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Scalp Dance
Book by Goodrich, Thomas
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 21, 2022
Great collection of (white) accounts detailing warfare between Native Americans and the invading armies / settlers. Reading the first-hand accounts is breathtaking and just adds to the utter horror and brutality of the time period.
October 18, 2015
Excellent book. It shows the savagery of the Indian, not the gentle, kind, peaceful people that the media would have you believe.
July 24, 2015
Once I had finished reading this book I wondered how to categorize it. Is it a history book? Many reviewers seem to believe that. But history books give a narrative distilled from sources and then refined by careful analysis according to the historical method. This book doesn't do that. I would rather call it a collage. It reminds me very much of the European political agit-prop-art of the 1920s and 1930s that is made of photo-collages. It is shrill, extremely in-your-face, follows a very clear agenda and isn't hampered by shades of gray.
The message of this political collage is that the Plains Indians - for all the period admiration of their exotic" gaudiness" - were essentially inhuman creatures (and therefore themselves less than human) who got what they deserved in the ethnic cleansing wars of the 1860s and 1870s.
If you want to find out what the author of this 1996 book has to say nowadays, you'll find his interviews on white supremacist internet talk radio websites and his articles on websites where his articles are lined with advertisements for poetry books on Adolf Hitler. That's not a coincidence. Looking at his book publishing record, you immediately realize how he categorizes groups of people on the good guy/bad guy scale. At the very bottom of the moral food chain are the supposed villains of this book, the Plains Indians, who dared to resist their ethnic cleansing (Goodrich calls it the only just war he knows). Above them, naturally, reside the white Invaders (more or less artfully presented as victims of Indian aggression here). Between those, however, there is a clear hierarchy of better or worse: Abolitionists are bad, Slave-proponents are good. Logically, the Confederate South is the morally superior victim of the evil North (The Day Dixie died). Looking across the pond, Nazi Germany becomes the morally superior genocide victim of the evil Allies (Hellstorm). In the background of everything, of course, lurks the eternal Jew who hates the white race and wants to destroy it from within by instilling racial self-hate among whites. Welcome to the world of Thomas Goodrich. Goodrich wants to assemble as many like-minded white supremacists as possible for the coming "Endkampf" between the races. This book is part of the recruitment effort.
The Leitmotiv of this book is one of racist partisanship: If you're a white American, be proud and unapologetic about the Indian Wars. Your ancestors deserve admiration and sympathy, the Indians only gleeful scorn.
The method chosen by Goodrich is even simpler: Why reinvent the wheel when all the racist, exterminatory rape and mutilation porn has already been written in abundance by others in the 19th century. Remember, this is not a history book but rather a political propaganda collage. It's all one big cut and paste job. The book consists of at least 80% block quotes (carefully selected for propagandistic effect, of course) and a bit of political prose that directs the reader from one copy/paste segment to the next.
Looking through the short bibliography, the Indian Wars buff will quickly notice that the standard literature on the Plains Indians is missing. One looks in vain for indispensable classics like Grinnell's "The Fighting Cheyennes", Hide's "Life of George Bent" or Powell's "People of the Sacred Mountain". Goodrich makes sure that the Indians will exclusively be viewed through the hateful and ignorant eyes of their white enemies. Apart from some frontier newspaper snippets (a treasure trove of - often facts free- hysterical anti-Indian atrocity porn), the literature used is exclusively secondary sources. Goodrich doesn't even consult Army reports such as the ones collected in the "Annals of the Southern Rebellion", he just copy-pastes from other authors. So, when he, for instances, quotes the -often comically- anti-Indian Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, he doesn't say from which of his books the quote actually is. That's quite annoying if you want to check quotes. Knowing Dodge's books doesn't help as the author doesn't tell you from which one the quotes at hand have been lifted as he didn't consult the original but went the easy way of quoting from secondary sources. Worse, very often he doesn't even bother to state which person he is quoting. You just get another the-Injuns-are-evil snippet and a footnote that directs you to some 1960s secondary literature. So, who actually said this? We never know.
Having said all this, I can't deny that large parts of the book are entertaining. After all, no matter how biased an author is, if he fills 80% of the book with direct quotes, you get a lot of "you are there " stuff for your money.
However, much of these aren't just often very biased against Indians, they also often contain far less "live coverage" than it may feel like for the less informed reader. Take for example the abundant excerpts from Custer's autobiographic "My Life on the Plains". As with any PR-savvy public figure, Custer's writing about his own exploits was of course heavily redacted to make him appear in the best possible light - dashing, brave and chaste- and his enemies in the worst possible light - treacherous, cowardly and always looking for the next rape victim. Award-winning historians like William Chalfant have painstakingly retraced how Custer's versions of certain events further and further "evolved" over time (the paper trail includes private letters and official reports) until they reached the form as presented in his autobiography. Goodrich, of course, isn't interested in such work and always takes authors like Custer at face-value.
Here is but one example of how that works: When Custer tells his readers an entertaining cloak-and-dagger-style episode of how he supposedly was the first to search some teepees of a large Cheyenne village deserted by its panic-stricken inhabitants, he has himself discover a little girl left behind in a dark lodge. Army reports, however, show conclusively that Custer wasn't the one who inspected these teepees first. He invents this for effect - and Goodrich swallows it all hook, line and sinker. Predictably, Goodrich also copy/pastes Custer's story that the eight years old little Girl was part-white and that she told the troopers that "the Indians had done her bad". However, the army records (especially the final report of the surgeon who inspected her), corroborated by Indian accounts, reveal that the Girl was full-blood Cheyenne, mentally retarded, had gotten lost in the chaos and was still untouched when the last Indian left the village. Soon after, the first troopers started rummaging through the village, looting it (that's not featured by Goodrich) - and must have treated the girl as just another enemy trophy for the taking, gang-raping her. She died a few days later from her severe wounds. In Goodrich's book, it's of course the Cheyennes who, covering and accompanying the evacuation of their panic-stricken families, have nothing better to do than rape a little girl from their own village during the evacuation. Yeah, sure... That's how objective Thom Goodrich is.
Staying on topic, the systematic sex abuse by the 7th cavalry of female Cheyenne hostages after the annihilation of Black Kettle's village at the Washita (it lasted from late November '68 until the early summer of '69) isn't even hinted at with a single word. Goodrich loves to relate rape and sex slave stories, but this one, of course, doesn't fit his agenda. Generally, Indian women are either denigrated as looking like Gorillas in this book or they are presented as cute Indian princesses who only fancy white cavalry officers (it all stays clean and platonic though, and the Indian princess dutifully dies before she can racially contaminate any white officer).
