Battle Of Little Bighorn Research Articles

Sound and Vision

Sound and Vision
 Battlescape analysis: Towards a Unified Method for Battlefield Archaeology
 Ever since the survey at the site of the battle of Little Big Horn in the 1980s, the number of battlefield archaeological projects has been rising. Still, despite increasing research and publications on the subject, a clearly defined and unified method for battlefield archaeology that connects all the loose ends is still lacking. This paper sets out to present a unified method for battlefield archaeology, presented here as Battlescape Analysis. A battlescape is made of everything from overall logistics, climate and weather, tactics to the very battlefield itself􀀞 a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Battlefields are parts of complex eco-systems in which an interplay of different agents and actants takes place. The different approaches that make out the unified method are mostly not novel but the intention of the article is to present a common language to facilitate work on the subject across boundaries.

They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story by Gretchen Cassel Eick

Reviewed by: They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story by Gretchen Cassel Eick Janet Dean They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story. By Gretchen Cassel Eick. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2020. xiii + 353 pp. $45.00 cloth. When Charles Ohiyesa Eastman and Elaine Goodale married in 1891, they formed a power couple in the fight for Indigenous people in the United States. He was a Santee Dakota (Sioux) doctor, serving his community as government physician at the Pine Ridge Agency. She was a white teacher and writer from Massachusetts whose work with Indigenous students at Hampton Institute led to a government position as supervisor of education in the Dakotas. Despite [End Page 177] their Indian Bureau appointments, both had reputations as critics of federal Indian policy and advocates for western tribes. Joining forces in life and work, the Eastmans would go on to dedicate their lives to the advancement of Indigenous rights. But the inauspicious timing of their engagement, days before the massacre at Wounded Knee, suggests the magnitude of what they, and their marriage, were up against: no less than a national campaign to eliminate Native American peoples and cultures. Less discernibly, the couple faced tensions within the movement they helped lead, as well as changes in their individual views about what was in the best interests of Indigenous people. Gretchen Cassel Eick’s They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story uses the record of this fascinating shared life as a framework for exploring the conflicts and contradictions of the Progressive Era. Interweaving descriptions of the Eastmans’ nearly thirty-year partnership with overviews of major historical events, shifts in government policy, and developments in reform movements, Eick offers not so much an intimate portrait of a marriage as a case study in the convergence of the personal and the political. Eick draws on scholarly biographies and the Eastmans’ memoirs, but rather than just presenting side-by-side life stories, she illuminates the major events that positioned her subjects between white and Indigenous worlds. The opening chapters focus on the Dakota War of 1862, which made Charles Eastman a refugee when he was four years old. Charles was raised by his grandmother in a traditional Dakota community in Canada; at fifteen, he was reunited with his father and brothers, who had been imprisoned by the United States and had emerged Christianized and assimilated. Charles learned English, converted to Christianity, and earned degrees from Dartmouth College and Boston University School of Medicine, but as Eick notes, he retained a belief that practicing traditional culture was an important form of resistance. Eick devotes less attention to Elaine’s early years but outlines a childhood in a New England family dedicated to social reform and an early writing career (as a teenager, she published a book of poetry with her sister). By the time of her marriage, Elaine was writing articles criticizing the commissioner of Indian Affairs and exposing the corruption of land speculators, railroad companies, and political appointees who exploited tribes. She learned Dakota and spent a year traveling to reservations to document conditions. In the years that followed their marriage, Charles held a variety of positions as Elaine supported his career and raised their six children, writing when she could. Eick details Charles’s work as a representative for the YMCA (he started forty-three chapters of the organization on reservations around the country), a lobbyist, an educator, a Bureau of Indian Affairs official, and a founder and president of the Society of American Indians. She chronicles Charles’s growing [End Page 178] celebrity as an author and speaker and the couples’ creation of a summer camp devoted to teaching Indigenous practices. Alternating with these descriptions are analyses of historical events, from the Battle of Little Big Horn to World War I, and introductions to a cast of prominent figures, including Chief Red Cloud, Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Emma Goldman, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin/Zitkala-Ŝa, and Mabel Dodge Luhan. While most of these figures did not directly interact with the Eastmans, their stories offer rich context for understanding the transformations in politics, society, and culture that the couple was experiencing at...

