounts of visits and meetings with them. In addition to his observations, we have the testimony of Charles Dickens, who met Choctaw Peter Pitchlynn, and a businessman who witnessed the Chickasaw crossing the Mississippi going westward. Indian dress in Faulkner’s works has been seen as symbolic; The chapter explores this theme through the observation of men contemporaneous with the middle times of the fictional Yoknapatawpha.

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