Talking about Indian women dutifully dying: The grand Opening of the book, Goodrich's coverage of the Sand Creek massacre, is a real keeper: He is, to my knowledge, the only modern author who would portray the bulky genocidal bully John M. Chivington as a "handsome" avenging angel, overlooking the judgment of God over the "Red Devils". His pulp-fiction-story like retelling of the Sand Creek Massacre is indeed hard to stomach, both for its awkward literary style and it's glaring distortion of historical facts:
- Goodrich describes how lucky Chivington felt that his prayers had been answered and the village of Sand Creek was where he had hoped it would be. In reality the Indians had been camping in this location on Chivington's orders. The chiefs had reported the location to nearby Fort Lyon. Just two days prior the local fort commander had sent traders to the village to make the villagers feel safe.
- Goodrich: "This morning, down there along the banks of Sand Creek, John Chivington was going to right a great wrong". One wonders what that would be. The search-and-destroy policy against unsuspecting Cheyenne villages he had instigated the previous spring? The callous murder of peace chief Lean Bear in May? Goodrich gives the reader a hint on the following page: "After nearly three years of fear and frustration the opportunity to smite their foe had finally arrived". One wonders what on earth the man is talking about. Remember, it was the whites who had, in flagrant violation of the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty, overrun Cheyenne and Arapahoe lands, destroying their favorite camping sites, water and timber resources, killing and driving away the game. As a consequence, many of the Cheyennes and Arapahos had been starving. Their warriors had been kept in check by the chiefs, anxious not to trigger a war of annihilation with the invaders. The uneasy peace had been kept until the begin of the search-and-destroy campaign of the Colorado volunteers. So, seriously, what is it now he wants to blame the Indians for? The civil war in the East? The Confederate threat from Texas? As deluded as it seems, that's exactly what the author is doing next.
- Mixing the civil war with the latter date settler-Indian war, he omits how the Colorado volunteers started the war and conveniently jumps to the reluctant retaliations by the Indians, answering deadly and destructive raids against no less than five villages with mere horse theft actions. Actually he doesn't even do that. Instead he fast-forwards to the point in the ensuing tit-for-tat where the Indians drew first blood among settlers after several weeks, obviously to make them look more like aggressors. He then inserts a ghastly quote that describes the finding of the four-person Hungate family on June 11th 1864 outside Denver, the first settler family to die 8 weeks after the first army attacks on Cheyenne villagers. Goodrich neither explains this quote as pertaining to the Hungate killings nor does he explain that these happened in retaliation to the killing of an Arapahoe warrior by Nathan Hungate. His anonymized presentation serves to give the reader the impression that such things were happening every day - which they were not.
- Goodrich: "Later that autumn, a band of Southern Cheyennes and Arapahoe under Black Kettle, aware of looming winter and weary of war, ceased their raiding and sued for peace"(p.3). That's totally manipulative again. Black Kettle had already sought out the commander of Fort Larned in July for peace talks and sent peace envoys to various Forts again in September. The only way to lure trigger-happy troop commanders into peace talks was to inform them about white prisoners and suggest a prisoner exchange. That was what finally worked for Black Kettle.
- Next sentence by Goodrich: "Although territorial authorities refused to treat with the Indians until the remaining hostiles surrendered, Black Kettle's band was given a voucher of safety from a young Federal officer and allowed to camp in peace" (p.3). In reality there was a conference at Camp Weld outside Denver. And the "young Federal officer" was not so young, it was Chivington himself.
Next:"The people of Colorado were outraged. [...] Punishment, not peace, should be the raiders' reward, most whites felt, and none was more violent on the matter or more determined to punish than Reverend John Chivington. Thus, above Sand Creek thus bright winter morning in 1864…" What Goodrich omits is that Chivington himself had told the chiefs that they should lay down their arms and submit to military authority at Fort Lyon. The Indians at Sand Creek had done exactly that. Now he was sneaking up at dawn to massacre them. Goodrich chooses to completely obfuscate the murderous treachery by Chivington that Sand Creek was.
Astonishingly, Goodrich then races through the actual carnage of Sand Creek in under one page. Why the sudden squeamishness and the haste? Isn't this the type of material this book is all about? This one morning at Sand Creek produced more quotable material on
- families being ripped apart by artillery shells,
- groups of women begging for their lives on their knees, then getting their brains blown out,
- countless more variations on the child-or-woman-begs-for-mery-and-gets-callously-murdered-nevertheless theme,
- target practice on fleeing toddlers,
- troopers taking turns in deflowering still living, dying or very dead women,
- murders of men, women and children taken captive etc., etc., etc.
than years of White-Indian War. Why skip what the book is all about as it is allegedly about the brutality of the Indian Wars? Because the victims have the wrong skin color, that's why.
To top it all, one third of that one page is devoted to a story of a bale of white scalps having been found in the village (see? We only did bad things to bad people). Informed people know how this story developed. Sure, Sand Creek was all about scalps, hundreds of them. Only one scalp in this story was white. It was taken by a warrior when he killed a trooper who had strayed too far from the rest while hunting survivors. His fresh scalp was found later in the day by other troopers and created much alarm among the troopers who were themselves so busy with scalping dead and not yet dead villagers. Soon the story evolved, the scalp became half a dozen scalps, then a full dozen and finally a bale of scalps (which is nowhere to be found as it never existed). When a legend has matured to this level it's just ripe for Thomas Goodrich. There you go...
With such propagandistic distortions disfiguring the entire narrative of the book, one is almost thankful that 80% of the book is not in the author's own words.
The book ends just as preposterous as it starts. Adding insult to injury to the Cheyenne people, Goodrich copy-pastes some white folks musings about how unduly quickly the whites had forgiven the survivors of the 1878 Northern Cheyenne Exodus their fight for their freedom.
This is a book written by a white racist for white racists. If you are white, scared of other races and feel like mentally preparing for the coming race war - this book has been written for you. However, if you are better than that, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a real history book.
The message of this political collage is that the Plains Indians - for all the period admiration of their exotic" gaudiness" - were essentially inhuman creatures (and therefore themselves less than human) who got what they deserved in the ethnic cleansing wars of the 1860s and 1870s.
