Herman Lehmann - Nine Years Among the Indians 1870-1879

In May 1870, Herman Lehmann and his brother Willie, aged 11 and 8 respectively, were kidnapped by Apache Indians and taken from their family farm in Texas. A few days later, in a brief battle with troops, Willie escaped and remarkably got home. Herman was to spend the next nine years away from his family living with the Apache and eventually the Comanche. 

Nine Years Among the Indians is Lehmann's famous memoir of his captivity and then life among the two tribes. Initially the Indians feared he would escape, and he was brutally assaulted and imprisoned. Soon however he became ingratiated into the tribe and began to learn how to live, hunt and fight among the Apache. His captors told Lehmann that his family had been killed, and this probably led Lehmann entering the tribe more easily. He seems to have become an accomplished fighter and horserider, and eventually as much a part of the tribe as anyone else - leading raids and fighting against the "whites". 

Lehmann's account demonstrates a remarkable memory, given it was written towards the end of his life. While most people today will probably read it for its eyewitness account of traditional camp life, the reader must also be wary. Writing for a "white" audience Lehmann seems to dwell on the brutality and violence of the Apache and the Commanche, and while expressing sympathy for the Indians he tends to celebrate the "civilising" affect of colonial society. This is, it should be said, particuarly noticeable in the introduction by one J. Marvin Hunter, whom produced the book from Lehmann's dictation. Hunter's introduction is full of racism and makes for uncomfortable reading.

Nonetheless there's a lot of interesting material, especially about life among the tribes, and the type of relationships between the Indians inside the tribe and with others. The internal disputes which led to Lehmann leaving the Apache and after many months alone, joining the Commanche are worth reading. But so are the account of the battle with the Texas Rangers (and the account of the same encounter from the other side). This, no doubt, inspired many a tale including similar events in Larry McMurtry's Comanche Moon.

Despite its short length, there is plenty to engage in here, and the difficulties that Lehmann found when he did eventually return to his family are touching. There's an amusing account of how he disrupted a Methodist revival with his Indian dancing, leading to him being banned from religious services until he was brought back to "civilised" behaviour. Lehmann's conclusion no doubt plays to his audience, but at least retains an understanding of who he was, and the life he was never quite able to leave behind. He dedicates the work to his mother, "and to those noble brothers and sisters I owe all for my restoration, for if it had not been for them I would today be an Indian still." If you can get past the appallingly dated language there's a lot here.

Related Reviews

Miller - Custer's Fall: The Native American Side of the Story
Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Michno - Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat

David Humphreys Miller - Custer's Fall: The Native American Side of the Story

There have been plenty of accounts of the Battle of the Little Bighorn that range from general discussions of "General" Custer's strategy to microhistories of individuals or specific areas of the battlefield. Few accounts however discuss the Native American experience in all but the most general terms. One of the most famous of these is David Humphreys Miller's Custer's Fall. It is a remarkable piece of work because it is based on Miller's personal interviews with Native American survivors of the Little Bighorn. Miller learnt multiple Native American languages (including sign languages) and befriended many survivors. He also produced extraordinarily personal portraits of those he talked to as well as images of Western scenes, some of which are reproduced for this book.

What emerges from these accounts is a sometimes contradictory, but always fascinating story of the battle. Readers will, of course, have to be cautious. Some of these memories are those of old men, thinking back decades. In addition oral history is also at risk of distortion from either faded memories or the desire to change the narrative. However readers must also be cautious not to apply their own prejudices to this form of history. Native Americans thrived on oral history. Accounts were told, and retold. Indeed one of the interesting things about this book is it tells how the victorious Sioux told their war tales on the evening of the Battle. The memories of the day were already being cemented on the very evening of the victory.

The accounts here are made with the desire to remember and tell a story. Indeed Miller does tell a story - the book reads like a novel, and the reader will be hardpressed to work out exactly what is memory. What emerges however is a slightly different narrative of the day of the battle. The Native American story begins the conflict earlier, with an attack on small groups of Indians early in the day by Custer's forces. That said the rough outlines of the battle follow those told in countless other stories. There is one significant difference. Several of Miller's sources tell that Custer was likely killed, or injured, very early on in an attempt to ford the stream at Medicine Tail Coulee. It is then suggested that his troops carried his body with them as they tried to regroup. In his counter-revisionist study of Native American accounts of the battle Gregory F. Michno is emphatic in his argument that this is a myth, and that Custer did not get killed or injured early. That said Michno's rejection of this specific part of the Native American oral history is in part because his whole book is designed to place the "Last Stand" back at the centre of the history of the Little Bighorn, and the "Custer myth".

The truth of the matter is that no one really can tell. Not least because no one at the time knew that Custer, or "Long Hair", was at the Little Big Horn. In addition several other individuals worse buckskin on the day, Custer's characteristic outfits. But what matters for Miller's account is that many Indians believed that this is what happened. There are always different tellings of history, and the story that Custer was killed early on is a central part of the Indian account of the day. The story is important though, because for many Native Americans it explained why the troops behaved as they did. As Miller recounts, something "seemed completely to demoralise the soldiers - something that occurred within their own ranks".

There are plenty of other pieces of information here that will readers. The behaviour of the Native Americans after the battle, the actions of Custer's Native American scouts, the way the news spread among the Native Americans faster than it could have been communicated by the Whites. There is even a fascinating account of Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them who "normally wore woman's dress, but changed to warrior's clothing before riding into battle. Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them was a Crow who fought as part of General Crooks command against the Sioux at the Battle of the Rosebud before the Little Bighorn. Miller uses the term "hermaphrodite" to describe Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them. The term is incorrect and very dated, as Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them was a badé, or Two-Spirit person, "a male-bodied person in a Crow community who takes part in some of the social and ceremonial roles usually filled by women in that culture." The story of how Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them fought at the precussor to the Little Big Horn (albeit on the side of the Whites) is important as it shows how Miller places Native American culture at the heart of the story of these conflicts. Crucial to this was the democratic decision making processes of the tribes.

One final thing is worth recounting to illustrate this. Its the story of how at the "last great Indian Council on the Little Big Horn" in 1909, a wealthy businessman offered very large financial reward to the tribes for definitive information on "who killed Custer". For several tribes the chiefs debates this, mindful of the benefits of the cash reward. Not being able to decide, not least because no one actually knew, the tribes elected Chief Brave Bear to be the person who was given the honour of killing Custer. Chief Brave Bear had, after all, been "on th Washita when Custer had destroyed Black Kettle's village" and had "spilled pipe ashes on Custer's boots" at a later peace conference. Chief Brave Bear fully expected to be killed by the Whites after accepting the cash for his impoverished kin. He wasn't, but as Miller points out his only statement afterward before his death in 1932 was to say that "I was in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The Indians called the General 'Long Hair'. It is a fight I do not like to talk about."

While the Whites continued to celebrate Custer's defeat and alleged heroism, the Native Americans were magnanimous and subdued in the aftermath of their victory. Their accounts here are not celebratory, but tell of a battle fought and won, of bravery and solidarity. It is well worth a read if you ever want to visit the Greasy Grass.

