Brian Lindenmuth of Spinetingler Magazine asked me not too long ago to review a story in an anthology entitled On Dangerous Ground: Stories of Western Noir for another of their epic review projects. And I tried really hard. But instead I ended up with a 3,000 word essay on the metaphysics of Indian hating. Go figure.

When I got the email from Brian Lindenmuth asking me to take part in a group review of the stories in a western noir anthology, I'll admit I got pretty excited. Those are two things near and dear to my heart, and I could think of all kinds of interesting avenues for this hybrid genre to take.

Then I read the story assigned me, "The Conversion of Carne Muerto," by James Reasoner. And that excitement died real quick, as I realized it was a minor variation of one of the ugliest stories in American literary history: that of the Indian hater. And that I was gonna have to explain exactly why I disliked this story so thoroughly, and that it was gonna take me a lot of words.

Following, I give it a shot. I hope you'll bear with me. Most of the information has been ripped off whole-hog from Richard Slotkins' Regeneration through Violence and Gunfighter Nation, Richard Drinnon's Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building, and Gary Clayton Anderson's The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land. Hopefully I reworded and condensed everything enough to avoid the plagiarism charges I'm sure I deserve.

The rest.