The Heart of Everything That Is

August 12, 2013
For all of our culture’s fascination with the American Indian, it’s almost impossible to believe that one of the most well-known Indians of his time, the Oglala Sioux warrior chief Red Cloud, could be largely forgotten until now. Yet that’s exactly what we discover in this illuminating account by Drury and Clavin (Halsey’s Typhoon). As the de facto leader of the Western Sioux nation—an unprecedented feat in itself given the Sioux’s rigorous individualism and a “culture consisted of fluid, haphazard tribal groups”—Red Cloud and his army stand alone in history as the only Indians to ever defeat the United States in a war, which took all of two years (1866–1868). A history inconveniently at odds with the accepted American narrative, the manuscript for Red Cloud’s 1893 autobiography lay in a drawer at the Nebraska State Historical Society into the 1990s. Thanks to that work and the authors’ extensive, additional scholarship, readers now have access to a much more thorough, comprehensive understanding of the Plains Indians’ brutal and tragically futile efforts to protect their land and way of living from the progress of ”civilization.” Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel-Weber Associates.

June 1, 2013

The New York Times best-selling coauthors have an intriguing subject in Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud--the only Plains Indian to defeat the U.S. Army in war. Among the resources they use to help polish our memory of Red Cloud, now somewhat faded, is an autobiography lost for more than 100 years.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2013

Red Cloud (1822-1909) was an Oglala Sioux war chief who successfully led Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux warriors against the U.S. Army. The war was sparked by the 1863 construction of the Bozeman Trail, which connected Montana's gold fields to the Oregon Trail in violation of the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty. From 1866 to 1868, Red Cloud proved such a brilliant tactician that the United States sued for peace to end what became known as Red Cloud's War. The resulting Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 found the United States pledging to stay out of the Sioux hunting grounds and to close the Bozeman Trail. In exchange, Red Cloud and his people pledged to live in peace on the Great Sioux Reservation. Journalists Drury and Clavin (coauthors, The Last Stand of Fox Company) have written a gripping narrative that illuminates Red Cloud's battlefield prowess. They also show how Red Cloud, a shrewd politician, rejected the overtures of Sitting Bull to join the disastrous 1876-77 war over the Black Hills. By choosing peace, Red Cloud ultimately accomplished more for his followers than he could have gained on the battlefield. VERDICT This fascinating book is highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of the Old West. Readers should also consider Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas, edited by R. Eli Paul. [See Prepub Alert, 5/13/13.]--John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2013
Sharply honed life of the only American Indian leader to definitively beat the United States in war, short-lived though the defeat might have been. Popular military historians Drury and Clavin (Last Men Out: The True Story of America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam, 2011, etc.) offer a battle-and-skirmish account of Sioux leader Red Cloud's war on the whites who invaded the Great Plains, though their narrative is strong on ethnohistorical matters as well. When a white officer sputtered "Horseshit" against Red Cloud's claim that the Sioux had an ancestral claim to the Black Hills, for instance, the authors are able to explain that, be that as it may, the Sioux had developed an emergence story to back up their case--one that, as it happened, had its first mention on the Sioux calendar "the summer before America's Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence." Drury and Clavin frame their story with what has been called the Fetterman Massacre (here, better put, the Fetterman Fight), in 1866, when an unfortunate Army officer led his command into a trap that led to their deaths, but they pack it with details taken from many episodes in the early history of Sioux relations with the whites, as well as with other tribes. They credit Red Cloud with forming a powerful alliance of peoples, among them the Cheyenne and Shoshone, the only way the Indians could resist white encroachment into their homeland. Even so, as the authors note, when Red Cloud was invited to Washington to sign a peace treaty and was taken to a federal arsenal to see the assembled weaponry available to his enemy, he recognized that the days of his people's suzerainty were numbered, even as he continued to mount "the most impressive campaign in the annals of Indian warfare," which lasted from 1866 to 1868. A well-researched and -written account of an often overlooked figure in the history of the Indian Wars.

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