Related Reviews

Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Donovan - A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn
Philbrick - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Stevenson - Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter & Custer's Seventh Cavalry
Brown - Showdown at Little Big Horn
Michno - Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat
Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

Robert Wooster - The Military & United States Indian Policy 1865-1903

This short book is an important, if relatively unknown, study of the way the US military related to, and shaped, government policy toward the Native Americans. It is not an account of troop movements, campaigns and battles, though these do make an appearance. Rather Wooster studies the evolution of ideas that would culminate in a genocidal policy.

Wooster makes some specific points. Firstly, military policy toward the Native Americans was shaped by the battle and campaign experiences most of the US commanders had from the Civil War. This led them to conceive of military engagements being based on columns of armed forces, that would overwhelm the enemy in pitched battles. This led them to be illequiped, logisitically and tactically for the type of combat that they would experience against the various Indian tribes. Secondly, the policy of the US army was often shaped by the ideas of its leading figures. In particular Generals Sheridan and Sherman. This meant that prejudices and racism often undermined the miltary's attempts to subdue the Indians. Wooster makes this point regarding the use of Indians in the army itself:

In addition to scouting, native auxiliaries were by the 1880s performing valuable services as reservation policemen, freeing regulars for other duries and prevening unnecessary army-Indian collisions. Later officials... favoured more direct measures, sponsoring new policies that added Indian companies to most of the army's regiments. This last step never gained full favor among line officers. Some opposed it on racial grounds; others... argued that language problems would demoralise Indians and strip them of their individuality, which had been there greatest asset in servving the army [as scouts]. Although the Indian enlistment program failed to meet expectations, it was a logical culmination of continued efforts to assimilate Indians into society as a whole through the miltiary.

It was also the culmination of a deliberate policy of "divide and rule" that saw the US miltiary turn various tribes against each other, or exacerbate differences, in order to undermine them both. The most obvious example of this were the Crow scouts who accompanied Custer to the Little Big Horn and fought on the wrong side. This in turn flowed from the idea that there were good and bad Indians. 

Throughtout  the period however the Army faced a difficult task. It was undermanned, under-equipped and under resourced. The period immediately after Custer's defeat aside, this was an army that couldn't actually easily do its task and subdue the "enemy". It was also at the whim of politicians whose desire for a military presence in their areas was often more about the jobs and profits that a fort might bring, than any need to subdue the Native Americans locally. As Wooster points out "The military thus influenced the econoimic, social and political structure of the states, territories and communities it protected". 

But it was government genocidal policies that eventually succeeded where military organisation was unable. 

Although the army was plagued by strategic failures, the near extermination of the American bison during the 1870s helped to mask the mlitiary's poor performance. By stripping many Indians of their available resources, the slaughter of the buffalo severely reduced the Indians# capacity to continue an armed struggle against the United States. 

While Sheridan and Sherman "recognised that eliminating the buffalo might be the best way to force Indians to change their nomadic habits", the actual massacre of the animals was mostly done by non-military people. While some officers opposed the killing of the bison, the government actively encouraged it. As the Secretary of the Interior said in 1874, to Congress:

The buffalo are disappearing rapidly, but not faster than I desire. I regard the destruction of such game as Indians subsist upon as facilitating the policy of the Government, of destroying their hunting habits, coercing them on reservations and compelling them to begin to adopt the habits of civilisation.

It is worth remembering that the lessons learnt by the US government and Army in this period were genocidal. Settler Colonialism was always based on mass murder. In conclusion Wooster argues that US Army policy was often confused and contradictory toward the Indians as a whole:

A wide range of political and cultural factors influenced the formulation of that policy. The policy-making process itself was woefully lacking. Neither the federal government nor the army representing it organised institutions to examine Indian affairs in any comprehensive and systmatic manner. The absence of detailed contemporary analysis sowed confusion, mistrust, and disinterest among those involved in making policy.

Where policy was decided it tended to be a response to events - either Indian resistance, or economic - such as the discover of gold in the Black Hills, or the decision that the central US was not "a great desert" but rather an area that could be profitably farmed. These failures led to a brutal and violent experience for the Native Americans, one that the US has yet to redress properly.

Related Reviews

Estes - Our History is the Future
Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

Joseph M. Marshall III - The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History

Crazy Horse is best known, to non-indigenous people, as the military leader whose charge destroyed General Custer's final defence at the Little Big Horn battle. But that's about it. There are no authenticated pictures of Crazy Horse, and much of the rest of his life as a Lakota leader is forgotten. Though his tragic murder is often mentioned in passing, a consequence of the genocidal policies of the US government who could not afford to have such a figure head live.

But there is a lot more history and autobiography about Crazy Horse, though learning it means listening to the people who knew him best - the Lakota themselves. Joseph M. Marshall III, himself a member of the Lakota, has written this epic autobiography basing it on the oral history of the Lakota. It is a remarkable read which interweaves the story of Crazy Horse with the story of the Lakota and the author's own experiences.

In fact, the most interesting parts of the book are not those dealing with the specific battles - though these are fascinating. They are the ones that depict Lakota life and how it was transformed by contact with Europeans. Crazy Horse himself represents this in microcosm. His birth mother died early in his life, and his father took two more wives who became Crazy Horses next mothers. It is an intriguing difference to the "family" that dominates Western culture and is told to us as the norm. Marshall points out that many Lakota, including people today and himself, have multiple parents in this way. Their upbringing not being restricted simply to a mother and father. Crazy Horse was mentored and trained by several different male parental figures, including his father. His father himself was called Crazy Horse, as was his grandfather. The Crazy Horse that is the centre of this book being given the name by his father at an appropriate moment while his father took a new name to replace it. 

These aspects of Crazy Horse's early life are intriguing for the insights into different styles of organising life. And it is defending that way of life that Crazy Horse commited himself to. He and his contemporaries watched the settlers arrive and travel across their terrority on the Bozeman Trail, until the Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands saw Crazy Horse play a leading role in defeating Captain Fetterman's force and the eventual withdrawal of US forces from the area.

The treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 was supposed to bring hostilities to an end. But Crazy Horse was skeptical. As Marshall explains:

Sitting Bull knew what would happen, Crazy Horse was certain. The whites would use that treat as a way to control the Lakota. They drew lines on a paper to outline the picture of the land, something not unknown to the Lakota. But the idea that an imaginary line could define where the land begins andends was laughable - as if the line would somehow show up on the land. Even more laughable was the rule that the Lakota had to live in one part of the land and obtain permission from the whites to hunt in the other. Their thinking was laughable, but it was their thinking and they had the power of numbers, many soldiers with many rifles, many wagon guns and plenty of powder. Part of the answer was to fight. There could be no other way... The whites understood force.

Crazy Horse has always been judged by others. In his summary Marshall notes that there are multiple Crazy Horses to the whites. The "noble warrior" doomed to loose, the chief. He points out that Crazy Horse as the "conqueror of Custer" means that "Crazy Horse has no validity without Custer". Always depicted, weapon in hand, Crazy Horse epitomises a certain, racist, view of Native Americans. But, as this book shows, Crazy Horse was a thinker, a leader, and a fighter. He was a human being - with foibles and loves - and part of a community with a rich and powerful tradition. He led the resistance to the destruction of that community, but in remembering him the West does so in a way that seeks to defeat him and his people. Joseph Marshall III's wonderful book does much to tell the true story.

