Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are many untold stories in popular history, and usually"untold" means not that there is no fairly decent treatment of the respective topic, but that former studies are simply dismissed to pretend a deceptive exclusivity. Actually Red Cloud's story was told quite often, first by himself and later including preeminent scholars like George E. Hyde or James C. Olson. In fact this Oglala leader is a comparatively well researched historical figure, and while many of these former studies have their weaknesses (some are simply outdated), they look rather innovative in comparison with this most recent work, which uses a reactionary language which was - for good reasons - more or less absent for the last two or three decades of historical revisionism. The Heart of Everything That Is is a strange combination of stereotypes and assertions disguised as solid evidence. Starting with the introduction, there are so many historical errors, exaggerations and omissions hidden in casually written subordinate clauses, that even the most willing reader should start to wonder... The strategy of the authors is quite obvious - they portray this historical episode as an unique success story of an outstanding character. Behind this is the straightforward logic that the sheer quality of the topic is congruent with the quality of the book. Intentionally or not, this is no clean historical science, it is a kind of post-revisionist, largely pseudohistorical iconography. Taking a closer look at some of the more obvious distortions or misinterpretations, one can only conclude that the authors committed the worst sin of historical science: they couldn't restist the temptation to use rather apocryphal interpretations just to make their point. Quite early in the introduction, the authors more or less argue that before the Plains Wars the American public was unused to stiff resistance by Native Americans, besides some exceptions. Actually European settlement needed two centuries and countless conflicts to reach the Mississippi frontier, suffering many serious defeats on its way, some of them with a very profound influence on the culture and politics of the American colonies and later the young United States. The relations of the United States with its indigeneous population were shaped and defined by these events, long before the American public and government were confronted with the harsh realities of Plains warfare. Surely the attitude towards Native Americans underwent many superficial changes (especially after the eastern states lost their frontier status), but the core issues of Manifest Destiny were valid long before and after it was designated as such. An unneccessary sensationalization is the graphic (and sometimes explicitely sexual)depiction of Native American actrocities, which sounds as if torture was a common feature of Plains warfare. In fact torture was much more common among the Eastern Woodland cultures, who often had a culturally embedded, ritualized captive complex - which most Plains groups didn't have. While Plains warfare was unquestionably brutal, actrocities were and still are a characteristic of most military conflicts, and are rarely restricted to one side. These horrible acts are not typical for Native Americans, they are typical for the nature of human conflict, and even Americans are not immune to these pathological acts, as massacres like Sand Creek, Marias River or Wounded Knee can proof. That US soldiers (although "their steel was forged" in the Civil War) were totally unaware of the more sinister aspects of combat is a questionable generalisation and at best true for recent immigrants from European societies. It seems as if the authors didn't study Sioux society very thoroughly, but quite selectively to create an image of the textbook savage, impulsive, heroic but also cruel, lurking before the palisades of Army forts which are manned by nervous bluecoats. The one exception to this overused cliché is the eponymous hero, a red Napoleon who has an "unusual foresight for an Indian" and whose spirited resistance engulfed the whole central Plains, well illustrated in a map which shows Red Cloud's "territory" stretching fom the Oregon-Idaho border to Minnesota and from Canada to Nebraska, including regions long lost to Native American control or in fact occupied and well defended by hostile tribal groups. This map, on first glance a harmless artwork, is the visualisation of the authors efforts to lift Red Cloud's war on a supra-regional, even national level. I never read about solid evidence of Sioux war parties operating in Idaho, Manitoba or Eastern Iowa during this conflict. While the spirited and resourceful fight of Red Cloud and his allies deserves its place in historiography, this overinterpretation doesn't serve its cause well. Maybe it was a stunning success, initiated by a probably (but not necessarily) outstanding leader, but from an objective point of view this military conflict was regionally rather restricted, without lasting consequences and the "multi-tribal" coalition which put up such an effective resistance actually consisted of merely three tribal groups (Teton Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho), who had formed a military task-force decades before their conflicts with the US Army. This conclusion doesn't minimize the historical importance of this war, but probably would have been a more appropriate approach on this subject. Contrary to many other comments, I don't think that this study is overtly racist, and contrary to several commentators (of Native American descent) I don't believe that only Native American "historians" have the rights and knowledge to write this history. Perhaps this study is at times too paternalistic and the terminology irritatingly outdated, but the counter-arguments by some Native American activists (in harmony with nature, matriarchal etc.) are often equally empty rhetoric, just from an opposite position. This topic needs the tools of old-school historical sience with a modern background, a thorough, extensive research, an objective assignment and comparison of the known facts and an eloquent synopsis without any agenda. In this regard, the story still remains untold.