“This Bloomin’ Country’s a Fraud”: Musical Commodification and Westward Expansion in Sharon Pollock’s Walsh

Canadian playwright Sharon Pollock’s Walsh (1973) revisits the aftermath of the Battle of Little Big Horn (1876) when Sitting Bull led the Sioux to cross the Canadian border for seeking refuge, befriended Major John Walsh of the North West Mounted Police and yet was forced to surrender to the American forces despite diplomatic exchanges. Since the play roughly coincides with the centennial celebrations in Canada and marks a renewed interest in Canadian drama for national topics, it has been studied in terms of its critical perspective to official historiography and its metadramatic treatment of the mentioned historical events. However, less scholarly attention has been spared to the use of songs in the play. Prioritizing the song form in its musical structure, Walsh integrates the history of westward expansion with the emerging economy and technology of music, resulting in the commodification of music at the turn of the twentieth century.

Plains Indian Buffalo Cultures: Art from the Paul Dyck Collection by Emma I. Hansen

Reviewed by: Plains Indian Buffalo Cultures: Art from the Paul Dyck Collection by Emma I. Hansen Emily C. Burns Plains Indian Buffalo Cultures: Art from the Paul Dyck Collection. By Emma I. Hansen. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. ix + 178 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95, paper. Joining an array of beautifully illustrated books that chart expansive private collections of American Indian art objects is Emma I. Hansen’s analysis of the Paul Dyck collection of about 2,000 objects, acquired in 2007 by the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. In the footsteps of his father, Dyck avidly pursued acquiring objects for his “Buffalo Culture Collection” over his lifetime, and also used his collection as inspiration for his own art-making. Hanson’s accessibly written and well researched volume presents a broad selection from this collection which largely comprises prereservation-era objects made by citizens of the Crow, Pawnee, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne, [End Page 386] Shoshone, Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, Dakota, Kiowa Comanche, Blackfoot, Otoe, Nez Perce, and other indigenous nations in the Great Plains. Hanson’s analysis simultaneously considers points of cultural overlap and shared artistic interests across these communities while flexibly allowing for occasional divergences and cultural specificity as appropriate, such as for beading techniques. She interweaves discussion of the lineage of Plains Indian art traditions with the adaptability of art production during the beginning of the reservation era. After a foreword by Oglala Lakota artist Arthur Amiotte, thematic chapters cover (1) the context of “Buffalo Culture” societies; (2) the material culture of warrior and hunting societies; (3) an analysis of a muslin painting of warrior life by Apsáalooke (Crow) painter Mee-nah-t-see-us (White Swan); (4) the role of women in Plains Indian art production; (5) the function of visual culture to bestow leadership and respect, both for men and women; (6) the relationship of art to horse culture in the Plains; and (7) the legacies of the Dyck collection, as well as a discussion of its occasional reservation-era artifacts, like ration cards and passports. The volume might do more to show the reciprocity between the details of the aesthetics of the objects and their histories, contexts, and uses, as well as framing the Dyck collection objects in a larger trajectory of Plains Indian art production. For example, how does Meenah-t-see-us’s depiction of himself as a warrior scout working with the Seventh Calvary in 1876 overlap with and distinguish itself from Lakota painter Mató Nájin’s (Standing Bear’s) depiction of the Battle of Little Bighorn (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017.718.2)? Yet the volume is at its best in Hanson’s investments in indigenous voices in the textual as well as the visual by drawing a large percentage of its primary and secondary source material from indigenous accounts. Her project also draws welcome attention to the role of women in Plains Indian society, in a deep reading of their labor of producing art objects, in participating in ceremonies, and in developing societies for art production. For scholars of Native American art, spiritualities, and history as well as for the lay reader, this book blurs the boundaries between traditional and adapted art practices, in the process revealing the cultural layers of Plains Indian nations as well as their resilience. Emily C. Burns Department of Art and Art History Auburn University Copyright © 2019 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Americans

