Ostler, JeffreyKeegan, Tara2021-11-232021-11-23https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26907Scholars have reexamined U.S. Indian policy in order to detail American genocidal efforts in the lands that became the United States. Others have studied the lives and influences of Tribes and Indigenous individuals who survived genocide and contributed their labor and creativity to modern enterprises. Rarely, however, are the two approaches combined in a single work that traces the mechanisms for survival in the face of nineteenth-century genocide and the survivors’ enduring legacies in a modern age of industry, technology, and reinvented popular culture. This dissertation utilizes archival sources and oral histories to study the intersection of traditional Indigenous and mainstream American cultures and reconstruct a timeline of genocide, survival, adaptation, and influence in Northern California from the Gold Rush to the growth of regional identities and economies in the late 1920s. Native people went from being the targets of genocide to key celebrities that projected Native modernity in the face of white supremacist backlash and “Vanishing Race” ideology that anticipated Native extinction.The central case study is the Redwood Highway Indian Marathon of 1927 and 1928—the first official “ultramarathon” in U.S. history. The story of this event provides the narrative arc and interpretive fulcrum of the dissertation. The marathon extended the 480-miles of the Redwood Highway, which also served as the racetrack. Boosters designed the event to showcase the highway and invited only Native men to participate, plus employed a Native woman as the event—and highway—mascot. These were the sites of intervention I discuss. The central case study is the Redwood Highway Indian Marathon of 1927 and 1928—the first official “ultramarathon” in U.S. history. The marathon extended the 480-miles of the Redwood Highway, which also served as the racetrack. Boosters designed the event to showcase the highway and invited only Native men to participate, plus employed a Native woman as the event—and highway—mascot. These were the sites of intervention. This project furthers studies of the Indigenous American experience and its intersection with mainstream American culture, colonialism, and evolving racism from the age of genocide through the turbulent 1920s. It documents a century-old revision of racial stereotypes and invites another today.en-USAll Rights Reserved.CaliforniaGenderIndigenousModernitySportsElectronic Thesis or Dissertation