Related Reviews

Brown - The Fetterman Massacre
Estes - Our History is the Future
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce
Michno - Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat
Donovan - A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn

Kent Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce

If you happen to be travelling in Yellowstone National Park you might drive on Chief Joseph Highway. Its a somewhat unusual name. Roads in the US tend to be named after US military heroes, not their adversaries. But Chief Joseph, or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, to give him his Nez Perce name was one of the most famous Native American leaders during the period after the Little Bighorn. In 1877 the Nez Perce Native Americans made a journey of almost 1200 miles from their ancestral homelands, across huge areas of what are now Wyoming and Montana trying to reach safety. Chief Joseph was one of Nez Perce chiefs, though for reasons that Kent Nerburn explains, he was not actually the supreme military leader that the US military, media and white population thought he was.

This account of Joseph, by one of the most talented non-Native American chronicllors of their history, begins with the first encounter the Nez Perce had with European settlers. This was the meeting between them and the Lewis and Clarke expedition, sent out from the East to learn more about the lands that would become the USA. The Nez Perce and the explorers got on well. So much so that later encounters were often marked by misunderstanding, confusion and tragedy. By the 1860s the US government was trying to force the Nez Perce to sign a treaty that would give up their lands so that settlers and gold hunters could use it. Some bands of the tribe did sign, but many, including Chief Joseph's, did not. A difference that became enshrined as the Treaty and non-Treaty Nez Perce.

Nerburn recounts the history of this period, as indignities and falsehoods grew, with the Nez Perce increasingly being forced into confrontations with the whites. By 1877 it was increasingly difficult for the Native Americans to avoid conflict, and more and more pressure was put on the non-Treaty Nez Perce to relocate. Refusing to do so, the Nez Perce were threatened with War. Thus began the long trek of the Nez Perce as they tried to escape and find sanctuary.

It is a gripping tale. The Nez Perce fled, intially with hope of finding a place to live, then simply to escape the persuing military. A series of confrontations took place as the Native Americans skillfully defeated the ill-equipped and under experienced troops. It might be described as a sort of fighting retreat, except the Nez Perce didn't think they were retreating. The telegraph and local journalists created a news story that was followed from coast to coast. Joseph became the supposed leader, though he was at the start only one of several other chiefs. Joseph infact was the least beligerent, the more warlike leaders unknown to the press. As the Nez Perce fled, lurid and racist stories followed behind and in front. Terror gripped the plains out of all proportion to the acts of the Native Americans, though as they travelled they did, under force of arms and increasing desperation commit acts. It is notable that by this point Yellowstone Park was open to tourists. Some of the first where indeed captured and killed by Native Americans. The history of the US war on its indigenous population is surprisingly close in time to our own.

Eventually the Nez Perce were defeated at the battle of Bear's Paw. They were a few tens of miles from the Canadian border and safety. Their defeat is remembered for Joseph's alleged speech that said he was no longer fighting. Promised much, but in reality offered little, the Nez Perce were relocated to Kansas where they became victims of racist and unscrupilous Indian Agents. Their they would have languised if Chief Joseph and others become skilled at public opinion. Joseph used every opportunity to speak to the press, to audiences and to visitors. He was skillful at highlighting the great injustice his people had suffered and how they only wanted to go home. Arthur Chapman, a translator, also wrote vast numbers of letters pleading the Nez Perce case.

There was some success. Many of the Native Americans did eventually return, though Chief Joseph was never allowed to. In fact he never again saw his own daughter, barred from visiting the lands she had been relocated to.

The tragedy of the Nez Perce is told brilliantly by Kent Nerburn's book. He highlights how the Nez Perce "war" as it is sometimes known arose out of the racist and genocidal policies of the US government that saw the Native Americas as people to be pushed and pulled from their homelands to wherever they were least in the way. It also demonstrates how, far from being the uncivilised people that racist politicians, military leaders and journalists thought they were, the Native Americans were skilled and careful politicians in their own right. And frequently far better soldiers than the US troops. Perhaps Kent Nerburn's greated achievement in this book is rescuing all the Native American leaders other than Joseph. But he also shows how many of the whites were also willing to show kindness and assistance to the Nez Perce after their capture. Even in the 1870s there were those who recognised the injustices of US settler colonialism. But Nerburn never lets you forget that the real heroes, and the ones that forced the US state to back down several times, though political campaigning and a fighting resistance, were the Nez Perce. Let's hope one day they receive adequate recompense for the injustices made against them. A superb read.

Related Reviews

Nerburn - Neither Wolf nor Dog
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping

Ivan Doig - Winter Brothers: A season at the edge of America

James Gilchrist Swan was a remarkable individual. Born in 1818 he spend most of his life in the Pacific North West, now part of Washington state in the US. Having travelled widely before arrival there, he took on a number of roles for the US government and other interests, becoming an Indian Agent, a temporary representative of a railroad company, and other such frontier roles. He was also a collector for the Smithsonian Institute, buying Native American art and tools for their collections. In addition Swan was a politician, a hunter, a painter and above all a writer. Today he would likely be called an anthropologist (indeed that is how he is described in his current, all to brief, Wikipedia entry). 

Swan lived among the Makah tribal group for many years, learning their language and customs, and documenting almost every aspect of their lives - from religious beliefs and mythology, to fishing practices and art. His book on the Makah was eventually published by the Smithsonian and remains an important account of their history and culture. But Swan was also a prolific writer in two other regards - his letters to all and sundry, and his diaries, which he kept for decades. These he filled daily recording in detail his life, work and internal thoughts.

Ivan Doig's Winter Brothers is Doig's study of these diaries, written while spending a winter season in the North West, visiting places and sites related to Swan's life. Doig is a magnificent writer, his own personal history, and the travelogue, expertly intertwined with extracts from Swan's diaries. At times this can be a little hard to follow as the reader has only italics to separate contemporary from historic. But it is worth pushing through as both illuminate each other.

Doig is a great novelist and biographer. But it is Swan that shines through the book, his love for life and people is wonderful. His respect for the Native Americans and their way of life, even if he is driven to distraction by some individuals, seems remarkable for the time. The closeness of his life with them, and the documentation of their culture is made with scientific rigour, but also honesty. 

But the diaries are also very touching. Swan's struggles with alcohol, his love for food and the way that life, death and love affect him through decades are moving. Doig's interaction with these aspects, as well as the insights he brings from his own youth in Montana make this a remarkable work. 

On finishing I noticed that my copy of the book has the name and number of a hotel scribbled on the inside back cover. This hotel, it turns out, is on one of the many islands in the Salish Sea, a place that Swan explored in detail and the location of his last, expedition. One of the previous owners was clearly enjoying the insight into the area offered by Doig's book while visiting the region. I can't imagine a better introduction to the place, it's people and history.

Related Reviews

Doig - This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
Doig - Bucking the Sun

Sai Englert - Settler Colonialism: An Introduction

Almost a year into Israel's genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians and in the myriad of books, articles and pamphlets that have appeared to analyse and explain events, the phrase "settler colonialism" regularly appears. As Sai Englert explains in his engaging new book, this is a phrase that has a long pedigree, arising out of liberation theories and ideas linked to thinkers like Franz Fanon and others. But for the wider left in Britain it is a relatively new concept, and Englert's book is an attempt to explain and contextualise the theory. It is a prescient book. First published in 2022 it is a little out of date given the events since October last year, and the mass movement in solidarity with Palestine, but this should not put off readers as what matters is the theory itself.

