This cracked me up no end. It was part of a discussion on rec.arts.sf.written, which turned into one about what people had and hadn’t learned in school about the War of 1812. Nicoll is from Canada; Watt-Evans is from the US. As a veteran of a lot of Usenet War of 1812 discussions, I find this one biased but accurate. 
For those young’uns unfamiliar with the nested pattern of old style Usenet quoting conventions:
James Nicoll wrote:
>>> I’m guessing Lundy’s Lane didn’t get mentioned much, despite
>>>it being peculiarly representative of the Attempted Land Grab Instigated
>>>by Southern Warhawks Safely Insulated from the Effects of the War by
>>>the Long-Suffering People of New England: it was a bloody battle and
>>>neither side agrees who actually won it.
More stuff is said, and Nicoll adds in another post:
>> And at least one history class presented it as a Canadian
>>victory, which it was only in the negative sense (For Canada to
>>exist, the US has to not decisively win in Upper Canada).
Lawrence Watt-Evans (the fantasy writer) replies:
>In fact, I’d never heard of it before; the entire northern land
>campaign of the War of 1812 was dismissed with a sentence or so along
>the lines of, “An attempted invasion of Canada failed.”>What we learned about from that war was the siege of Baltimore, the
>burning of Washington, the surprising ability of the U.S. Navy to put
>up a respectable fight, and Andy Jackson making his rep in Louisiana;
>anything close to home was quietly ignored.
Nicoll then says (my bolding, spelling unchanged):
We got told about Detroit, Queenston Heights, Lundy’s Lane,
Ogdensberg, Washington, the Battle at the Thames River, the burning
of York and such but the massacre at the River Raisen* was completely
left out even though it is what touched off the custom of winning hearts
and minds in Upper Canada by burning down people’s homes.In fact, I think the exact timing of Isaac Brock’s death
at Queenston Heights re the rest of the Warhawk’s War might have
been passed by quickly, in order to better ignore the dismal performance
of his successors (Prevost, Sheaffe and Proctor). By dying in battle,
he did get to join other Canadian martyrs like Wolfe and Montcalm.*Following the battle about 70 American combatants died
spontaneously of a hemoragic swamp fever whose symptoms
coincidentally happened to resemble hatchet wounds.The same British officer blamed for the supposed Indian massacre at
the River Raisen, Henry Proctor, was also in charge at Fort Miami,
where around 40 Americans caught the same disease. He was known for
his talent at advancing towards the rear, leading Tecumseh to praise
his thusly:“a fat animal which slinks away, its tail between its legs”.
After the Battle of the Thames, which saw one volley from the British
before they fled and the death of Tecunseh at the hands of the barbaric
Americans, Proctor was court martialed, effectively ending his
career.
Wow, I spent a *lot* of time in Tecumseh, Michigan (on the Raisin) and never knew about this battle to begin with. Heck, Monroe isn’t all that far from Toledo to begin with, and we never learned about this battle in school.
Well, I think it’s not taught these days on the US side, because nobody wants to promote hatred of Canadians or Native Americans/First Nations tribes.
Unfortunately, this leaves Americans with no way to explain the burning of York or the late intense American love of Tecumseh — who after all was determined to destroy the US and replace it with his own united confederation of tribes. You can’t understand how offended ordinary frontier Americans were, by a VP candidate claiming to be the man who killed Tecumseh, if killing Tecumseh were generally seen as a Good Thing. You can’t understand why so many places and things in whitest America are named after the man, or why there’s a statue of him, an American enemy, in the middle of the Naval Academy. But even in the play Tecumseh, the matter was not fully explained.
If you do know the story (which I only learned from my father orally), then you understand what’s going on. But nobody tells us. And yet it used to be a hugely important event to Americans, and to Canadians too.
You’ll notice that even at the battlefield website, the massacre is relegated to a sidebar. Very weird. Sorta like if Auschwitz’s website referred to the place as a famous detention facility, and then on the sidebar had some verbiage about people getting killed there, but left ovens and Mengele to you to discover in your own study.
I will further note how _weird_ it is, that Native Americans who were traditionally set up for adulation and imitation by young Americans — like Tecumseh and Chief Logan — are actually not taught as much as they used to be in the 1800′s and early 1900′s. You would think all the multiculturalism would make them more popular in textbooks, not less.
I think my Ohio History textbook was the last gasp of learning about Chief Logan in school, whereas Mr. McGuffey made you memorize his speech as part of McGuffey’s Readers.
Re: local stuff, I learned a lot about Shakers and the Moravians at Gnadenhutten, but nothing about the effect of Precious Blood Fathers and Sisters on Ohio history or Ohio schools. (Which is weird, because half of our Ohio history class seemed to be about Ohio schools.) We didn’t even learn in CCD or Religion class in my parish about the several saints with Ohio connections, although we did have to memorize the names (not told anything about the deeds) of Mother Seton and Mother Cabrini. And now that you mention it, most of what I know about frontier history I learned from our 7th grade Ohio history teacher, who drew on non-textbook sources to teach us; or of course, my dad.