Americans

Cheyenne Odyssey: Representing Removal in an Educational Video Game

This articles reflects on the process of creating digital media in collaboration with Native communities, using the example of Cheyenne Odyssey, a game from Mission US, to argue that such media can illuminate the perspectives of Indigenous peoples for a wide audience while also creating digital repositories for both visual and narrative forms of knowledge. This game takes on the difficult challenge of portraying very sensitive moments of US history to middle school-age children. The game walks the player through the Battle of Little Big Horn, the forced removal of the Northern Cheyenne people, their harrowing journey home again, and even the massacre of Dull Knife’s band at Fort Robinson. The creators of the game brought Cheyenne perspectives to the process by consulting Northern Cheyenne elders, historians, and even school children, as well as archival materials, and scholars of Cheyenne history, including the author. This multifaceted collaboration resulted in a game that presented Cheyenne history in a way that reflected Cheyenne values while providing non-Cheyenne people with an accessible narrative that, nevertheless, disrupts the familiar history of westward expansion in the United States. At the same time, the game makes new a history familiar to every Cheyenne by presenting it in a fresh medium that captivates young people. The public nature of this online game empowers Cheyenne people to take pride in their own historical narratives.

Ernest Haycox and the Western by Richard W. Etulain

Reviewed by: Ernest Haycox and the Western by Richard W. Etulain Daniel Worden Richard W. Etulain, Ernest Haycox and the Western. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2017. 200 pp. Cloth, $29.95. A productive author of Western fiction, Ernest Haycox wrote twenty-four novels and over two hundred short stories. Most notably for scholars of Western American literature and film today, Haycox's 1937 story "Stage to Lordsburg" was adapted into John Ford's landmark 1939 film Stagecoach. In his engaging biographical study, Richard W. Etulain chronicles Haycox's career as a Western writer, from his prolific work for pulp magazines to his later interest in breaking out of the Western formula he helped to define. In so doing, Etulain offers not only a valuable study of Haycox and his [End Page 261] work but also a model for how neglected Western writers can be approached as both literary figures and laborers within a publishing industry that thrived on the Western genre. Etulain's book begins with a brief account of the Western genre's emergence, from frontier narratives and Cooper's Leatherstocking saga to the Western genre's solidification into "something of a morality play" by the first decades of the twentieth century (18). This sets the scene for Haycox's entrance into literary culture in the 1920s, when he devotes himself to "learning and practicing the formula of the Western" that had become ubiquitous in pulp and middlebrow magazines (19). After establishing the literary context Haycox would encounter as an adult, Etulain then tells Haycox's life story, from his birth in Portland, Oregon, to a family that struggled financially and moved around a great deal, to high school, and to service overseas during World War I. Attending college first at Reed, then at the University of Oregon, Haycox wrote for campus newspapers, and in so doing, Etulain notes, Haycox would begin to articulate his worldview: "He held that one should be independent in beliefs and actions but not to such an extent as to isolate one's self from society" (34). This perspective has a clear affinity with the Western genre, in which isolated individual Westerners are often compelled to act heroically, in the interests of a larger good. In a brief foray into Haycox's politics, Etulain also remarks that Haycox's worldview would reach beyond his fiction writing and "helps explain why Haycox stood against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and became a strong advocate of conservative Republicanism in the 1930s and 1940s" (34). This is a rare gesture in the book to the broader social and political currents that surrounded Haycox and the Western in the twentieth century. The book's major focus is on the development of Haycox's literary career, from his short stories and serialized novels in pulp magazines such as Western Story Magazine, his later publications in the more prestigious and better paying Collier's, and his novels. Etulain details Haycox's vision of writing, which differs from more romantic conceptions of the profession, noting that "Haycox considered himself more of a craftsman than an artist. He was convinced that writing could be compared with plumbing, [End Page 262] carpentering, or any other such skill" (71). Gradually, Haycox began to depart from the Western genre formulas he honed in the pulps, perhaps most notably in his 1944 historical novel about the Battle of Little Big Horn, Bugles in the Afternoon. He would continue this focus on history, instead of formula, with the posthumously published The Earthbreakers in 1952. In this novel, Etulain sees evidence of a broader conception of novelistic form, a more complex representation of character, and a nuanced engagement with history. Unfortunately, Haycox would not complete the trilogy that The Earthbreakers was supposed to begin. Ernest Haycox and the Western portrays the life of a working Western writer, devoted to craft and the market yet not without literary ambitions. In the book's epilogue, Etulain reflects on Haycox's place, or lack thereof, in the canon of Western American literature and whether we should think of Haycox among genre writers like Max Brand, Zane Grey, and Louis L'Amour or among more "literary" figures such as Walter...