Englert begins by outlining the history of colonialism and, closely related to this, the development of racist ideologies that sought to justify colonialism. Here he draws heavily on the analysis of writers like Gerald Horne whose books on settler colonialism in the Americas I have reviewed before. Englert's account of colonialism reminds the reader of the sheer horrors of that colonialism, and the cynicism by which racist ideas were constructed in order to make it acceptable. Indeed Englert notes that the attempts to downplay colonialism's genocidal policies continue today, for instance in the focus that is often placed on "disease" as a killer in the Americas. This, he points out, was important, but "its role is often overstated - or at least extracted from a more general picture of settler violence and murder". It is this violence that is key to understanding what happened in colonialism, and the construction of settler colonial states.

Settler colonialism in general does not separate colonialism from the rise of capitalism. As Englert notes, "the accumulation of wealth in the Americas, based on the murder, enslavement and dispossession of Indigenous and African peoples, kick-started the rise of European empires on the world stage... which laid the ground for an accelerated emergence of capitalist relations of production and the intensification of exploitation at home."

This is important because there is a close link between the impact of colonialism and the development of "settler states" and the progress of capitalism, and its exploitation, in the heart of the colonial powers themselves. The dispossession of hundreds of thousands of peasants from land in Europe, was closely associated with the rise of industrial capitalism, as well as the movement of settlers to places like the Americas and Australasia. 

Settler societies emerged, most strikingly in the colonies that would become the US, which attempted to develop polities free from a reliance on the Indigenous populations. Their economies would be primarily dependent on settler smallholders and European bonded labourers on the one hand, and impotred enslaved African populations on the other. 

This highlights a problem for settler colonial theory, in that the experience of colonialism itself was different around the world. Some colonial projects had a genocidal policy towards indigenous people - eg in New Zealand, others saw indigenous people as making up the enslaved people for the rise of capital.

The centrality of racism to colonialism is important, in part because it helps understand how it was possible for relatively small powers to violently dominant much larger land masses by mobilising the dispossed against the indigenous people. The construction of "whiteness" which gave settlers an identification with their own ruling class, despite being the victims of an exploitative relationship with them, was part of making the settlers buy into the process. While there was solidarity between the oppressed within Settler societies, and indigenous people, it wasn't the norm, though it was not uncommon, as this important piece from Australian socialists makes clear.

Racism, Englert, argues is so central to the colonial project that fighting racism has to be linked to "ending the underlying process of domination that gave birth to it. Only by ending the social reality of settler domination can the ideology that normalises it die". Marxists or revolutionary socialists would  not disagree with this. That racism is part of capitalism, and for racism to end, so must capitalism, is something that has been associated with revolutionary ideas since the days of Marx and Engels. Englert reminds us, however, that we have to ensure that all racist ideas are included within this. He criticises "much of the literature on Whiteness for failing to address Indigenous dispossesion alongside the enslavement of African populations in racism's emergence and reproduction". 

The existence of racism, against Black and indigenous people, underminded the struggle of white workers for their own emancipation. But, Englert takes this further. He argues that settler colonialism means that white workers had, and continue to have, an interest in furthering it. This is undoubtably true of the past. Englert lists a number of occasions when the unity of Black and white workers threatened the structures of colonial power enough for violent measures to be taken to prevent such unity again. He also notes the large number of times when white workers, and their organisations - including trade unions and left parties - organised against black workers.

Englert argues:

Far from challenging the process of settler expansion, settler workers repeatedly played a key role in intensifying racial segregation and Indigenous dispossesssions. Settler class struggle was fought simultaneously against settler bosses and Indigenous workers. Settler labour movements demanded both an increase in their share of value extracted from their own labour power, as well as from the colonial loot extracted through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. From Australia's labour-led "White-Australia" campaign to the French labour movement's near-unanimous opposition to Algerian indendence, across the colonial world, settler workers fought for the exclusion and dispossession of Indigenous and racialised people, and did so while deploying socialist, communist, or even internationalist rhetoric.

While acknowledging that there have been significant and succesful attempts to challenge racism by activists and the left in all of the settler states, does Englert's argument here remain the case? In a key part of the book, Englert discusses the nature of Settler Colonialism, and writes about "settler quietism" which he explains is "the fact that all settler classes, despite their internal social tensions and conlicts, depend on the Indigenous population's continued dispossesssion, as well as on the settler state to impose their dominance and distribute the colonial loot. Even when the situation escalates to internal military confrontation, peace can be re-established not through structural change but through the intensification of colonial violence, to the settler population's collective benefit."

Here, Englert is arguing that in settler colonial states, all "settler classes" benefit from the structures and activity of Settler Colonialism, which allows the ruling class to buy off workers. But is is that still true today? There is perhaps an argument that this is taking place in Israel, where the displacement of Palestinian people, is allowing material benefits to some Israeli workers in terms of land. This is an argument made by Englert. But is it true of the settler colonial states of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand today? I am unsure. Englert continues:

Similar to the case of racism... land distribution and economic advantages to settler workers serve as powerful tools for stabilisation of settler rule. They also facilitate the economy's continued functioning as well as the reproduction of both the settler state's and capitalist class's power. In that sense, settler workers participate in securing their continued exploitation, in exchange for land and comparatively better working conditions.

I don't think it is tenable to say this is continuing everywhere and Englert offers no numerical evidence to suggest it is happening. So either Englert's arguments don't fit, or there isn't such a thing as settler colonialism. To argue the theory as no value would be entirely wrong. As Englert's book makes clear, the theory does offer many insights, even while it doesn't necessarily have a single agreed "line". What I think needs to be added to Englert's analysis is a more detailed exploration of settler colonialism as a process that takes place over time - and frequently a long time. What happened to Native Americans until the Massacre at Wounded Knee when the frontier was declared "closed", and what that meant for "settler classes", is different now to how the continued repression and oppression of Native American people impacts on working class Amercians (Black and white). 

But the process itself also matters. It is undoubtably true that people from working class backgrounds went to colonial countries. But those settlers who were "bought off" with land in the early days of (say) Canada or North American colonial history, were no longer workers. Buying them off like this, transformed their class position. They became farmers or smallholders. This is not the same as saying "settler workers" benefited as workers from the continued disspossession of indigenous people and land - and consequently secured their own continued exploitation. It is not correct to say that this process continues in (say) Australia. Israel/Palestine is a different case, which highlights the necessity of understanding specific settler colonialisms in their wider context, particularly that of the global imperialist system.

In general, with the exception of Israel and the case of South Africa under Apartheid, I don't think it is right to argue that workers benefit from settler colonialism. In Australia settler colonialism allowed some of the settler lower orders to avoid becoming wage labourers in that continent. But the workers who did not benefit like this remained workers, and saw no benefit from settler colonialism. Indeed, the racism that went alongside, undermined their position and their ability to fight for better conditions. Englert says that white Australian workers get "land and comparatively better working conditions" out of these relations. But this is simply not accurate. Englert would need to provide more detailed examples to justify this point today. Clarity on this is important, for if "settler workers" do benefit from settler colonialism, than it makes the process of workers' self emancipation either harder or impossible.

Workers everywhere have every interest in defeating racism, and the system that uses it, and they can only do so through completely unity with indigenous people, and principled opposition to all forms of racism. 