If you want to find out what the author of this 1996 book has to say nowadays, you'll find his interviews on white supremacist internet talk radio websites and his articles on websites where his articles are lined with advertisements for poetry books on Adolf Hitler. That's not a coincidence. Looking at his book publishing record, you immediately realize how he categorizes groups of people on the good guy/bad guy scale. At the very bottom of the moral food chain are the supposed villains of this book, the Plains Indians, who dared to resist their ethnic cleansing (Goodrich calls it the only just war he knows). Above them, naturally, reside the white Invaders (more or less artfully presented as victims of Indian aggression here). Between those, however, there is a clear hierarchy of better or worse: Abolitionists are bad, Slave-proponents are good. Logically, the Confederate South is the morally superior victim of the evil North (The Day Dixie died). Looking across the pond, Nazi Germany becomes the morally superior genocide victim of the evil Allies (Hellstorm). In the background of everything, of course, lurks the eternal Jew who hates the white race and wants to destroy it from within by instilling racial self-hate among whites. Welcome to the world of Thomas Goodrich. Goodrich wants to assemble as many like-minded white supremacists as possible for the coming "Endkampf" between the races. This book is part of the recruitment effort.
The Leitmotiv of this book is one of racist partisanship: If you're a white American, be proud and unapologetic about the Indian Wars. Your ancestors deserve admiration and sympathy, the Indians only gleeful scorn.
The method chosen by Goodrich is even simpler: Why reinvent the wheel when all the racist, exterminatory rape and mutilation porn has already been written in abundance by others in the 19th century. Remember, this is not a history book but rather a political propaganda collage. It's all one big cut and paste job. The book consists of at least 80% block quotes (carefully selected for propagandistic effect, of course) and a bit of political prose that directs the reader from one copy/paste segment to the next.
Looking through the short bibliography, the Indian Wars buff will quickly notice that the standard literature on the Plains Indians is missing. One looks in vain for indispensable classics like Grinnell's "The Fighting Cheyennes", Hide's "Life of George Bent" or Powell's "People of the Sacred Mountain". Goodrich makes sure that the Indians will exclusively be viewed through the hateful and ignorant eyes of their white enemies. Apart from some frontier newspaper snippets (a treasure trove of - often facts free- hysterical anti-Indian atrocity porn), the literature used is exclusively secondary sources. Goodrich doesn't even consult Army reports such as the ones collected in the "Annals of the Southern Rebellion", he just copy-pastes from other authors. So, when he, for instances, quotes the -often comically- anti-Indian Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, he doesn't say from which of his books the quote actually is. That's quite annoying if you want to check quotes. Knowing Dodge's books doesn't help as the author doesn't tell you from which one the quotes at hand have been lifted as he didn't consult the original but went the easy way of quoting from secondary sources. Worse, very often he doesn't even bother to state which person he is quoting. You just get another the-Injuns-are-evil snippet and a footnote that directs you to some 1960s secondary literature. So, who actually said this? We never know.
Having said all this, I can't deny that large parts of the book are entertaining. After all, no matter how biased an author is, if he fills 80% of the book with direct quotes, you get a lot of "you are there " stuff for your money.
However, much of these aren't just often very biased against Indians, they also often contain far less "live coverage" than it may feel like for the less informed reader. Take for example the abundant excerpts from Custer's autobiographic "My Life on the Plains". As with any PR-savvy public figure, Custer's writing about his own exploits was of course heavily redacted to make him appear in the best possible light - dashing, brave and chaste- and his enemies in the worst possible light - treacherous, cowardly and always looking for the next rape victim. Award-winning historians like William Chalfant have painstakingly retraced how Custer's versions of certain events further and further "evolved" over time (the paper trail includes private letters and official reports) until they reached the form as presented in his autobiography. Goodrich, of course, isn't interested in such work and always takes authors like Custer at face-value.
Here is but one example of how that works: When Custer tells his readers an entertaining cloak-and-dagger-style episode of how he supposedly was the first to search some teepees of a large Cheyenne village deserted by its panic-stricken inhabitants, he has himself discover a little girl left behind in a dark lodge. Army reports, however, show conclusively that Custer wasn't the one who inspected these teepees first. He invents this for effect - and Goodrich swallows it all hook, line and sinker. Predictably, Goodrich also copy/pastes Custer's story that the eight years old little Girl was part-white and that she told the troopers that "the Indians had done her bad". However, the army records (especially the final report of the surgeon who inspected her), corroborated by Indian accounts, reveal that the Girl was full-blood Cheyenne, mentally retarded, had gotten lost in the chaos and was still untouched when the last Indian left the village. Soon after, the first troopers started rummaging through the village, looting it (that's not featured by Goodrich) - and must have treated the girl as just another enemy trophy for the taking, gang-raping her. She died a few days later from her severe wounds. In Goodrich's book, it's of course the Cheyennes who, covering and accompanying the evacuation of their panic-stricken families, have nothing better to do than rape a little girl from their own village during the evacuation. Yeah, sure... That's how objective Thom Goodrich is.
Staying on topic, the systematic sex abuse by the 7th cavalry of female Cheyenne hostages after the annihilation of Black Kettle's village at the Washita (it lasted from late November '68 until the early summer of '69) isn't even hinted at with a single word. Goodrich loves to relate rape and sex slave stories, but this one, of course, doesn't fit his agenda. Generally, Indian women are either denigrated as looking like Gorillas in this book or they are presented as cute Indian princesses who only fancy white cavalry officers (it all stays clean and platonic though, and the Indian princess dutifully dies before she can racially contaminate any white officer).
Talking about Indian women dutifully dying: The grand Opening of the book, Goodrich's coverage of the Sand Creek massacre, is a real keeper: He is, to my knowledge, the only modern author who would portray the bulky genocidal bully John M. Chivington as a "handsome" avenging angel, overlooking the judgment of God over the "Red Devils". His pulp-fiction-story like retelling of the Sand Creek Massacre is indeed hard to stomach, both for its awkward literary style and it's glaring distortion of historical facts:
- Goodrich describes how lucky Chivington felt that his prayers had been answered and the village of Sand Creek was where he had hoped it would be. In reality the Indians had been camping in this location on Chivington's orders. The chiefs had reported the location to nearby Fort Lyon. Just two days prior the local fort commander had sent traders to the village to make the villagers feel safe.
