Calloway's The Victory With No Name

There are several arguments that Calloway concludes with in The Victory with No Name. The primary argument is his notion that Native Americans deserve more credit than what American history has given them. Calloway states, “the day when American Indians won their greatest victory became an aberration in the national story and a blank spot in the national memory,” and argues the book will “restore the memory” of this victory (10). Moreover, Calloway demonstrates that “St. Clair’s defeat” represented the weakness and vulnerability of the new American republic, stating, “The destruction of St. Clair’s army reaffirmed westerners’ concerns that the federal government lacked the resolve to bring order,” and illustrated throughout the book that lack of communication and resources from the federal government caused the defeat of the first American army. Nevertheless, Calloway shows that Native
His heavy usage of secondary sources demonstrates his reliance on other author’s arguments and ideas rather than constructing his own opinion from primary sources. For example, Calloway references various secondary sources, including Richard Lytle’s the Soldiers of America’s First Army when writing, “the army was ineffective at anything other than local police action” (20). Moreover, Calloway provides information that is not relevant to his argument, such as detailing the land purchases made by different companies, the political structure of Native Americans, and his failure to compare it directly to the political structure of the U.S. Furthermore, despite the book focusing on acknowledging Indian victory, Calloway focuses excessively on the American perspective rather than the Indian perspective. For instance, there was only one chapter devoted to the Indians while the rest of the book focused on problems faced by Americans. Although he mentions Indians in the other chapters, the focal point are the