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

Reviewed by: Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson Lori Burlingame Joe Jackson, Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016. 599 pp. Cloth, $30. Jackson's biography is an epic, comprehensively researched historical and sociopolitical account of the life of Black Elk (1863–1950), revered and iconic Oglala Lakota visionary and healer. Born on the cusp of the most turbulent period of change in Native North American history, Black Elk bore witness to his people's unimaginable losses and to their incredible story of strength and "survivance." Black Elk's 1872 vision of the sacred hoop and the restoration of balance haunted him; he strove to understand it and felt a sacred responsibility to honor and preserve it, which is why he shared his story with poet John Neihardt. Jackson's narrative begins with the first encounter between Black Elk and Neihardt and then moves chronologically through the events of Black Elk's life as they converge with pivotal moments in Native history. Black Elk killed a soldier at the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn, where Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were defeated. He bore witness to escalating tensions between the Lakotas and Whites, the theft of his people's sacred lands, the killing of his second cousin Crazy Horse in 1877, and the near extinction of the buffalo. Because of his powerful vision, Black Elk became a healer and performed traditional ceremonies. He and his people suffered the hardships of reservation life at Pine Ridge, where increasingly the US government and the Catholic Church worked to outlaw Lakota traditions and ceremonies, like the Sun Dance. From 1886 to 1888 Black Elk performed with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in England. Jackson explores Black Elk's missing of the ship home, his injury while working in Joe Shelley's Western Wilds of America Show, and his relationship with a Parisian woman. He returned home in 1889, just prior to the Sioux Ghost Dance. [End Page 459] Jackson narrates in inspiring detail Black Elk's courage in charging at soldiers while under intense fire, thus enabling some fellow Lakotas who were captive to escape during the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. In 1904 Black Elk was baptized in the Catholic Church, after having previously clashed with Jesuit priests over his work as a traditional Lakota healer. Jackson delineates Black Elk's conflicted relationship with Christianity; he worked as a catechist for over twenty years but as early as 1923 began to practice traditional ways again and from 1936 to 1945 managed the Duhamel Indian Pageant at the Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns. Black Elk's son, Ben, was a student at the Carlisle Boarding School, and both Ben and Neihardt passed away in 1973, the year of the Siege of Wounded Knee. Jackson documents the close relationship between the Black Elk and Neihardt families, as well as Black Elk's connection with Joseph Epes Brown, recorder and editor of The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953). Particularly poignant is Jackson's account of Black Elk's 1931 climbing of Harney Peak, the last mountain in his vision; while he was praying for his people there, it began to rain—perhaps a sign to Black Elk, a thunder dreamer, that his prayers had been heard. Jackson's biography is colorful and thoroughly engaging; readers will have a hard time putting it down. Every topic raised, from Black Elk's heyoka ceremony to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, is exhaustively addressed, and while some topics examined, like the Whitechapel murders, might be viewed as tangents, they are all connected to a deeper understanding of the historical circumstances that shaped Black Elk's life. Featuring a user-friendly organizational structure, Jackson's text includes a listing and description of key historical figures and maps of places discussed, photographs, English names of Lakota months, and a timeline of events. A premise of Jackson's biography is that Neihardt endeavored to the extent possible to be true to Black Elk's voice, even as he employed poetic license in writing Black Elk...