- Goodrich: "This morning, down there along the banks of Sand Creek, John Chivington was going to right a great wrong". One wonders what that would be. The search-and-destroy policy against unsuspecting Cheyenne villages he had instigated the previous spring? The callous murder of peace chief Lean Bear in May? Goodrich gives the reader a hint on the following page: "After nearly three years of fear and frustration the opportunity to smite their foe had finally arrived". One wonders what on earth the man is talking about. Remember, it was the whites who had, in flagrant violation of the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty, overrun Cheyenne and Arapahoe lands, destroying their favorite camping sites, water and timber resources, killing and driving away the game. As a consequence, many of the Cheyennes and Arapahos had been starving. Their warriors had been kept in check by the chiefs, anxious not to trigger a war of annihilation with the invaders. The uneasy peace had been kept until the begin of the search-and-destroy campaign of the Colorado volunteers. So, seriously, what is it now he wants to blame the Indians for? The civil war in the East? The Confederate threat from Texas? As deluded as it seems, that's exactly what the author is doing next.
- Mixing the civil war with the latter date settler-Indian war, he omits how the Colorado volunteers started the war and conveniently jumps to the reluctant retaliations by the Indians, answering deadly and destructive raids against no less than five villages with mere horse theft actions. Actually he doesn't even do that. Instead he fast-forwards to the point in the ensuing tit-for-tat where the Indians drew first blood among settlers after several weeks, obviously to make them look more like aggressors. He then inserts a ghastly quote that describes the finding of the four-person Hungate family on June 11th 1864 outside Denver, the first settler family to die 8 weeks after the first army attacks on Cheyenne villagers. Goodrich neither explains this quote as pertaining to the Hungate killings nor does he explain that these happened in retaliation to the killing of an Arapahoe warrior by Nathan Hungate. His anonymized presentation serves to give the reader the impression that such things were happening every day - which they were not.
- Goodrich: "Later that autumn, a band of Southern Cheyennes and Arapahoe under Black Kettle, aware of looming winter and weary of war, ceased their raiding and sued for peace"(p.3). That's totally manipulative again. Black Kettle had already sought out the commander of Fort Larned in July for peace talks and sent peace envoys to various Forts again in September. The only way to lure trigger-happy troop commanders into peace talks was to inform them about white prisoners and suggest a prisoner exchange. That was what finally worked for Black Kettle.
- Next sentence by Goodrich: "Although territorial authorities refused to treat with the Indians until the remaining hostiles surrendered, Black Kettle's band was given a voucher of safety from a young Federal officer and allowed to camp in peace" (p.3). In reality there was a conference at Camp Weld outside Denver. And the "young Federal officer" was not so young, it was Chivington himself.
Next:"The people of Colorado were outraged. [...] Punishment, not peace, should be the raiders' reward, most whites felt, and none was more violent on the matter or more determined to punish than Reverend John Chivington. Thus, above Sand Creek thus bright winter morning in 1864…" What Goodrich omits is that Chivington himself had told the chiefs that they should lay down their arms and submit to military authority at Fort Lyon. The Indians at Sand Creek had done exactly that. Now he was sneaking up at dawn to massacre them. Goodrich chooses to completely obfuscate the murderous treachery by Chivington that Sand Creek was.
Astonishingly, Goodrich then races through the actual carnage of Sand Creek in under one page. Why the sudden squeamishness and the haste? Isn't this the type of material this book is all about? This one morning at Sand Creek produced more quotable material on
- families being ripped apart by artillery shells,
- groups of women begging for their lives on their knees, then getting their brains blown out,
- countless more variations on the child-or-woman-begs-for-mery-and-gets-callously-murdered-nevertheless theme,
- target practice on fleeing toddlers,
- troopers taking turns in deflowering still living, dying or very dead women,
- murders of men, women and children taken captive etc., etc., etc.
than years of White-Indian War. Why skip what the book is all about as it is allegedly about the brutality of the Indian Wars? Because the victims have the wrong skin color, that's why.
To top it all, one third of that one page is devoted to a story of a bale of white scalps having been found in the village (see? We only did bad things to bad people). Informed people know how this story developed. Sure, Sand Creek was all about scalps, hundreds of them. Only one scalp in this story was white. It was taken by a warrior when he killed a trooper who had strayed too far from the rest while hunting survivors. His fresh scalp was found later in the day by other troopers and created much alarm among the troopers who were themselves so busy with scalping dead and not yet dead villagers. Soon the story evolved, the scalp became half a dozen scalps, then a full dozen and finally a bale of scalps (which is nowhere to be found as it never existed). When a legend has matured to this level it's just ripe for Thomas Goodrich. There you go...
With such propagandistic distortions disfiguring the entire narrative of the book, one is almost thankful that 80% of the book is not in the author's own words.
The book ends just as preposterous as it starts. Adding insult to injury to the Cheyenne people, Goodrich copy-pastes some white folks musings about how unduly quickly the whites had forgiven the survivors of the 1878 Northern Cheyenne Exodus their fight for their freedom.
This is a book written by a white racist for white racists. If you are white, scared of other races and feel like mentally preparing for the coming race war - this book has been written for you. However, if you are better than that, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a real history book.
July 17, 2017
Like his most recent book, Hellstorm, this is another Goodrich book that stays with you the rest of your life. I finished this book this weekend. I could not put it down. I felt like I was right there. I will NEVER watch a Hollywood movie in the same way again. They are fictional nonsense. Scalp Dance is real! But be warned: This book is not for kids. Like Hellstorm, this is the way it was. And war is not pretty. You have been warned.
May 6, 2025
The more than decade long warfare against the Plains Indians on the American frontier has always been curiously remembered - it was the most bloody and savage and yet simultaneously the most romanticised of all American conflicts. Who doesn't retain some kind of glorified image of the 'Red Indians' of the Plains, the cavalry charges, the glory of Custer's Last Stand? Such images have seeped into popular culture via the innumerable memoirs, novels, newspaper accounts, films and so, and are hard to shake.
Thomas Goodrich's book brings a little bit of reality and realism back to this era. He draws heavily on the recollections and writings of the soldiers, wives and civilians actually caught up in the fighting, making the narrative that much more stirring and immediate. There's little in the way of overview or historical analysis here, just a purely narrative-driven approach heavily studded with 'I was there' accounts.
Sadly, this makes it an incredibly one-sided read. Of course that's inevitable, given how many of the Native peoples were wiped out during the warfare and how few left their thoughts in any kind of permanent form. Unfortunately, it does leave you with a vivid impression of the rape, murder, mutilation and torture committed by Native Americans on whites, but there is very little recounting of the no doubt just as equal brutality meted out the other way, outside of the 'collateral damage' from raids on villages and teepees. But after all, history is always written by the victors.
Thomas Goodrich's book brings a little bit of reality and realism back to this era. He draws heavily on the recollections and writings of the soldiers, wives and civilians actually caught up in the fighting, making the narrative that much more stirring and immediate. There's little in the way of overview or historical analysis here, just a purely narrative-driven approach heavily studded with 'I was there' accounts.
