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pturnbull's review
4.0
Thoughtful and brief biography of Crazy Horse, the legendary Sioux warrior who has become a contemporary icon of resistance. McMurtry is a careful, fair-minded guide into a somewhat murky history: primary sources are rare, contradictory, and unreliable, and some earlier historians apparently supplemented the record with their own imaginings. What I most appreciate is that McMurtry brings clarity to familiar historic individuals through well-chosen details and anecdotes, for example:
Everyone was getting more than a little tired of Red Cloud, but he was both tenacious and smart. He was to be one of the very few Plains Indian leaders of this period who survived everything, dying of old age in 1909.
McMurtry also provides helpful contextual information about the social life and values of the Plains tribes. Something that comes up repeatedly is the chronic misunderstanding of Indian leadership by the whites. This became particularly problematic during critical negotiations with the U.S. government over land and restitution. Sadly, and shamefully, these hard-won treaties and agreements were easily and often broken by the United States, leaving the Indians in increasingly limited conditions and unable to feed themselves in traditional ways.
This book is only 148 pages long and is meant for the interested reader, not the specialist. McMurtry kindly provides an annotated bibliography at the end. Read this for a meticulous presentation of the known facts, with respectful attention to all who deserve it. Look elsewhere for tragic tales; Crazy Horse was a warrior whose end came in part because he remained true to the vision he received as a young man. "Among a broken people an unbroken man can rarely be tolerated--he becomes a too-painful reminder of what the people as a whole had once been." This--his integrity and unbroken spirit--is why we remember Crazy Horse today. He is, simply, an American hero.
Everyone was getting more than a little tired of Red Cloud, but he was both tenacious and smart. He was to be one of the very few Plains Indian leaders of this period who survived everything, dying of old age in 1909.
McMurtry also provides helpful contextual information about the social life and values of the Plains tribes. Something that comes up repeatedly is the chronic misunderstanding of Indian leadership by the whites. This became particularly problematic during critical negotiations with the U.S. government over land and restitution. Sadly, and shamefully, these hard-won treaties and agreements were easily and often broken by the United States, leaving the Indians in increasingly limited conditions and unable to feed themselves in traditional ways.
This book is only 148 pages long and is meant for the interested reader, not the specialist. McMurtry kindly provides an annotated bibliography at the end. Read this for a meticulous presentation of the known facts, with respectful attention to all who deserve it. Look elsewhere for tragic tales; Crazy Horse was a warrior whose end came in part because he remained true to the vision he received as a young man. "Among a broken people an unbroken man can rarely be tolerated--he becomes a too-painful reminder of what the people as a whole had once been." This--his integrity and unbroken spirit--is why we remember Crazy Horse today. He is, simply, an American hero.
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