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

Reviewed by: Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson Michael F. Steltenkamp S.J. Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary. By Joe Jackson. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2016. Pp. xxii, 600. $30.00. ISBN 978-0-374-25330-1.) This biography addresses the life of a Lakota (Sioux) holy man who gained admirers worldwide through John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1972). His fuller identity was revealed in Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala (1993) and Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic (2009). Jackson's primary focus is on the same period that Neihardt addressed. He devotes 347 pages to the man's first twenty-five years, while giving just 118 pages to his last sixty. Both factual and fictional in its portrayal of the holy man, this work is rich in speculation—with Jackson even proposing the name of a never-before-identified soldier that Black Elk may have killed at the battle of Little Bighorn. Historical events are fleshed out—providing context at times but also lengthening the work unnecessarily. This is not a criticism of the author's laudatory desire to inform but rather of his editor's having allowed so much to be reported, e.g., six pages describing John Neihardt's life! The dust jacket itself gives pause to readers [End Page 377] when two of its four testimonials are in praise of another book penned by the author (a fiction writer of some renown). Although countless assertions are made without documentation, this authorial style might appeal to nonspecialists. However, one needs to be wary of drawing conclusions about Black Elk since numerous flaws appear throughout the text—as shown in the sampling that follows: identification of Tekakwitha as "Mohican" instead of Mohawk (p. 15); reference to Lakota spirit-entities as "gods" (pp. 16, 426–27, 484); acceptance of Black Elk's fictional "lament" as fact (pp. 16, 426–27); reference to men as "braves" (pp. 154, 327), to women as "squaws" (pp. 323, 339), and to babies as "papooses" (p. 136)—terms not used in scholarly literature; misidentification of Fort Peck as Fort "Peak" (pp. 174ff); uncritical acceptance of oral traditions that are debatable or demonstrably false (pp. 272, 321, 338, 397, with all opinions given equal weight); racialization of "Lakota men" as "exotic, mysterious, sensual" (p. 272); citation of the Great Sioux "Reservation" (the proper reference) as the Great Sioux "Reserve" (p. 280); failure to attribute Red Cloud's well-known quotation (p. 281); reference to Louis "Gall" when the name is "Goll" (pp. 286ff, 580)—an important matter since there was a contemporary Lakota named "Gall" and a priest named "Gall" (pp. 461ff); erroneous placement of Bernard Fagan on the reservation in the 1930s (p. 356); a reference to interfaith dialogue "ecumenicism" where it should be "ecumenism" (p. 364); inaccurate dates for Red Cloud's war, which took place in 1866–68 (not 1865–68, as a photo notes); an assertion that Black Elk continued his traditional healing practice when evidence says the opposite (pp. 364, 366ff); ignorance of the fact that a Jesuit "provincial" (not the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions) deploys Jesuit priests (p. 370); citation of the Book of Revelation as the Book of "Revelations" (p. 373); a claim that Black Elk identified himself with the Bible's Paul, along with the proposal that this association was, and is, widespread (pp. 381ff); etc. The Catholic Church appointed a postulator in 2017 to investigate the holy man's cause for canonization as a saint, but Jackson's work will not contribute to this process. His Black Elk is more associated with the oft-heard trope that Lakota elders resisted embracing a Christian identity. Jackson's Black Elk is not a devout Catholic but is, rather, the die-hard traditionalist portrayed by John and Hilda Neihardt. It is their portrayal that Jackson adopts uncritically—echoing all the stereotypes that they espoused—of Indians, Black Elk, settlers, soldiers, and the Native encounter with Christianity. Jackson commendably provides much information related to the holy man and his people. Unfortunately, the net result is a one-dimensional misrepresentation of Black Elk's experience. The...

A Cheyenne Voice: The Complete John Stands In Timber Interviews by John Stands (review)

Reviewed by: A Cheyenne Voice: The Complete John Stands In Timber Interviews by John Stands Christina Gish Hill A Cheyenne Voice: The Complete John Stands In Timber Interviews. By John Stands In Timber and Margot Liberty. Foreword by Raymond J. DeMallie. Map commentary by Michael N. Donahue. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. xxi + 495 pp. Illustrations, maps, map notes, index. $34.95 cloth. By publishing A Cheyenne Voice, a compilation of the transcribed interviews of John Stands In Timber, Margot Liberty has made available a priceless resource on Northern Plains history. This volume represents not only years of careful scholarship by both Liberty and Stands In Timber, but it is also a model of collaborative research between Native and non- Native scholars. Since 1967, thousands of readers have enjoyed Cheyenne Memories, the first book to emerge from the long scholarly relationship between these two historians. Whereas Cheyenne Memories resembles other as- told-to Indigenous life histories, presenting a rather seamless historical narrative woven together from unseen interviews, A Cheyenne Voice records each interview in the order recorded, including the questions posed by Liberty, revealing a record of a life and a research process that is rarely available to the public. Most field notes and interviews languish away in archives, inaccessible without time and money for travel. By publishing these transcriptions, Liberty has made the fruits of her collaboration with Stands In Timber accessible to anyone. A Cheyenne Voice provides insight into both Cheyenne history and the methodology of learning and recording these narratives from both a scholarly and an Indigenous perspective. Through the foreword and introduction, readers learn about the life of John Stands In Timber and his diligent efforts to learn about Northern Cheyenne histories from the oldest generations of his home community. They also discover the potential of collaborative relationships between scholars and Native historians. The interviews themselves reveal the depth of knowledge Stands In Timber had gained [End Page 189] about Northern Cheyenne history and culture. It is obvious from the text that he was a natural historian, not only learning narratives but also carefully documenting dates of important events and names of participants. The volume provides detailed information on almost any topic related to Cheyenne culture and history, including early migrations, practices of the military societies, expectations of the chiefs, courtship, marriage, battles with other tribal nations and with US troops, the transition to reservation life, and even religious narratives and ceremonies. The text also reproduces three maps of the Battle of Little Big Horn, drawn by Stands In Timber himself. Though long, at 480 pages of narrative, this book is a treasure for anyone wishing to learn more about the Northern Cheyenne. Readers have Stands In Timber’s words before them, almost unadulterated by an editor’s pen. In these pages, they will find one Cheyenne man’s perspective on his people’s history and their adaptations to the dramatic transition of life on the Plains to life on the reservation, including the violence that accompanied this process. This book is not merely an autobiographical account of this powerful history, it is also a carefully researched ethnohistory of a people. Stands In Timber certainly deserves the title of historian for his detailed exploration of oral histories preserved by the generations who came before him. Now his important research is finally available to us all. Christina Gish Hill Iowa State University Copyright © 2015 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