These are significant criticisms of Englert's book, but it is made in the spirit of arguing that the book is a contribution to the debates that seek to understand a world where imperialist powers continue to destroy the lives of billions of people, dispossing, oppressing and exploiting them in a unrelating drive to accumulate capital. Much more discussion and clarity is needed.

Related Reviews

Horne - The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism
Horne - The Dawning of the Apocalypse
Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth
Clayton-Dixon - Surviving New England
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties

Jeanne O'Neill & Riga Winthrop - Fort Connah: A Page in Montana's History

Fort Connah is likely the oldest standing building in Montana in the United States, but has an importance far beyond its age and architecture. It was one of the original “forts” constructed by the Hudson Bay Company to assist in the extraction of millions of furs from North America through trade with furtrappers and Native Americans. While called a fort, the building had no military value, and was not garrisoned - it was living accomodation and storage for the McDonald family who lived and ran the trading post.

I was determined to visit Fort Connah earlier this year following my reading of James Hunters’ book Glencoe and the Indians. While on a visit, when we had been shown around by very kind and friendly members of the Connah restoration society, I picked up this short book by Jeanne O’Neill and Riga Winthrop. 

The book was published in 2002 when restoration of the Fort was still in the early stages. For those who know the history the book offers little new information. It is really a short introduction to the sigificance of Fort Connah to Montana’s history. As such it deservers a wider readership as I certainly felt that the site was little known, even to locals.

O’Neil and Winthrop locate their history very much in colonial development of the region. The fur industry, they write, “was just the beginning of a history of rape and plunder, of a cycle of boom and bust”. In fact the determining history of Fort Connah was not events on the ground, but wider economic and political contexts, which the authors do due justice too.

Fort Connah in May 2024

The book is short and typical of the peculiarly American local history publication that proliferates in locally in the States. It gives great insights into niche areas, normally only of interest to locals, and in the case of Fort Connah those with the surname McDonald. For, as Hunter’s work has shown, the influence of Scottish migrants on Flathead was significant. Angus McDonald who is buried near the Fort along with his Native American wife Catherine, where the head of a new tribe of locals who have come to play an important role in local history since the end of the 1800s. Angus was, it must be argued, not a genocidal immigrant and clearly, from this account at least, cared deeply for the indigenous  people and their knowledge. O’Neill and Winthrop repeat accounts of him telling Native American history while sharing a drink with visitors. Angus’ life - from Scotland to fur-trapper, Fort manager and then cattle farmer - forms the backbone to this story. But the book does cover more. SOme of this is a little peripheral, but adds to the flavour.

This book is perhaps somewhat specialised, but ought to be read by those heading to Flathead for their holidays. It is an good general introduction to a history of the area that deserves to be better known and would help ensure that Fort Connah and it’s intriguing history is preserved even further.  

Related Reviews

Hunter - Glencoe and the Indians
Spence - Montana: A History

Gregory F. Michno - Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat

One of the notable things about visiting the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn today is how it has been changed, under pressure from Native Americans, to incorporate their viewpoints and history into the memorial. While the location is dominated by an overt US militarism, there are multiple, moving testimonies and memorials to the Native American casualties. The story is told from the viewpoint of the victors as well as the victims.

Pursuing this approach to the battle I was pleased to pick up Gregory Michno's book Lakota Noon, whose subtitle indicates that it looks at the Indian narrative, something distinctly lacking from most accounts of the battle. The book is, it must be said, a boon to anyone who wants to do this and it would have been an excellent read prior to the battle. Michno has not just gathered many different indigenous accounts together, he has arranged them in a novel way. Rather than reading different accounts, from different viewpoints at one time, he has collected the parts of peoples' accounts together at the estimated times that they happened. Thus we can read differing points of view from the moment of Reno's attack, or during the chaos of the final moments of Custer's defeat. 

The accounts are often shocking. Rarely do we read the actuality of conflict, and this was violent, hand to hand fighting, and the accounts by the Native Americans do not diminish that. But these are not just the reminiscances of arrogant victors, rather they are from soldiers who understood that they were fighting a great and significant battle. For many of them it was to be the most important milestone in their lives, their Lakota Noon. Thus we also also learn about Native American beliefs, their preparations for war, their understanding of US Cavalry tactics, and above all, their praise for the brave men they defeated. 

There are some fascinating things among these accounts. One is that of the role of women. One Native American, Antelope, spent significant time on the day close to the action as she searched for a relative. Antelope "had seen other battles and had always liked to watch the men fighting, though she had been teased about it, for not many women followed the warriors to battle". Another example is that of Chief Gall, who recollected his personal experience of losing non-combatant relatives to the US cavalry, "his lodge was vacant. He extended his search around the point of timber a short distance o the south. There he finally found his family. Dead. His two wives and his three children, killed." Another account by Rain in the Face, recollected that a woman Moving Robe, whose brother had been killed was among the fighters. "Behold, there is among us a young woman! Let no young man hide behind her garment" shouted Rain in the Face to inspire the other warriors.

But mostly readers will want to learn the accounts of the battle by Native Americans, like Low Dog:

They came on us like a thunderbolt... The Indians retreated at first but managed to rally and make a charge of their own. Low Dog called to his men, "This is a good day to die: follow me." They massed their warriors. So that no man should fall back, every man whipped another man's horse as they rushed the soldiers. The bluecoats dismounted to fire, but did not shoot well. While firing, they had been holding their horse's reins with one arm. The frrightened horses piulled them all around and many of their shots went high in the air and did the Indians no harm. Nevertheless, the white warriors stood their ground bravely, and none made an attempt to get away.

But there are problems with the book. One of the largest was that the Native American accounts are not direct quotes. Michno acknowledges the problems of the sources - they are biased, sometimes recorded many decades after the battle, often contradictory and frequently have grown in the telling. Memory plays its tricks, but so does the reality of a confusing, scary, noisy and smoke obscurred battle field. Disappointingly though, Michno's narratives are not direct quotes, but are his rewriting of the various testimonies in order to make a readable account. This makes things clearer for the reader, but its not the  collection of eyewitness voices I expected.

Michno presents the book as being a final word in understanding what happened. Rightly, he argues, it has been near impossible to know what actually happened to Custer's direct command on the day. By piecing together the Native American accounts, together with a close analysis of the battlefield site, he hopes that he has presented a definitive history of the day. He is dismissive, sometimes to the point of pomposity of some other historians. But by and large his arguments about events on the day are persuassive, as does his unpicking of the conflicting and sometimes extremely unclear accounts of different Native Americans. He points out, probably accurately, that the famous charge by Crazy Horse likely never happened.

Michno is keen to tackle what he sees as the political correctness of recent scholarship of the battle. In fact the book is really an attempt to state a particular viewpoint of the battle using definitive studies and eyewitness accounts, in order to defend a particular historical approach. This is, I think, most notable when considering the Reno-Benteen fight and defense. After Reno is driven off, the battle recentred on Custer's attack. This is not surprising. The Native Americans had to regroup to drive off the bigger threat to their village. But the Reno-Benteen command did make a stand, and faced many hours horrificaly besieged. Michno provides no eyewitness accounts to this. Perhaps there are none. In which case it would have been useful to know. Or perhaps Michno thinks that because Cavalry troops from these events survived, then there's no need to give accounts (though this does not prevent him giving them about earlier parts of the battle). I suspect the real reason is that Michno is focused on other events because the purpose of his book is actually to polemicise about the significance of Custer's final defeat for latter day accounts of the Indian Wars.