Sadly, this makes it an incredibly one-sided read. Of course that's inevitable, given how many of the Native peoples were wiped out during the warfare and how few left their thoughts in any kind of permanent form. Unfortunately, it does leave you with a vivid impression of the rape, murder, mutilation and torture committed by Native Americans on whites, but there is very little recounting of the no doubt just as equal brutality meted out the other way, outside of the 'collateral damage' from raids on villages and teepees. But after all, history is always written by the victors.
December 30, 2014
Definitely told from the perspective of the white settler and Calvary man as is tells the stories of the utter brutality of the Indians. The horror is far worse than anything King or Koontz could ever make up. I found myself looking at a people pushed to the point of nothing left to loose as the Native Americans grappled with the lose of their way of life and untold horrors against their people at the hands of white men.
September 21, 2025
Leest als een soort wikipedia pagina van 300 bladzijden met als titel 'die indianen dat waren ook geen lieverdjes hoor'. Alleen maar geschreven vanuit het perspectief dat de witte mensen daar gewoon iets moois wilden opbouwen en dat die stomme oorspronkelijke bewoners dat aan het dwarsbomen waren. 1 ster extra omdat het wel gewoon heel sick is wat daar allemaal gebeurd is en je er door alle verhalen uit de eerste hand wel een goed beeld van krijgt
August 27, 2025
Mein Scalpf
I've read better books on the Indian Wars, but only because they were laid out better and there was more and better author commentary.
I shouldn't neglect this very important praise: this is almost entirely eye-witness accounts, in their own words, verbatim, with all kinds of weirdo spelling and lingo. This grizzled old-timer, prairie-crank patois alone makes it more fun than almost every other book on these events - but even with this Walter Brennan or Freddie Sykes spittin' and snortin' you always know exactly what's going on, which is more than you could say if we'd given Cormac McCarthy the job. Thank God Pynchon and Faulkner never took interest in the Indian Wars; these roosters would've ruined my fun forever.
I just this minute was thinking what a bang-up job James Carlos Blake coulda done on the Plains Wars and, while looking him up, I find that he died just this last January. I'm sorry to hear that; he lived near me and I always hoped I'd run into him sooner or later. We're both graduates of, and taught at, the same university - long before we'd both become so widely celebrated, dazzlingly famous, and sought-after by Hot Chicks that we had to lie low.
We all know that old timers' war stories are at least half bullshit, but only half is better than the pure bullshit you get from journalists, historians, and Hollywoodians.
I'll say more later. I wanna re-read a real good one I read a few years ago first.
It'll be a job finding it, since I don't remember the title and I've got so many of them. This is where a bookshelf full of books beats a Kindle - I'd recognize the one I'm thinking of by sight.
Incidentally, Custer's widow wrote a few really first-rate accounts too. George himself was a real good writer, but his wife was even better. Man, she must've been made of buffalo hide and cast iron, the stuff she went through.
I've read better books on the Indian Wars, but only because they were laid out better and there was more and better author commentary.
I shouldn't neglect this very important praise: this is almost entirely eye-witness accounts, in their own words, verbatim, with all kinds of weirdo spelling and lingo. This grizzled old-timer, prairie-crank patois alone makes it more fun than almost every other book on these events - but even with this Walter Brennan or Freddie Sykes spittin' and snortin' you always know exactly what's going on, which is more than you could say if we'd given Cormac McCarthy the job. Thank God Pynchon and Faulkner never took interest in the Indian Wars; these roosters would've ruined my fun forever.
I just this minute was thinking what a bang-up job James Carlos Blake coulda done on the Plains Wars and, while looking him up, I find that he died just this last January. I'm sorry to hear that; he lived near me and I always hoped I'd run into him sooner or later. We're both graduates of, and taught at, the same university - long before we'd both become so widely celebrated, dazzlingly famous, and sought-after by Hot Chicks that we had to lie low.
We all know that old timers' war stories are at least half bullshit, but only half is better than the pure bullshit you get from journalists, historians, and Hollywoodians.
I'll say more later. I wanna re-read a real good one I read a few years ago first.
It'll be a job finding it, since I don't remember the title and I've got so many of them. This is where a bookshelf full of books beats a Kindle - I'd recognize the one I'm thinking of by sight.
Incidentally, Custer's widow wrote a few really first-rate accounts too. George himself was a real good writer, but his wife was even better. Man, she must've been made of buffalo hide and cast iron, the stuff she went through.
December 8, 2020
A phenomenal resource for studying information related to the American-Indian wars and the savagery, bloodshed, heroism, and drama that took place therein. T.H. Goodrich's book narrates these thrilling events from primary and secondary resources. This picture perfect narration of Indian warfare as it was, pulls no punches and spares none of the gory details concerning the battles that were fought between the settlers and the Indians. This book draws heavily from genuine and authentic diaries, letters, and memoirs of the settlers (1865-1879) as they bravely and valiantly fought the savages in a variety of thrilling, bloody and violent combat scenarios.
November 29, 2009
Its a shame that this book tells such a terrible story as its such a well written account of a terrible period of America's history. I found it a very interesting account of Indian warfare on the high plains after the Civil War. The author used first-hand accounts of the fighting and style of warfare used by both sides.
The only fault that I could find with this book that there were not many similiar accounts from the 'other' side. Overall an excellent read which makes you realise how lucky we are sometimes and what other people had to endure back in those days.
July 13, 2016
Great book got a bit bogged down at the start but got better as it went along, a must read if you wish to see it from the settlers and soldiers side for a change, instead on read about the revisionist history that is churn out now days
August 25, 2019
The many first person accounts are eye opening and often at odds with the currently prevailing narrative covering this time in history. It's always fascinating to hear directly from the people who were actually there.
October 23, 2009
This is one of my all time favorite books. I couldn't put it down. I read it cover to cover in 2 days
July 24, 2023
I would like Scalp Dance better if the author had worked harder at pointing out more of the errors and misconceptions that drove the wars -- he does mention some -- but the Introduction says flat out that what the author is trying to do is present how the soldiers and settlers experienced the war, meaning he just wasn't writing the book I was looking for. Once he gets going I do think he does a fair job at presenting the mindset of many of the whites involved, however I also would have liked him to set up the situation a bit more clearly. I think he gives in to the novelistic urge to neaten things in limiting the "Indian Warfare on the High Plains" to 1865-1879, thus completely ignoring all the earlier comparatively minor but important activities that played into the settlers' mindset, along with the Dakota War of 1862, which was most certainly something whites on the frontier were still worrying about in 1864.