West of the Revolution: an uncommon history of 1776

In 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the Continental Congress declared independence, and Washington crossed the Delaware. We are familiar with these famous moments in American history, but we know little about the extraordinary events occurring that same year far beyond the British colonies. In this distinctive history, Claudio Saunt tells an intriguing, largely untold story of an immense and restless continent connected in surprising ways. In that pivotal the Spanish established the first European colony in San Francisco and set off a cataclysm for the region's native residents. The Russians pushed into Alaska in search of valuable sea otters, devastating local Aleut communities. And the British extended their fur trade from Hudson Bay deep into the continent, sparking an environmental revolution that transformed America's boreal forests. While imperial officials in distant Europe maneuvered to control lands they knew almost nothing about, America's indigenous peoples sought their own advantage. Creek Indians navigated the Caribbean to explore trade with Cuba. The Osages expanded their dominion west of the Mississippi River, overwhelming the small Spanish outposts in the area. And the Sioux advanced across the Dakotas. One traditional Sioux history states that they first seized the Black Hills, the territory they now consider their sacred homeland, in 1776. Two nations were born that year, Saunt writes. The native one would win its final military victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn one hundred years later. From the Aleutian Islands to the Gulf Coast and across the oceans to Europe's imperial capitals, Saunt's masterfully researched narrative reveals an interconnected web of history that spans not just the forgotten parts of North America but the entire globe. Richly illustrated, with maps that reenvision a familiar landscape, West of the Revolution explores a turbulent continent in a year of many revolutions.

Following Orders: Deliberate Defeat at the Little Bighorn

The battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 marked the beginning of the end of conflict between the U.S. and its military against the various Native American tribes west of the Mississippi River. Historians have given us various ideas of why Lieutenant Colonel Custer met with defeat. But none have noted, in connection with the November 3rd “secret meeting” between Grant and his generals, a movement of troops away from the Black Hills even before decisions were supposedly made to no longer keep miners out of that sacred land. When we study attitude and orders in conjunction with what we know about these events, the idea emerges that the government knew that they couldn’t get the Indians to break the Fort Laramie Treaty unless they were attacked. Here, then, is a presentation of the possibility of deliberate defeat by the U.S. government and its military in order to take the Black Hills.

“The Battle of Many Names, or No Remorse”

This three‐act historical ethnodrama rereads the discourse surrounding Custer's Last Stand, arguably the most written‐about military event in American history. It compares and contrasts First Nation oral history accounts, official military records, and select painterly representations of the “Battle of Little Bighorn.” It asks if there was a real “last stand” or only a flawed grand narrative (see Denzin 2011).

Into the Greasy Grass: During the Battle of Little Big Horn on the Crow Reservation in the Montana Territory, June 25, 1876

Into the Greasy Grass: During the Battle of Little Big Horn on the Crow Reservation in the Montana Territory, June 25, 1876

"Sioux Yells" in the Dawes Era: Lakota "Indian Play," the Wild West, and the Literatures of Luther Standing Bear

In 1902, in an era when the federal government endeavored to immobilize, disband, and assimilate the Lakota into the national body, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West enabled Luther Standing Bear to leave Pine Ridge and, consequently, transformed his life and his life's work. Ultimately Standing Bear's literature, in particular his autobiography My People the Sioux (1928), was dynamically conversant with both Cody's and cinematic representations of American expansion that featured Lakota violence. While dismantling accounts, such as the Battle of Little Big Horn, central to Cody's narrative, Standing Bear grounded the veracity of My People in a Cody-esque rhetoric of "authenticity." The Lakota writer also engaged the rhetoric of white liberal reformers who equated racial "uplift" with private-property-owning American citizenship. In Land of the Spotted Eagle (1933) he blasted "progressives" whose beliefs threatened to destroy, because they failed to understand, the sophistication and value of Lakota society.

Storytelling time: Native North American art from the collections at the University of North Dakota

The University of North Dakota's history is irreversibly intertwined with the difficult history of the Plains Indians who roamed the regions of North and South Dakota. Founded in 1883, the University has been collecting Native American art and artifacts for over a century. With great respect of how the Native Americans used and cherished these objects, this catalog documents this extraordinary collection of clothing, headdresses, and ceremonial objects, many of which incorporate exquisite bead and quill work. Many objects presented in this publication were pieces their Native American owners did not consider objects of art, but instead viewed them as symbols of status, or identity or ceremony. Often pieces were a connection to past and future and handed down from one generation to the next. The essays that accompany this collection examine the history of each piece and engage in the discussion of the traditions and the future of Native American Art. It also includes the original manuscript recounting of the Battle of Little BigHorn written by a warrior who fought there, Joseph White Bull, nephew of Chief Sitting Bull. This manuscript is priceless documentation of Plains Indian people's battle against the invasion of their homeland, a manuscript created from a Native perspective.

The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns. By Stew Magnuson. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2008. xx, 361 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-89672-634-5.)

In this book Stew Magnuson uses his considerable journalistic talents to chronicle the cross-cultural exchanges along the border between the Pine Ridge Reservation (which is located in South Dakota) and Nebraska. Set largely in the Sheridan County, Nebraska, communities of Gordon, Rushville, and Whiteclay, most of his story occurs after 1972. But as in any stirring narrative such as this one, contextual material enlarges its coverage. In this case it includes accounts of the Sioux Treaty of 1868; the 1876 battle of Little Bighorn; the 1890 tragedy of Wounded Knee; the 1887 application of the Dawes Act; the in-migration of ranchers, homesteaders, and townspeople; and the implementation of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1935. Magnuson also incorporates detailed vignettes of individuals and families enmeshed in the principal story that begins with the senseless death of a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe, Raymond Yellow Thunder, in Gordon, Nebraska, in February 1972.

Native American Mascots in Contemporary Higher Education: Part 1: Politically Acceptable or Ethnically Objectionable?

The battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 was one of the last great wars fought by Native Americans on a grassy battlefield. The battle was fought over territory and the right to live in the Dakota and Montana territories. The Native Americans won the battle of Little Big Horn but eventually lost the war and were forced to live on a reservation away from their homeland. Today another great battle involving Native Americans is taking place, not on a grassy plain somewhere out West, but in courtrooms, classrooms, and tribal meetings across the country. The battle is over the use of historical Native American images and traditions as mascots and nicknames of higher education institutions. The research reported in this paper identified seven institutions of higher learning (not a complete list) which have abolished the use of Native American mascots on their campuses. Although these seven schools do not include a community college, much food for thought is presented for the benefit of community college educators who respect the thoughts and feelings of Native American Indians. The need is for this study to be replicated among community colleges with Native American mascots.