This is especially visible in his critiques of those who argue there was "no last stand" in the sense that the battle did not have a definitive ending, rather pettering out into smaller and smaller clusters of killing. These he says are often motivated by a "those more concerned with officious moralising than with finding historical truths". For instance, he bemoans one author whose book contains multiple references (Michno gives them all!) to "genocide, greed and injustice". 

The problem with Michno's approach here is that it is difficult to write a genuine history of Native America and its encounter with the US government without acknowleding the "genocide, greed and injustice" that was directed at them from the earliest days of European colonialism in the Americas. Indeed, the books concluding focus on the reality of a "last stand" is less about actual events and more about defeating "revisionist interpreations and political correctness". 

The problem of course is that the last stand can mean different things to different people. Those who enjoyed the historically laughable They died with their boots on at the cinema in 1941 and since have a different understanding of the heroism of that day to that of the Native American eyewitnesses here. Indedd they would also probably not agree with Michno himself who is not dismissing the Native Americans as savages. 

The point is not the battle, but the context - culturally and historically. Endless debates about about cartridge numbers from battlefield archaeology cannot overcome the wider historical backdrop which is far more important to understanding the aftermath of the Lakota Noon.

Those interested in the battle should read Lakota Noon, if only for the eyewitness accounts and the discussion about events on 25-26 June 1876. For those wanting a subtle study of the context, there are other, better books, polemical in their own way.

Related Reviews

Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Estes - Our History is the Future
Donovan - A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
Philbrick - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

Dee Brown - Showdown at Little Big Horn

I knew of Dee Brown as a historian of Native American peoples. His most famous book is, of course, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Some years ago I also read his excellent account of the Fetterman Massacre. When I recently visited the site of the Little Big Horn battle, fulfilling the ambition of a lifetime, I came away with quite a few souvenirs and several books. Among them was this short work by Brown, which I bought on the basis of the author.

I was surprised to find out that it was not an explicity work of history. Rather it is a fictionalised account of the lead up to the Battle of the Little Big Horn based on testimonials, memoirs and contemporary accounts. After overcoming my surprise, and learning that Dee Brown was also a novelist, I dived in.

The book itself is interesting, but perhaps a little dated. For those not versed in the story of the Little Big Horn it might serve as a good starting point, but the nature of the novel means that it doesn't give any real context. Read a decent history of the Battle and its location within the wider project to destroy the Native Americans in Montana territory first if you want to appreciate the material that Brown uses.

He begins with some relatively minor characters. The journalist Mark Kellogg, who produced a diary and sent regular reports Eastward as Custer's troops travelled. These form the basis of a surprisingly detailed account, as Kellogg wrote almost to the end. Of course Brown has to embellish things with descriptions and context, but it works well. Not all the characters are Europeans. Sitting Bull is one of the more well known historical individuals given a chapter here, but so are less well known ones, such as Bobtail Horse who, with three other Native Americans are said to have held off Custer's troops charge down the Deep Ravine.

Oddly for Dee Brown, the book devolved into sentimentality at the end, with the final viewpoint being that of Comanche, Captain Keogh's horse. The sentimentallity lies mostly of course, with the US Cavalry who lacking any other hero on that field commissioned the horse second in command of the Seventh Cavalry. The irony was not lost on anyone.

Showdown at Little Big Horn is not a particularly great work. Younger readers might find it more interesting, but it lacks Dee Brown's historical knowledge, while retaining his desire to give the Native American people a voice.

Related Reviews

Brown - The Fetterman Massacre
Donovan - A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn
Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Estes - Our History is the Future
Philbrick - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties

James Donovan - A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn

James Donovan's A Terrible Glory is widely described as the definitive account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It certainly is a readable account that does its best to use first hand accounts to tell the story of the battle as clearly and vividly as possible. Unfortunately it feels as an account of the US Cavalry. The book suffers greatly from a lack of the Native American perspective - not just on the battle itself, but on the context for the battle. 

Given the annilation of the men with Custer at the end, there is a natural tendency for the author to focus on the experiences of the survivors. As in many other histories of the Little Big Horn, this means that historians and authors tend to tell the story of the commands of Reno and Benteen. Donovan does this well, giving a real sense of how the troops there, a few miles from Custer's position, had little understanding of what had happened, and their terrifying nights defending their position while being unsure what had happened to Custer's force.

Donovan places pride of place to Benteen here. Benteen, hated by Custer, is built up here as a brave tactician, able to step in when Reno fails and loses control. Benteen's ability to organise the defence and a fighting retreat after Weir's unsuccessful attempt to reach Custer probably saved the companies on the hill. Reno himself is depicted as a coward and a drunk, though Donovan is perhaps less critical that other historians of the man himself. There's no doubt that Reno's initial charge was met by a heavy force, and could not have survived a full scale attack on the Native American village. In the aftermath of that collapse, Benteen could save the men, but there was an utter failure of collective leadership. The real failure of command however, was Custer.

Custer's luck ran out at the Bighorn. It is noticeable that many of those who survived with Reno (thanks to Benteen) assumed that Custer must have survived - he was considered unkillable. But that reputation was built on luck itself. Indeed what's really noticeable in contemporary accounts such as Donovan's is that the massacre of the Seventh Cavalry took place because Custer's command decisions were frequently made on the basis of his personal animosity and factional fighting in the regiment. Ironically, Custer took his friends and family with him, leaving his antagonists with Reno. They're the ones who lived.

Despite starting decades before, James Donovan's book is focused on the battle to the exculsion of much interesting contemporary material and suffers from a lack of Native American material and voices. It is interesting to compare and contrast the account of the Little Bighorn told in Pekka Hämäläinen's Lakota America. Which is entirely from the perspective of the Lakota forces on the day. Donovan's book would have been much stronger had it used this approach alongside the well worn tale from the Cavalry's side.

In the final third of the book Donovan tells the story of the recriminations and blame after the battle. Here the reader is likely to be disappointed. The survivors banded together, for the good of the regiment, and everyone failed to learn any lessons. Many of those who survived however suffered badly - what we would today call PTSD led many to drink, and tragic deaths. The Native Americans celebrated, but were rounded up and destroyed by a beligerent US and so it is right that Donovan finishes with the horror of Wounded Knee - making it clear how the US Army saw this massacre of men, women and children as revenge for the Custer's death. 

A Terrible Glory is a readable account of the Little Bighorn fight. But readers will likely find themselves wanting more than James Donovan offers here. Readers looking for a first book about this subject might find Nathanel Philbrick's The Last Stand a better introduction.

Related Reviews

Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Estes - Our History is the Future
Philbrick - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties

Pekka Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

In the introduction to this outstanding new history of the Lakota Native American people, Pekka Hämäläinen makes the point that the Lakota are often defined by the events of a single day - June 25 187 when Lakota Souix, Cheyenne and Arapaho forces destroyed Custer's command at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. But this is problematic because it tends to ignore the rich and varied history of the Lakota both before and after that war.

