Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull
Author: Stanley Vestal
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2014-12-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806187662

"If that is Long Hair, I am the one who killed him," White Bull, the young nephew of Sitting Bull, said when Bad Juice pointed out Custer's body immediately after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Yet it was Sitting Bull who acquired the notoriety and was paraded in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as "the warrior who killed Custer." But this new edition of Stanley Vestal's classic biography of the famous chief emphasizes that "Sitting Bull's fame does not rest upon the death of Custer’s five troops. Had he been twenty miles away shooting antelope that morning, he would still remain the greatest of the Sioux." The stirring account of the death throes of a mighty nation and its leader is the story of the "greatest of the Sioux" and his struggle to keep his people free and united. The Sioux were formidable warriors, as attested to by men who fought against them, like General Anson Mills, who said, "They were the best cavalry in the world; their like will never be seen again," but they were up against an overwhelming tide of soldiers, homesteaders, and bureaucrats. Sitting Bull fought long and hard and "He was ... a statesman, one of the most farsighted we have had," but statesmanship could not prevail against such odds. This powerful biography of Sitting Bull is brought to a new generation of readers in h a new and expanded edition, for much new material had been added to the original edition (published in 1932) that could not be disclosed while the informants were still living. Sitting Bull is a moving account of the epic courage of one man in the face of his inevitable defeat as the last defender of his people's rights.

Nez Perce Summer, 1877

Nez Perce Summer, 1877
Author: Jerome A. Greene
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2022-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496236122

Nez Perce Summer, 1877 tells the story of a people’s epic struggle to survive spiritually, culturally, and physically in the face of unrelenting military force. Written by one of the foremost experts in frontier military history, Jerome A. Greene, and reviewed by members of the Nez Perce tribe, this definitive treatment of the Nez Perce War is the first to incorporate research from all known accounts of Nez Perce and U.S. military participants. Enhanced by sixteen detailed maps and forty-nine historic photographs, Greene’s gripping narrative takes readers on a three-and-one-half month 1,700-mile journey across the wilds of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana territories. All of the skirmishes and battles of the war receive detailed treatment, which benefits from Greene’s astute analysis of the strategies and decision making on both sides. Between 100 and 150 of the more than 800 Nez Perce men, women, and children who began the trek were killed during the war. Almost as many died in the months following the surrender, after they were exiled to malaria-ridden northeastern Oklahoma. Army deaths numbered 113. The casualties on both sides were an extraordinary price for a war that nobody wanted but whose history has since fascinated generations of Americans.

Annual Report

Annual Report
Author: United States. Dept. of the Interior
Publisher:
Total Pages: 996
Release: 1877
Genre: Natural resources
ISBN:

The Last Sovereigns

The Last Sovereigns
Author: Robert M. Utley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496222806

The Last Sovereigns is the story of how Sioux chief Sitting Bull resisted the white man’s ways as a last best hope for the survival of an indigenous way of life on the Great Plains—a nomadic life based on buffalo and indigenous plants scattered across the Sioux’s historical territories that were sacred to him and his people. Robert M. Utley explores the final four years of Sitting Bull’s life of freedom, from 1877 to 1881. To escape American vengeance for his assumed role in the annihilation of Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s command at the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull led his Hunkpapa following into Canada. There he and his people interacted with the North-West Mounted Police, in particular Maj. James M. Walsh. The Mounties welcomed the Lakota and permitted them to remain if they promised to abide by the laws and rules of Queen Victoria, the White Mother. But the Canadian government wanted the Indians to return to their homeland and the police made every effort to persuade them to leave. They were aided by the diminishing herds of buffalo on which the Indians relied for sustenance and by the aggressions of Canadian Native groups that also relied on the buffalo. Sitting Bull and his people endured hostility, tragedy, heartache, indecision, uncertainty, and starvation and responded with stubborn resistance to the loss of their freedom and way of life. In the end, starvation doomed their sovereignty. This is their story.