Remembering Cherokee Removal in Civil Rights–Era Georgia

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cherokee Removal is most famous episode of South's Native American history. It is also an event that southerners have commemorated quite extensively. Tribal museums in North Carolina and Oklahoma, as well as parks and historic sites in at least five other states, tell story of Trail of Tears. Documentary films, multiple novels, a host of children's books, and at least one TV movie (starring Johnny Cash, no less) have also recounted forced migration. A nationally designated trail maps tribe's general route, and annual Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride recalls journey. No other Indian event, except perhaps Battle of Little Big Horn, has received so much attention in America's culture of memory. Historical memory is a major concern for people who study South. Monuments, commemorations, and historical myths form a popular and important focus of southern cultural studies. Virtually none of this work, however, includes Native American topics. The recently published Myth, Manners, and Memory volume of New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, for example, contains no entries specific to Native Americans. Concerned more with Paul Bear Bryant than Cherokee leader Drowning Bear, it hardly mentions Indian people. Questions of race are at center of scholarship on southern memory, since much of it deals with Civil War, slavery, and segregation; however, literature almost always defines race in terms of black and white. Examining Trail of Tears commemoration, then, offers an opportunity to expand understandings of southern memory. (1) Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, is a good place to start. In early 1950s white residents began work to rebuild New Echota, town that had served as Cherokees' national capital in 1820s and 1830s, just prior to Trail of Tears. Local business leaders launched effort, identifying a section of farmland once occupied by town, raising money to purchase it, and then petitioning state government to make it a historic site and recreation area. The Georgia Historical Commission (GHC), a then newly formed state agency, managed project. Its directors viewed site as a unique place with potential to draw a great many visitors, and as work proceeded, New Echota became one of GHC's most important and highly publicized development efforts. By early 1960s, Commission had reconstructed a portion of village and was planning a museum. The state opened site to public in May 1962, dedicating it in a grand ceremony involving Georgia's governor, other high officials, and Cherokee representatives from North Carolina and Oklahoma. When state of Georgia rebuilt New Echota, it sanctified site. It not only marked location of old Cherokee capital, but set it apart in landscape, placing it outside of everyday life and protecting it as a location suited for contemplation. Sanctifying a historic site almost always involves an effort to derive some kind of clear moral message from events that have taken place there. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Preserved battlefields, for example, usually emphasize virtue of sacrifice for nation. At New Echota in early 1960s, that interpretive effort focused on story of Cherokee Removal, and moral message was atonement. As Governor Ernest Vandiver explained at opening, restoration of town represented white Georgians' apology for Removal, an apology for the unbridled avarice of our ancestors that had driven Cherokees from their homeland. The explicit moral purpose of site was to encourage visitors to guard against similar acts in present and future. As Secretary of State Ben Fortson remarked, New Echota will make us better Americans, for Americans use their mistakes as stepping stones for something more worthwhile. In supporting that proposition, GHC just prior to dedication sponsored a resolution in Georgia legislature repealing anti-Indian laws from late 1820s and early 1830s. …

Selenium: Deterrence, toxicity, and adaptation

Introduction The element selenium (Se), named after the moon (Greek selene), has long been known for its toxicity. In 1295, Marco Polo was the 1st to describe the typical symptoms of selenosis in his pack animals. Centuries later, selenosis may have played a role in the demise of General Custer in the battle of Little Big Horn. Still today, chronic or acute Se poisoning is responsible for the loss of thousands of head of livestock every year in the western United States, where Se is prevalent in soils. Due to its chemical similarity to sulfur, Se in excess will nonspecifi cally replace sulfur in proteins, leading to the observed toxicity. At low levels, however, Se is also an essential trace element for many organisms, including humans, as a component of specifi c selenoproteins that often play a role in cancer prevention. Selenosis in animals mostly is due to ingestion of Se hyperaccumulator plants, commonly termed “locoweeds” by ranchers. These plants can accumulate Se to around 1% of their dry weight, 100-fold higher levels than those found in surrounding vegetation, and 1,000-fold higher than soil Se. Selenium hyperaccumulator species mainly occur in the genera Astragalus (Fabaceae) and Stanleya (Brassicaceae), and predominantly are found on Se-rich soils as seen in the western United States. Several hypotheses exist for the functional signifi cance of the intriguing phenomenon of hyperaccumulation. We currently study the elemental defense hypothesis, which proposes that the accumulated Se protects the plants from herbivory or microbial infection. We also are interested in how accumulated Se in plants affects local ecological interactions (Pilon-Smits and Freeman 2006; Fig. 1A). In this paper, we give an overview of our fi ndings so far, followed by an overall discussion of their implications with respect to the evolution of hyperaccumulator plants and the management of Se-rich plants in natural and agricultural settings.