Using extensive Native American sources as well as contemporary White accounts, Hämäläinen explores the long history of the Lakota, beginning when they were an "obscure tribe of hunters and gatherers at the edge of a bustling new world", through the varied conflicts and changes that led to them becoming a power on the American plains. At each stage, the Lakota demonstrate a remarkable capacity for change and adaption. Because of the images of the "Indian Wars", and especially Little Big Horn, we tend to think of them as brilliant cavalry troops, but this was only one particular point. Before they got horses (which was surprisingly late compared to other indigenous tribes) they were limited in hunting and travelling. Their were more sedentary, and like other Native Americans, often farmed for some of their food.

But they were defined by their relationship to other tribes and the European colonists. Hämäläinen gives a real sense of how the colonial wars between France and England, and later America and the European powers that remained on the American confict, shaped Lakota history. In fact, war and disease was a driving force behind the shift that saw the Lakota move into the Plains to their west, driven by the Iroquois who reacted to devastation of their population by striking out westward to capture slaves. This shift opened up the Plains, and the Lakota became part of a burgeoning trading network that saw them, and other tribes, collecting furs and hides for sale to Europeans, in exchange for food, weapons and other materials. It was a significant transformation, as this passage from Hämäläinen indicates:

By the late 1840s almost all Lakotas had made the western plains their home, visiting the Mnisose [Missouri River] only peridodically to bring their robes to steamboat stops for downriver shipment. Only Two Kettles, a small oyáte of some five hundred people, remained attached to the river. They made quick forays nto the West, but did not enage in large-scale raiding, and were known as superior hunters and tactful traders who were 'extremely fond of getting well paid for their skins'. Their semi-permanent villages near Fort Pierre were the last substantial Lakota bridgehead on the Missouri, which had lost its centrality in the Lakota universe.

The reader gets a real sense of how changing the indigenous world was, and how much they had become attached to a global economic system of trade. This transformed Lakota ideas and their social organisation, and created real tensions within their society - not least about how to relate to European power. But there is also no doubt from Hämäläinen's history that the Lakota, and other tribes were part of that great game between the colonial powers - a military and economic force that one side or the other tried to use in turn, while it also fought hard for its own interests.

Lakota power is a phrase used frequently by Hämäläinen and it is worth reminding ourselves that the Lakota were at one point, a significant national power on the North American continent. They were able, on several occasions to stop westward colonialisation, and certainly won significant gains from the American government. Indeed when their representatives negotiated with the American government they did so very much as equals.

As Hämäläinen emphasises, the Lakota's war with the US "was a shattering experience, but it did not define them as a people or their place in history". His book celebrates these "superbly flexible people" fighting for their place in a world increasingly squeezed by genocidal settlement. He continues:

Perhaps most strikingly, they emerge as supreme warriors who routinely eschewed violence, relying on diplomacy, persuasion and sheer charm to secure what they needed - only to revert to naked force if necessary. When the overconfident Custer rode into the Bighorn vally on that June day, they had already faced a thousand imperial challenges. They knew exactly what to do with him.

This is why the Lakota had to be destroyed. The Little Bighorn was their greatest moment, but it was also the beginning of their defeat. US settler colonialism could no longer keep up the pretext of living together and finding space. The punishment was explicitly genocidal, as seen at Wounded Knee, where Hotchkiss guns annihilated hundreds of Lakota.

But this was not the end, and nor did it stop the resistance, even as it transformed it. Hämäläinen continues with the history of the Lakota people in the 20th century, marked by racism and extreme oppression and economic punishment, but also by resistance. From Wounded Knee and the American Indian Movement in the 1970s to the battles over the Dakota Pipeline, the struggle continues. Hämäläinen concludes that the Lakota will prevail - "They will always find a place in the world because they know how to be fully in it, adapting to its shape while remaking it, again and again, after their own image."

Pekka Hämäläinen is an outstanding history. It never robs the Lakota of their agency, placing them in the heart of their own history - casting them not as victims, but as part of a rapidly evolving historical situation that could have gone in any one of different ways. It is noteworthy that the author uses indigenous language and spelling wherever he can, and writes from the point of view of the Lakota themselves. If you've read, like I have, countless histories of the Little Bighorn battle, then Hämäläinen's account based on indigenous sources, frames things very differently. If I have one criticism it is that I don't think the author really understands the term "imperialism" and tends to throw it about as a catch all term to describe American expansionism. For anyone interested in resistance to settler colonialism, and how that shaped and transformed the land and people on the North American continent, this is a must read.

Related Reviews

Estes - Our History is the Future
Cronon - Changes in the Land
Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
Philbrick - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Clark C. Spence - Montana: A History

The States and the Nation series was a collection of books commissioned to mark the bicentennial of the United States. There were 51 in total, one for each state plus one for the District of Columbia. They were intended to be a lasting account of the states, but not comprehensive, rather a "summing up" of the history. Clark C. Spence's account of Monata is very much a summing up. Readers will find a decent overview of events - from the first furtrappers and settlers, through the era of homesteading and ranching, on to the period of mining and the modern day - up to the bicentennial at least.

But it is very much a "summing up", and the tone of the book (and indeed it's content) is very much that of its time. For instance, there is nothing here about the pre-state history. The book begins with Lewis and Clark's expedition. While they aren't depicted as entering into an empty land, the Native American societies that had existed in this part of North America for thousands of years are given no history at all. Indeed, this undermines any real attempt to understand what happened next as US settler colonialism exploited and destroyed the indigenous population and natural resources.

The book is dated in other ways. Consider this line on the Lewis and Clark expedition about the Native American woman who travelled with them: "Every schoolgirl thrills to the name of Sacagawea, the Shoshone lass, a mere slip of a girl of seventeen who carried her infant son, Pomp, on her back to the Pacific and return, and who made real contributions, though often her role is unduly magnified." I suppose we should be grateful that Spence even named this woman, before dismissing her as being of real interest only to schoolgirls. Doubly patronising.

The book is on stronger ground with later events. The reader gets a real sense of Montana as a place exploited for its resources, land and beauty, shaped by a series of changing economic interests - firstly the fur trade, then ranching and homesteading and finally mineral extraction. While these changing economic circumstances are summarised well, the consequences for people - indigenous and white - are often all to brief. There is a chapter on "Control of the Indians" gives a sense of the way that racist government policies destroyed entire peoples but it is inadequate. The chapter's title perhaps gives a clue to the approach taken. The author's desire to appear neutral undermines any attempt to draw conclusions. Notably The Battle of the Little Big Horn - Montana's seminal moment in the Indian Wars, only gets a brief sentence. There is a slightly longer treatment for the trade unionists, socialists and miners of Montana, especially during the Copper Wars and the First World War when figures like Frank Little made brave radical stands against war and exploitation. 

Modern readers will perhaps find the description of the arc of history, most interesting. Particuarly the way that agriculture and mining shaped the wider politics of the state. The influence of the mining capitalists on state politics is fascinting, as is the story of the 20th century which saw enormous poverty and hunger through the state. Tourists will be interested to read how much of the infrastructure (and indeed landscape) of the state park system came out of unemployment projects in the 1930s which built bridges and roads and planted thousands of trees. But the succession of politicians described from the post-WWII period is tiresome for a modern reader, though no doubt essential in 1978. 

All in all this is very much a summary, and a dated one. Readers looking for a comprehensive and modern history of Montana will inevitably find this because of the lack of alternatives. We'll have to find more info elsewhere - especially because the all to brief accounts and references hint at some fascinating detail.

