20 research outputs found
Review of \u3ci\u3eKit Carson and the Indians\u3c/i\u3e By Tom Dunlay
No full textKit Carson-the name conjures images of a bigger-than-life mountain man and Indian fighter who attained the skills and knowledge necessary to win the West. As cliché-bound as this dime store novel impression may be, part of it may be warranted. Even while still alive, Carson became subject to the mythologizing process associated with the American frontier. Since that time, historians have added their own interpretations, in some cases clarifying and in others confusing the man and his times.
Tom Dunlay recognizes these errors and their origins, believing that in order to uncover the real Carson, one must understand the context in which he lived. The author rejects judgments based on today\u27s views that fail to include yesterday\u27s values. The result is a carefully argued thesis that Carson was a product of time and place, and that by using a contemporary yardstick for measure, we can see a good man who treated Indians fairly even kindly-unless provoked. While this theme may not seem revolutionary, anyone who has read historical interpretations written in the last forty years knows that vilifying white people involved in the westward movement has been popular sport. Dunlay provides an antithetical view.
The major events of Carson\u27s life-including his early boyhood in Kentucky, adventures as a mountain man, service during the mapping expeditions of John C. Fremont, life as an Indians agent, soldiering against the Navajos and Comanches, and, in his last days, spokesman for the Utes-shape the book. The common thread of Carson\u27s views of and actions toward the American Indian runs throughout. The author does not dismiss the fact that his subject often fought Indians, but chooses to portray him as a man of sound judgment who waged war primarily for protection.
Dunlay succeeds in developing this thesis, providing an extensive review of the literature, presenting both sides of an interpretation, arguing persuasively after all the facts are in, and admitting honestly that, in some instances, there are no answers. Though he may belabor some of his points, being thorough is better than being misunderstood. Readers concerned with the Great Plains will find much of value here, although there is no missing Kit Carson\u27s Southwest connection. Readers interested in the man, the westward movement, Native Americans, and historiography will find Kit Carson and the Indians well worth their time
Review of Paper Medicine Man: John Gregory Bourke and His American West
No full textJohn Gregory Bourke (1846-1896) is best known to students of the American West as the author of On the Border with Crook, a classic record of frontier military life. He was also, like certain other army officers, among the pioneers of American anthropology. Like his commanding officer, General George Crook, he was a critic of federal Indian policy and an advocate of the rights of American Indians. His biography is, therefore, much more than the record of a frontier soldier. He is worthy of study as a chronicler of Western campaigns, a dedicated scholar of Indian culture, and a man whose life casts light on Indian-white relations
Review of Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith\u27s View of the Sioux War of 1876.
No full textIt is only in recent decades that the Trans-Mississippi Indian wars have become the subject of considerable scholarly as well as popular investigation and writing. It is even more recently that such study has gone beyond indignation at the fate of the Indians themselves. Sherry L. Smith\u27s book is an attempt to understand both sides, and in particular those generally unheard participants, the enlisted men of the regular army. William Earl Smith was the author\u27s great-grandfather, and a major part of the book is his journal of the campaign of General George Crook against the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes in the fall of 1876, culminating in the battle on the Red Fork of the Powder River
Review of \u3ci\u3eSlim Buttes, 1876: An Episode of the Great Sioux War\u3c/i\u3e By Jerome A. Greene
No full textBooks on the Sioux War of 1876 tend to concentrate on the defeat of George A. Custer at the Little Bighorn and either slight or ignore the months of campaigning that followed that disaster. Both buffs and scholars should therefore welcome Jerome Greene\u27s study of the operations of General George Crook in August and September 1876. Although especially arduous and frustrating, the campaign and its climactic battle at Slim Buttes, South Dakota, were far more typical of the wars on the plains than Custer\u27s spectacular downfall.
The campaign became known as the Horsemeat March, because the failure of supplies forced the soldiers to eat their own mounts, who were themselves dying because of the hardships. The engagement at Slim Buttes on 9 September 1876 resulted from an accidental encounter with a body of Indians returning to the reservation, but it gave the army and Crook a modest success to boast of after a frustrating and humiliating summer.
The author has made good use of eyewitness accounts, including those of several newspaper correspondents attached to Crook\u27s command. He has resisted the temptation to expand at length on the colorful personalities of many of the participants, and he does not indulge in the indignation so evident in recent writing in this field. He has made use of Indian evidence to the extent that it is available, without claiming to present the Indian side of the story.
His style is seldom picturesque and he refrains from dogmatic conclusions. This does not mean that he has no opinions, for the book is sharply critical of Crook, and certainly the general did not enhance his reputation as an Indian-figh ter in this campaign.
Greene considers that the attack on the Indian camp at Slim Buttes was part of a policy of total war, or extermination, against the Sioux. In fact, the Indians suffered fewer than a dozen casualties in the action; the significant result lay in the destruction of their property and the blow to their morale, and this was the case with most such attacks.
Since Greene is critical of Crook\u27s conduct of the campaign, he should perhaps have noted the general\u27s own analysis of the difficulties he encountered. Crook attributed his problems first to the lack of enough mules for transport, which led to the starvation march, and second to the lack of Indian scouts, which so limited his reconnaissance capability that any results were a matter of luck. This analysis is readily available in Crook\u27s published autobiography.
Two maps showing different phases of the battle are quite helpful; the overall campaign map, on the other hand, is almost unusable
Age-Related Risk of Adverse Events after Left Ventricular Assist Device Implantation: A Device-Specific Comparison
No full textEvaluation of HeartWare HVAD Appearance on Serial Chest Radiographs: Pump Position and Migration Influence Adverse Outcomes
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Review of \u3ci\u3eSacagawea\u27s Nickname: Essays on the American West\u3c/i\u3e By Larry McMurtry
No full textIn these essays, originally published in the New York Review of Books, Larry McMurtry examines Western writers as mythmakers. Overall, however, his most interesting pieces are those in which he pays tribute to authors who have influenced his own work or have left behind literary treasures he finds moving and wise.
One of the essays is devoted to historian Angie Debo and her influence on McMurtry\u27s development as a writer. As a youth he accidentally found The Road to Disappearance (1941), her history of the Creek Indians, and discovered that Debo, from neighboring Oklahoma, had made for herself a life devoted to writing. Her example taught McMurtry that, despite the limited opportunities in the Great Plains region, one could organize one\u27s life around writing. Moreover, the straightforward, unsentimental manner in which she narrated her tragic histories of the dispossession of the Indians of the Five Tribes left an enduring impression on him. This essay is his way of repaying her for those gifts .
In another essay, McMurtry celebrates an American epic, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton and assistant editor Thomas Dunlay. These volumes, published by the University of Nebraska Press, now permit Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to do what the best writers have always done-immerse readers in their adventures along the trail. McMurtry provides guideposts for those willing to take that journey across America.
In Sacagawea\u27s Nickname, the volume\u27s title essay, McMurtry explores the fragmentary evidence of the relationship between William Clark and Sacagawea, whom Clark nicknamed Janey. The two, McMurtry believes, developed a strong bond. We know little about Sacagawea, but what we do know, McMurtry notes, is largely because of Clark\u27s references to her and his struggle to record her name phonetically so that she would survive in history.
This volume will appeal to a wide range of Western enthusiasts and those interested in good literature, whatever the region. McMurtry\u27s insights are always penetrating, but his tribute to the poet-novelist Janet Lewis deserves careful reading. He studies her as an author over time and lays bare the unflinching honesty and subtlety she brought to both her poetry and her fiction and the tragic themes she explored. Sacagawea\u27s Nickname is provocative in some parts, humorous in others, but always rewarding concerning those writers who have helped to shape our views of a region central to America\u27s definition of itself
Clinical and Microbiologic Characteristics of Infections in Left Ventricular Assist Device Recipients
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