Meaning I quite disagree with this statement, from the "Prologue" -- "Then, in 1864, the greatest and most terrifying threat of all suddenly arose." Specifically, I disagree with the word "suddenly." In terms of the Colorado whites, fights with the local Indians started up 1850s and never stopped, the only difference being that some years the Indians were too busy fighting each other to bother with the whites. Still, as early as 1862 settlers complained that the Cheyenne and Arapaho spent their summers bullying and stealing, and then would "make peace" in the fall in order to get government reparations to tide them over the winter, only to go out on their raids again the next spring. Some years the raids were just stealing, but the whites lived in constant dread that it would be a killing year. And of course in those days stealing horses was a hanging offense; the fact that the Indians so often stole horses and cattle and otherwise destroyed people's businesses with no repercussions did not go over well.
Over and above this unpredictable cycle, Robert North's report in November 1863 that some of the local tribes, and all of the Cheyenne, were planning to "go to war with the whites" the next spring was corroborated by Indian Agents Colley and Loree. Governor Evans believed he faced something like the Dakota Wars of 1862, which resulted in some 600 deaths, including over 350 settlers, He was convinced the Indians and the whites were at war whether the Indians admitted it or not. So I question Goodrich's claim that the Indian wars "suddenly arose" that year -- Indian wars had been an issue for a while, in the sense that Colorado had lived in fear of their supply lines being cut off for years.
What changed in 1864 was that the Indians were no longer attacking people well out on the trails or in isolated trading posts; a group of Arapaho and Cheyenne killed a family of four on a ranch only 30 miles from Denver. Meaning the Indians were no longer a threat in the sense of cutting off people's food; to people who thought they lived close enough to civilization to be safe, Indians were suddenly a threat to life and limb! Which arguably supports Goodrich's "suddenly," but I still think his decision to frame the Indian Wars as an unexpected twist was more about telling a good story than telling good history.
At any rate, first time through I just grumbled to myself and kept going, and I found the book as a whole highly readable. Goodrich accurately reproduces the sometimes unique spelling and vernaculars of the people he's quoting, but it's only a paragraph here or there and I didn't find it tiresome. His quotes run the gambit of white opinion of the time, from people who were horrified by the violence of the Indian wars to people who were convinced the violence was justified, and from people who learned to look past their prejudice to see at least some Indian individuals as fully human to people whose hatred of Indians grew the more they saw of them.
I must say, the way he weaves together various witness reports to tell the reader what happened in a couple of battles makes them far more interesting than the more strictly historical write-ups I'd read previously. This is a book of popular history, and Goodrich knows how to tell a good story.
Meaning I quite disagree with this statement, from the "Prologue" -- "Then, in 1864, the greatest and most terrifying threat of all suddenly arose." Specifically, I disagree with the word "suddenly." In terms of the Colorado whites, fights with the local Indians started up 1850s and never stopped, the only difference being that some years the Indians were too busy fighting each other to bother with the whites. Still, as early as 1862 settlers complained that the Cheyenne and Arapaho spent their summers bullying and stealing, and then would "make peace" in the fall in order to get government reparations to tide them over the winter, only to go out on their raids again the next spring. Some years the raids were just stealing, but the whites lived in constant dread that it would be a killing year. And of course in those days stealing horses was a hanging offense; the fact that the Indians so often stole horses and cattle and otherwise destroyed people's businesses with no repercussions did not go over well.
Over and above this unpredictable cycle, Robert North's report in November 1863 that some of the local tribes, and all of the Cheyenne, were planning to "go to war with the whites" the next spring was corroborated by Indian Agents Colley and Loree. Governor Evans believed he faced something like the Dakota Wars of 1862, which resulted in some 600 deaths, including over 350 settlers, He was convinced the Indians and the whites were at war whether the Indians admitted it or not. So I question Goodrich's claim that the Indian wars "suddenly arose" that year -- Indian wars had been an issue for a while, in the sense that Colorado had lived in fear of their supply lines being cut off for years.
What changed in 1864 was that the Indians were no longer attacking people well out on the trails or in isolated trading posts; a group of Arapaho and Cheyenne killed a family of four on a ranch only 30 miles from Denver. Meaning the Indians were no longer a threat in the sense of cutting off people's food; to people who thought they lived close enough to civilization to be safe, Indians were suddenly a threat to life and limb! Which arguably supports Goodrich's "suddenly," but I still think his decision to frame the Indian Wars as an unexpected twist was more about telling a good story than telling good history.
At any rate, first time through I just grumbled to myself and kept going, and I found the book as a whole highly readable. Goodrich accurately reproduces the sometimes unique spelling and vernaculars of the people he's quoting, but it's only a paragraph here or there and I didn't find it tiresome. His quotes run the gambit of white opinion of the time, from people who were horrified by the violence of the Indian wars to people who were convinced the violence was justified, and from people who learned to look past their prejudice to see at least some Indian individuals as fully human to people whose hatred of Indians grew the more they saw of them.
I must say, the way he weaves together various witness reports to tell the reader what happened in a couple of battles makes them far more interesting than the more strictly historical write-ups I'd read previously. This is a book of popular history, and Goodrich knows how to tell a good story.
February 6, 2019
Ok, so I'm going to preface this by saying that I have never really read anything on the Indian Wars other than snippets here and there in tangentially related material. And I've never read anything else by the author. So let's just say that I entered this experience with zero preconceptions. Which, as I see it, is the most fair way to experience any book. You open the book with little if any knowledge of the subject matter or the author and you just let the story guide you.
Long story short: The author is kind of a white supremacist sympathizer and he paints the darkest picture possible of the Native inhabitants of the American Plains.
Ok, is he totally wrong? No. No, he is not. If half the things written about the Plains Indians during the 19th century were true, then they were brutally violent people. Of course, so were the white settlers encroaching on their territory. While some of that counterpoint was explored in the book, that exploration was pretty brief. As in "the guys under Chivington were a little excessive, now here is a couple hundred pages of Indian rape porn"-brief.
And I sort of get that. Everyone from Academia to Hollywood has painted the Plains Indians as noble tribes of decent people who only ever acted out in the face of European brutality. And that isn't totally accurate, either. There was rape and murder and torture by the ton perpetrated on settlers just trying to get across this vast grass ocean populated by a warrior culture that evolved in an environment that did not reward charity. Did innocent civilians deserve that? No. Did the Natives deserve what was essentially an outright genocide for profit? No. Nor have popular depictions of that period accurately described the behavior of either side. Whites murdered Indians. Indians murdered whites. Indians murdered Indians and Whites murdered Whites. Everyone was basically just killing the shit out of each other pretty much nonstop. And the mainstream media and academics have done a terrible job of explaining that in an unbiased manner. But you don't repair bias with more bias in the other direction. That isn't evening things out. That's polarization. And that is where this book fails miserably. Chivington was a genocidal psychopath, Custer was an asshat glorywhore and there were plenty of Natives who obviously enjoyed murdering and raping hapless settlers just as there were plenty of settlers who reveled in shooting anything they could find that wasn't white. Welcome to the last 300,000 years of human history. We are a despicable species of primate and taking sides is pretty irrelevant in the face of that.
Long story short: The author is kind of a white supremacist sympathizer and he paints the darkest picture possible of the Native inhabitants of the American Plains.
Ok, is he totally wrong? No. No, he is not. If half the things written about the Plains Indians during the 19th century were true, then they were brutally violent people. Of course, so were the white settlers encroaching on their territory. While some of that counterpoint was explored in the book, that exploration was pretty brief. As in "the guys under Chivington were a little excessive, now here is a couple hundred pages of Indian rape porn"-brief.
And I sort of get that. Everyone from Academia to Hollywood has painted the Plains Indians as noble tribes of decent people who only ever acted out in the face of European brutality. And that isn't totally accurate, either. There was rape and murder and torture by the ton perpetrated on settlers just trying to get across this vast grass ocean populated by a warrior culture that evolved in an environment that did not reward charity. Did innocent civilians deserve that? No. Did the Natives deserve what was essentially an outright genocide for profit? No. Nor have popular depictions of that period accurately described the behavior of either side. Whites murdered Indians. Indians murdered whites. Indians murdered Indians and Whites murdered Whites. Everyone was basically just killing the shit out of each other pretty much nonstop. And the mainstream media and academics have done a terrible job of explaining that in an unbiased manner. But you don't repair bias with more bias in the other direction. That isn't evening things out. That's polarization. And that is where this book fails miserably. Chivington was a genocidal psychopath, Custer was an asshat glorywhore and there were plenty of Natives who obviously enjoyed murdering and raping hapless settlers just as there were plenty of settlers who reveled in shooting anything they could find that wasn't white. Welcome to the last 300,000 years of human history. We are a despicable species of primate and taking sides is pretty irrelevant in the face of that.
December 27, 2018
The book is written from the point of view of the settlers and soldiers involved in the western Indian Wars. As such it does not touch on the more popular issues of today.
What I mean by that is there is no political agenda of any sort. The author uses period newspaper articles and diaries to chronicle the experiences of the soldiers and settlers who fought the Indians and were victims of them.
This is not to say it wasn’t the other way around because it certainly was.
I am highly sympathetic to the Native Americans of today. They lost everything to a technically and numerically superior culture that rarely treated them with Christian charity that was genuine.
On the other hand I did not live through the Indian Wars as a simple settler trying to make a living in an unforgiving landscape. Nor was I soldier charged with keeping the peace often with contradictory orders coming from Washington.
The result of horrible management , broken treaties, tribes and factions that did not get along with each other much less the whites, uncontrollable warriors was hatred and terrible atrocities on both sides.
It’s the strength of the book. The author lets the whites who lived through it tell their story in their time frame.
We tend to judge people in the past by our own politically correct standards and fail to understand what it was like to be an ordinary person caught up in war. The book in my opinion covers the human interest angle very well in helping us understand a culture clash and human nature.
What I mean by that is there is no political agenda of any sort. The author uses period newspaper articles and diaries to chronicle the experiences of the soldiers and settlers who fought the Indians and were victims of them.
This is not to say it wasn’t the other way around because it certainly was.
I am highly sympathetic to the Native Americans of today. They lost everything to a technically and numerically superior culture that rarely treated them with Christian charity that was genuine.
On the other hand I did not live through the Indian Wars as a simple settler trying to make a living in an unforgiving landscape. Nor was I soldier charged with keeping the peace often with contradictory orders coming from Washington.
The result of horrible management , broken treaties, tribes and factions that did not get along with each other much less the whites, uncontrollable warriors was hatred and terrible atrocities on both sides.
It’s the strength of the book. The author lets the whites who lived through it tell their story in their time frame.
We tend to judge people in the past by our own politically correct standards and fail to understand what it was like to be an ordinary person caught up in war. The book in my opinion covers the human interest angle very well in helping us understand a culture clash and human nature.
January 6, 2024
Scalp Dance
One of the worst most suburb and well researched books of the Indian Wars I have ever encountered!
A master piece of true stories and their macabre endings for Indian, White settlers, as well as U.S. Cavalry operations of the time.
Reads like a novel but its not!
Masterful layout of journal entries from those who lived and died in those events.
Amazing information that will keep.you reading into the dark early hours of the morning. So real you can hear the gunshots, feel the arrows, and smell the frightened horses and men as they ride into battle even along with war correspondent s of the day.
The book also examines a side of Custer few ever knew.
A magnificent book. Don't miss the opportunity to learn the real events of the Plains Indian wars!
One of the worst most suburb and well researched books of the Indian Wars I have ever encountered!
A master piece of true stories and their macabre endings for Indian, White settlers, as well as U.S. Cavalry operations of the time.
Reads like a novel but its not!
Masterful layout of journal entries from those who lived and died in those events.
Amazing information that will keep.you reading into the dark early hours of the morning. So real you can hear the gunshots, feel the arrows, and smell the frightened horses and men as they ride into battle even along with war correspondent s of the day.
The book also examines a side of Custer few ever knew.
A magnificent book. Don't miss the opportunity to learn the real events of the Plains Indian wars!
December 17, 2025
While the author whitewashes many notorious events of the Indian Wars (see Sven’s thorough, erudite comment), his book does provide a wealth of first-hand accounts of the interactions between Indians and American society. Most episodes are gruesome, but many encounters between whites and Indians involved mutual curiosity and in a few cases even tenderness.
The book might not be good history, but it definitely piqued my curiosity about a bygone era full of colorful characters and strange things.
The book might not be good history, but it definitely piqued my curiosity about a bygone era full of colorful characters and strange things.
June 15, 2025
A book of adventure that only the Old West could provide.
This books provides first hand accounts from journal entries of soldiers and others at the frontlines of the war for the West.
It provides a new perspective of the brutal existence of life during that time.
A great historical account.
This books provides first hand accounts from journal entries of soldiers and others at the frontlines of the war for the West.
It provides a new perspective of the brutal existence of life during that time.
A great historical account.
August 6, 2025
Viscerally realized cowboy diaries remind us why "Western" remains a genre with legs 150 years after its namesake was won. Plenty of adventure, alien contact, and bloodcurdling war crimes abound in your dad's dad's dad's primary sources. Nonfic has fun, too, yknow ;)
August 9, 2025
As I get older, I constantly get both humbled and irritated that there is so much I don't know about history, which is a lifelong love of mine. Here is another blind spot. I hope there are more to come.
Read
July 12, 20259 out of ten stars
September 21, 2025
Great book
November 3, 2016
"The palefaces, our eternal persecutors, pursue and harass us without intermission, forcing us to abandon to them, one by one, our best hunting grounds, and we are compelled to seek a refuge in the depths of these Bad Lands like timid deer. Many of them even dare to come into the prairies which belong to us, to trap beaver and hunt elk and buffalo, which are our property. These undesirable creatures, the outcasts of their own people, rob and kill us when they can. Is it just that we should suffer these wrongs without complaining? Shall we allow ourselves to be massacred...without seeking to avenge ourselves? Does not the law...say, "Justice to our own nation and death to all palefaces?" -Sioux Chief
Growing up I did not here much about the indigenous people on this continent beyond the usual accounts of Wounded Knee, a few key battles, the Trail of Tears and their forced relocation onto reservations. Too often natives are represented in a simple manner, either as noble savages or victims. I wanted to learn more about their violent resistance to the settlers. I also have a general interest in warfare so I picked up Scalp Dance (if you just happen to be in an all native hardcore band this should be your next album).
Yes, this book would have been terrible if it hadn’t been mostly quotes. Of course, they are mostly the words of white men, but isn’t all history mostly the words of white men, the people who cared to record everything? For example the author has this to say about Custer: "Though he fought the Indian as he had the Rebel—with every ounce of energy he possessed—few soldiers had more respect and, ultimately, more genuine sympathy for the plight of the Indian than George Armstrong Custer. Realizing that their time was short, the colonel and a handful of others were determined to learn all they could about these mysterious people of the Plains before they vanished from the face of the earth forever." WHAT? NO! STOP.
Luckily, this book isn’t about the John Wayne fuckers, its about indigenous people refusing to be enslaved and violently resisting. If smallpox hadn’t decimated the natives, history might have been written differently (or not at all). The tribes of the plains were incredibly skillful warriors, experts in the art of guerrilla tactics.
Also of interest to me was a brief mention of whites fighting whites and aiding the natives:
"Surprisingly, the use of Indian scouts against their own was not entirely one-sided. Many times, whites joined reds to war on whites. In a sense, such "renegades" served the enemy as scouts by teaching tactics, explaining white ways, and even leading the Indians on raids and skirmishes. Some of the whites were "squaw men" who sided with their wives' people. As one news-man covering a campaign in Wyoming made note:
"In the evening two rough-looking fellows came into camp and reported that they belonged to a party which was coming from the Black Hills to the Big Horn. The main body, they said, was a day's march behind us....The men went away like Arabs and only when they had gone did it strike our officers that they were squaw men from the Sioux camp, who visited us in the capacity of spies in behalf of their Indian people-in-law. It seemed stupid not to have detained the rascals as prisoners."
Other "white men in war paint" were hunters and trappers who, after long stings in the wilderness, had become "more Indian than the Indian" and resented the encroachment of civilization. Though rare, soldiers occasionally "went over" to the hostiles. On more than one prairie battlefield, an expertly blown bugle coordinated Indian attacks."
Its too bad battles are so one-sided these days (see Standing Rock). It pressures people into accepting non-violence as the only way to change things, but maybe if the people laying down the pipeline had to worry about being mutilated beyond recognition, there might be less oil spills and contaminated water in the future.
Growing up I did not here much about the indigenous people on this continent beyond the usual accounts of Wounded Knee, a few key battles, the Trail of Tears and their forced relocation onto reservations. Too often natives are represented in a simple manner, either as noble savages or victims. I wanted to learn more about their violent resistance to the settlers. I also have a general interest in warfare so I picked up Scalp Dance (if you just happen to be in an all native hardcore band this should be your next album).
Yes, this book would have been terrible if it hadn’t been mostly quotes. Of course, they are mostly the words of white men, but isn’t all history mostly the words of white men, the people who cared to record everything? For example the author has this to say about Custer: "Though he fought the Indian as he had the Rebel—with every ounce of energy he possessed—few soldiers had more respect and, ultimately, more genuine sympathy for the plight of the Indian than George Armstrong Custer. Realizing that their time was short, the colonel and a handful of others were determined to learn all they could about these mysterious people of the Plains before they vanished from the face of the earth forever." WHAT? NO! STOP.
Luckily, this book isn’t about the John Wayne fuckers, its about indigenous people refusing to be enslaved and violently resisting. If smallpox hadn’t decimated the natives, history might have been written differently (or not at all). The tribes of the plains were incredibly skillful warriors, experts in the art of guerrilla tactics.
Also of interest to me was a brief mention of whites fighting whites and aiding the natives:
"Surprisingly, the use of Indian scouts against their own was not entirely one-sided. Many times, whites joined reds to war on whites. In a sense, such "renegades" served the enemy as scouts by teaching tactics, explaining white ways, and even leading the Indians on raids and skirmishes. Some of the whites were "squaw men" who sided with their wives' people. As one news-man covering a campaign in Wyoming made note:
"In the evening two rough-looking fellows came into camp and reported that they belonged to a party which was coming from the Black Hills to the Big Horn. The main body, they said, was a day's march behind us....The men went away like Arabs and only when they had gone did it strike our officers that they were squaw men from the Sioux camp, who visited us in the capacity of spies in behalf of their Indian people-in-law. It seemed stupid not to have detained the rascals as prisoners."
Other "white men in war paint" were hunters and trappers who, after long stings in the wilderness, had become "more Indian than the Indian" and resented the encroachment of civilization. Though rare, soldiers occasionally "went over" to the hostiles. On more than one prairie battlefield, an expertly blown bugle coordinated Indian attacks."
Its too bad battles are so one-sided these days (see Standing Rock). It pressures people into accepting non-violence as the only way to change things, but maybe if the people laying down the pipeline had to worry about being mutilated beyond recognition, there might be less oil spills and contaminated water in the future.
March 15, 2013
amazing read.
May 23, 2013
Just couldn't put this one down. Read while in America and actually recognised one of the battle sites as per its description.
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