Related Reviews

Carlisle - Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America
Lause - The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots & Class Conflicts in the American West
Hunter - Glencoe and the Indians
St. Clair & Frank - The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink

Kent Nerburn - Neither Wolf nor Dog

This book begins with a phone call. Author and artist Kent Nerburn gets contacted by the grandaughter of an Native American elder, who wants him to write his story. Nerburn has already published several books that present the stories and memories of Native Americans who lived on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation, and Dave Bald Eagle (Dan), a member of the Lakota, feels that Nerburn can deliver. But this writing assignment becomes a spiritual journey for Nerburn when Dan, and his friend Grover, essentially kidnap Nerburn and take him on an intellectual journey to understand Native American history, thought and, above all, anger.

There is a great deal of mutual misunderstanding in this book. Nerburn often, and openly, fails to understand what Dan and Grover are telling him. He cannot comprehend the Lakota worldview, and he is helpless in answering and understanding what he is being told. Gradually he gets closer to it, after essentially having a breakdown in the face of the emotion, intensity and power of Dan's ideas. It is a journey (spiritually and physically) that is deftly told. Dan is hard on Nerburn, rarely allowing him space, and pressing him on points and the half-baked thoughts that the whiteman makes. There's a hard hitting bit when the three travellers visit some of Dan's family, and Dan tackles Nerburn for treating one of the children differently. One of the kids is half Indian and half white and Dan accuses Nerburn, "He wasn't an Indian to you. That's why you talked to him more." Nerburn doesn't see that he did anything wrong, and this just riles Dan more - "The little guy... he's never been as far as Rapid City. He speaks Lakota. He's never even seen his white dad. But to you the other kids are more Indian."

It's a powerful moment and Nerburn's protestations are frustrated and bitter. But it's honest. It leads the author, through Dan, to explore US politics around race, genocide and the reservations themselves. Nerburn is ill-equipped to deal with the onslaught of ideas, thoughts and new approaches to the world that Dan and Grover offer him. Dan complains:

You are still writing down our story, using your words, and you are still getting it all wrong. Your words are all full of sharp edges that cut us. But we have been bleeding so long we don't even feel it anymore.

It is a powerful lesson for Nerburn, and the reader. Nerburn is ill-equipped to tell it, and that's not just because he is not a Native American. It's also because he hasn't got any political framework to explain American history. If I have one disagreement with Dan's own politics its that it doesn't acknowledge that as capitalism sought to murder the Native Americans, it also destroyed the lives of countless other peoples whose world-views and livelihoods did not fit its model. The genocide of the Native Americans took place alongside the colonial destruction of peoples across the Global South as well as the destruction of European ways of life that had entirely different relationships to the world around them.  But Nerburn doesn't even appear to have heard of Wounded Knee. He's a great writer, and perhaps his naivety is the perfect foil for Dan's hard reality, but at times I was exasperated by him for different reasons to Dan's!

Nevertheless this "neither fiction nor non-fiction" account of a road trip is a powerful and illuminating read. Add it to your list, for a sense of the raging discontent and anger that remains at the heart of the so called "American Dream".

Related Reviews

Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Braiding Sweetgrass is one of those books that defies easy categorisation. I picked it up expecting a book that distilled indigineous knowledge about plants, perhaps imaginging a discussion about what plants made for good food, medicine or had other benefits. The book definitely has this within it. But it has much more. It is also part autobiography, part reportage, part biological discussion. All of this often infused with anger and sadness. Robin Wall Kimmerer draws on her many varied experiences - as a mother, scientist and university tutor - as well as an indigenous person in North America - to draw out how Native American people understand the world and nature. It makes for a remarkable book.

One of the things about Braiding Sweetgrass is Kimmerer's mixing of scientific and indigenous insights. Towards the end of the book, she writes:

The very facts of the world are a poem. Light is turned to sugar. Salamanders find their way to ancestral ponds following magnetic lines radiating from the earth. The saliva of grazing buffalo causes the grass to grow taller. Tobacco seeds germinate when they smell smoke. Microbes in industrial waste can destroy mercury. Aren't these stories we should all know?

She continues, "The stories of buffao and salamanders belong to the land, but scientists are one of their translators and carry a large responsiblity for conveying their stories to the world". But she bemoans that "scientists mostly convey these stories in a language that excludes readers."

I think the point she is making is that Western thought teachers people to understand the world in a particular way. Nature is a commidity that has been tied into a global market. Capitalism teaches us to see the world in a particular way. We relate to nature, not as nature, but as a thing, separate from us.

Kimmerer shows this often in her descriptions of time spent with student. On field trips she finds students who are incredulous at her suggestions that they listen to nature, or think of a tree, plant or stone as a person that they should communicate with. I'll admit that it seems strange to me. But the point that Kimmerer is making is that we consider the world differently when we have to think about the consequences of our actions - when we have to ask the animal if it is ok to hunt them, or the crop to cut it. The action of making gifts to nature is in part about making a recognition that nature cannot be taken for grants.

There's an excellent chapter that looks at this through a PHd students work on crop yields. This student is studying the impact of different ways of harvesting crops. The university professors are incredulous that she thinks that the act of farming the crops would increase yields. "Anyone knows that harvesting a plant will damage the population. You're wasting your time" said the Dean. Yet the opposite was proved to be true. Indigenous knowledge trumped the academy.

Kimmerer is not suggesting that indigenous knowledge should replace Western science. What she is arguing is that the approach of indigenous people to the world offers ways of understanding the world that can supplement science. Her different chapters all, in various ways, make this case - often in convincing and interesting ways.

But I think there's something missing of her analysis. The problem is not science. The problem is a social and economic system that frames science in a particular way. Rightly Kimmerer talks about the appalling genocidal treatment of indigenous people. This saw the deliberate and violent destruction of a way of life - and a way of thinking. But the rise of capitalism did this to people everywhere - including in Europe. James D. Fisher's recent book The Enclosure of Knowledge makes this point well about the experience in England. This is not to downplay the violence inflicted on Native Americans, but to argue that the rise of the bourgeois way of thinking about nature is the problem. We cannot simply graft better and more helpful ways of thinking on existing science. We need to transform the system itself.

This is why I think Kimmerer's book is sometimes misunderstood by reviewers. Because it seems hard to imagine what she is suggesting taking place - because it can seem so alien. Interestinginly at the same time as writing this review I've been reading Kent Nerburn's book Neither Wolf Nor Dog, which features similar increduality between Nerburn and his Native American companions.

Of course, it is possible to shift how people think and view the world. Kimmerer's students often make that leap - and she writes touchingly about this. Her book will also contribute to this process. But making that change is only a first step. As she writes at the very end, we need "courage" to "refuse to participate in an economy that destroys the beloverd earth to line the pockets of the greedy, to demand an economy that is aligned with life, not stacked against it. It's easy to write that, harder to do."

Unless we shatter the Settler Colonial system that alienates us from nature, and shapes our way of thinking, we will remain trapped in its framework. Kimmerer's book is thus a powerful argument for a new way of thinking, but we need to go much further.

Related Reviews

Fisher - The Enclosure of Knowledge
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
McMillan & Yellowhorn - First Peoples in Canada
Hunter - Glencoe and the Indians
Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping