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Cheyenne Autumn
In the autumn of 1878 a band of Cheyenne Indians set out from Indian Territory, where they had been sent by the US government, to return to their homeland in Yellowstone country. Mari Sandoz tells the saga of their heartbreaking fifteen-hundred-mile flight.
282 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Mari Sandoz
61 books49 followersMari Susette Sandoz (May 11, 1896 – March 10, 1966) was a novelist, biographer, lecturer, and teacher. She was one of Nebraska's foremost writers, and wrote extensively about pioneer life and the Plains Indians.
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October 11, 2025
The Cheyenne people were dying, from disease and starvation, in the southern lands to which they had been consigned by the U.S. government; and therefore, in the autumn of 1878, they broke free from their confinement and made their way northward, with a forlorn hope of successfully returning to their ancestral homes along the Yellowstone River. Mari Sandoz tells this story with a striking blend of the epic and the intimate in her 1953 book Cheyenne Autumn.
Sandoz was born in rural Nebraska, and she experienced all the travails of a farming life in a northern locale. She pursued her vocation as a writer in the face of a variety of obstacles and challenges, including an authoritarian father who disapproved of the very idea of a farm woman wanting to write. And in composing books like Cheyenne Autumn, Sandoz drew upon the stories she heard from old-time trappers and traders who had known the harsh life of the Old West – who had worked with, and sometimes fought, the Sioux and Cheyenne.
These Indians told stories, too, of their old buffalo-hunting life, and of the first real encounter with the United States Army in the Grattan fight of 1854. At that time, the white men in the region were only a few little islands in a great sea of Indians and buffaloes. Twenty-three years later, in 1877, the buffaloes were about gone, and the last of the Indians driven to the reservations – only a few little islands of Indians in a great sea of whites.
Sandoz offers devastating commentary on what was done to the Indigenous people of the West: “This exploit of modern man is unrivaled in history: the destruction of a whole way of life and the expropriation of a race from a region of 350,000,000 acres in so short a time.” There had been a tendency to romanticize the way of life of the Plains peoples, but then gold was discovered, “and suddenly the romantic Red Hunter was a dirty, treacherous, bloodthirsty savage standing in the way of progress, in the path of manifest destiny.”
Incidents like the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, when U.S. troops murdered unarmed Cheyenne people who had been promised the protection of the U.S. government, became more the rule than the exception; and, as Sandoz puts it,
All this time, a few humanitarians were complaining against such treatment of the Indian, but no voice was loud enough to be heard above the drumbeaters for the railroads, the cattlemen, the miners, and the army contractors. There were some generals who protested these war tactics and regretted the entire Indian extermination policy, men like [John] Pope and [George] Crook, but their voices too were like the wind on the buffalo grass.
Sandoz’s Cheyenne Autumn is characterized by a spirit of profound respect for the Cheyenne sensibility and worldview. Writing in a style that could be characterized as prose poetry, Sandoz seeks to help the reader enter into the Cheyenne outlook on life, as when she writes that “All the things that ever happened here were as of today, because what has been done in a place is always there.” Going into greater detail regarding the Cheyenne view of life and the world, Sandoz later writes that
The old Cheyennes, even more than their High Plains neighbors, had a rich and mystical perception of all life as a continuous, all-encompassing eventual flow, and of man’s complete oneness with this diffused and eternal stream. It was a stream of many and complex dimensions, one in which man, the tree, the rock, the cloud, and all the other things were simultaneously in all the places they had ever been; and all the things that had ever been in a place were always in the present there, in the being and occurring.
In their northward retreat, the Cheyennes were led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife. Together, the two men led a brilliant fighting retreat, evading one column after another of U.S. troops sent to capture them, as well as posses of angry whites who wanted nothing but “revenge” and would not be bound by any laws of war or norms of civilized behaviour.
Little Wolf in particular made me think of Xenophon leading the retreat of the Athenian mercenaries from Persia, as he recounted in his Anabasis (The March Up Country). Like Xenophon in 401 B.C., Little Wolf in 1878 had to lead a 1,500-mile retreat by persuasion, and by the force of example; as the “bundle bearer,” he could not simply give orders and assume that they would be obeyed, the way a U.S. Army general might be able to expect. Rather, in every aspect of his command, he had to embody the honour and dignity of the Cheyenne people, and had to persuade his fellow Cheyennes to accede to his ideas for how to conduct the retreat. To say that Little Wolf bore a heavy burden of leadership on the long walk north toward the Yellowstone would be an understatement.
Over the long march, the Cheyenne find themselves meditating on the difference between the U.S. and the Cheyenne way of war: “Somehow unlimited killing never turned the veho officers from their path. Was it because the white man’s fighter was not from a home, not returning to his house to eat and sleep and to live as the Indian warrior did, but was a pay man who did nothing but kill? Was it because the stink of all the blood could be kept away from the living, off in the distant forts?”
In a fateful decision, late in the retreat, Dull Knife and his followers choose to break away from Little Wolf, to seek shelter with the Sioux leader Red Cloud. But then Dull Knife learns that Red Cloud too is virtually a prisoner of the veho, and that now the veho soldiers holding Red Cloud say that Dull Knife and his followers must disarm, surrender, and submit to be taken back to Indian Territory. It is moving to witness Dull Knife’s heartbreak at realizing that he has in effect delivered his people into the hands of the enemy, and at hearing that his people have been ordered to return south to the desolate lands where they had faced a slow death from starvation and disease.
“We will die first,” Dull Knife said, so sorrowful and low it could scarcely be heard by the soft-listening Cheyennes about him. It was a hard thing to see, this man rousing himself to realize that all his plans for refuge had only been a dreaming. They looked into the earth, for no one could speak the comforting words as Dull Knife slowly got up and stumbled away into the darkness. Here and there a woman began to cry softly, and then that too was gone.
It is likewise thought-provoking when Sandoz provides the perspectives of other Cheyenne people seeking a way out of their nation’s dilemma, as when a young warrior named Little Finger Nail suddenly finds the idea that “The Cheyennes must try to discover a new path” coursing through his mind, “as though a voice had spoken” to him. Little Finger Nail, who has never thought of himself as anything other than a fighting man, thinks long and hard about the change in life direction that he is contemplating:
It would mean that the gay and bedecked Little Finger Nail must become a plain man of the village, without the paint and feathers that pleased the young women; without the display and rivalry of the soldier lodge that pleased him so much, or the parades, the racing and gambling, the accumulation of horses and honors. All the wise ones of the Cheyennes had been simple men, and modest, their far-seeing eyes not blinded by the brilliant prides and vanities close before them. They were humble men, wanting nothing for themselves, so their hands were always empty and ready to receive the gifts that came for all.
Suddenly, the young Cheyenne found himself singing a new song:
“Help me, Powers of the wind and sky,
And the Earth in the cold night-time,
Help me get my people away!”
Cheyenne Autumn contains a great deal of heartbreak – and, toward its conclusion, a surprising measure of hope. It is an essential work for any student of the history of Indigenous Americans in the West.
Sandoz was born in rural Nebraska, and she experienced all the travails of a farming life in a northern locale. She pursued her vocation as a writer in the face of a variety of obstacles and challenges, including an authoritarian father who disapproved of the very idea of a farm woman wanting to write. And in composing books like Cheyenne Autumn, Sandoz drew upon the stories she heard from old-time trappers and traders who had known the harsh life of the Old West – who had worked with, and sometimes fought, the Sioux and Cheyenne.
These Indians told stories, too, of their old buffalo-hunting life, and of the first real encounter with the United States Army in the Grattan fight of 1854. At that time, the white men in the region were only a few little islands in a great sea of Indians and buffaloes. Twenty-three years later, in 1877, the buffaloes were about gone, and the last of the Indians driven to the reservations – only a few little islands of Indians in a great sea of whites.
Sandoz offers devastating commentary on what was done to the Indigenous people of the West: “This exploit of modern man is unrivaled in history: the destruction of a whole way of life and the expropriation of a race from a region of 350,000,000 acres in so short a time.” There had been a tendency to romanticize the way of life of the Plains peoples, but then gold was discovered, “and suddenly the romantic Red Hunter was a dirty, treacherous, bloodthirsty savage standing in the way of progress, in the path of manifest destiny.”
Incidents like the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, when U.S. troops murdered unarmed Cheyenne people who had been promised the protection of the U.S. government, became more the rule than the exception; and, as Sandoz puts it,
All this time, a few humanitarians were complaining against such treatment of the Indian, but no voice was loud enough to be heard above the drumbeaters for the railroads, the cattlemen, the miners, and the army contractors. There were some generals who protested these war tactics and regretted the entire Indian extermination policy, men like [John] Pope and [George] Crook, but their voices too were like the wind on the buffalo grass.
Sandoz’s Cheyenne Autumn is characterized by a spirit of profound respect for the Cheyenne sensibility and worldview. Writing in a style that could be characterized as prose poetry, Sandoz seeks to help the reader enter into the Cheyenne outlook on life, as when she writes that “All the things that ever happened here were as of today, because what has been done in a place is always there.” Going into greater detail regarding the Cheyenne view of life and the world, Sandoz later writes that
The old Cheyennes, even more than their High Plains neighbors, had a rich and mystical perception of all life as a continuous, all-encompassing eventual flow, and of man’s complete oneness with this diffused and eternal stream. It was a stream of many and complex dimensions, one in which man, the tree, the rock, the cloud, and all the other things were simultaneously in all the places they had ever been; and all the things that had ever been in a place were always in the present there, in the being and occurring.
In their northward retreat, the Cheyennes were led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife. Together, the two men led a brilliant fighting retreat, evading one column after another of U.S. troops sent to capture them, as well as posses of angry whites who wanted nothing but “revenge” and would not be bound by any laws of war or norms of civilized behaviour.
Little Wolf in particular made me think of Xenophon leading the retreat of the Athenian mercenaries from Persia, as he recounted in his Anabasis (The March Up Country). Like Xenophon in 401 B.C., Little Wolf in 1878 had to lead a 1,500-mile retreat by persuasion, and by the force of example; as the “bundle bearer,” he could not simply give orders and assume that they would be obeyed, the way a U.S. Army general might be able to expect. Rather, in every aspect of his command, he had to embody the honour and dignity of the Cheyenne people, and had to persuade his fellow Cheyennes to accede to his ideas for how to conduct the retreat. To say that Little Wolf bore a heavy burden of leadership on the long walk north toward the Yellowstone would be an understatement.
Over the long march, the Cheyenne find themselves meditating on the difference between the U.S. and the Cheyenne way of war: “Somehow unlimited killing never turned the veho officers from their path. Was it because the white man’s fighter was not from a home, not returning to his house to eat and sleep and to live as the Indian warrior did, but was a pay man who did nothing but kill? Was it because the stink of all the blood could be kept away from the living, off in the distant forts?”
In a fateful decision, late in the retreat, Dull Knife and his followers choose to break away from Little Wolf, to seek shelter with the Sioux leader Red Cloud. But then Dull Knife learns that Red Cloud too is virtually a prisoner of the veho, and that now the veho soldiers holding Red Cloud say that Dull Knife and his followers must disarm, surrender, and submit to be taken back to Indian Territory. It is moving to witness Dull Knife’s heartbreak at realizing that he has in effect delivered his people into the hands of the enemy, and at hearing that his people have been ordered to return south to the desolate lands where they had faced a slow death from starvation and disease.
“We will die first,” Dull Knife said, so sorrowful and low it could scarcely be heard by the soft-listening Cheyennes about him. It was a hard thing to see, this man rousing himself to realize that all his plans for refuge had only been a dreaming. They looked into the earth, for no one could speak the comforting words as Dull Knife slowly got up and stumbled away into the darkness. Here and there a woman began to cry softly, and then that too was gone.
It is likewise thought-provoking when Sandoz provides the perspectives of other Cheyenne people seeking a way out of their nation’s dilemma, as when a young warrior named Little Finger Nail suddenly finds the idea that “The Cheyennes must try to discover a new path” coursing through his mind, “as though a voice had spoken” to him. Little Finger Nail, who has never thought of himself as anything other than a fighting man, thinks long and hard about the change in life direction that he is contemplating:
It would mean that the gay and bedecked Little Finger Nail must become a plain man of the village, without the paint and feathers that pleased the young women; without the display and rivalry of the soldier lodge that pleased him so much, or the parades, the racing and gambling, the accumulation of horses and honors. All the wise ones of the Cheyennes had been simple men, and modest, their far-seeing eyes not blinded by the brilliant prides and vanities close before them. They were humble men, wanting nothing for themselves, so their hands were always empty and ready to receive the gifts that came for all.
Suddenly, the young Cheyenne found himself singing a new song:
“Help me, Powers of the wind and sky,
And the Earth in the cold night-time,
Help me get my people away!”
Cheyenne Autumn contains a great deal of heartbreak – and, toward its conclusion, a surprising measure of hope. It is an essential work for any student of the history of Indigenous Americans in the West.
July 17, 2013
I was raised in Montana, not far from the Custer Battlefield, and have always had a real interest in the history of the American west. Having said that, I am trying to figure out why it took be so many years to read Mari Sandoz. This is a real loss since I have discovered that many of her books are becoming very difficult to find. Cheyenne Autumn is the story of an epic journey by 270 Northern Cheyenne from their imprisonment in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma to the Yellowstone River in Montana. These Native Americans made their way, almost unarmed, through literally thousands of federal troops and marauding civilians while enduring the worst weather that that part of the country can offer. It is told from the point of view of the Cheyenne, and while there is always another side to the story, nothing excuses the atrocities that were inflicted on them. When we go around the world lecturing people about human rights, we seem to forget our own dismal history in this regard. I think this is supposed to be non-fiction but it reads like a novel.
December 4, 2013
I found this to be a powerful book. I noticed a fair amount of criticism concerning readability. Her prose spoke to me. The book requires some effort. The litany of atrocities never lets up. Hope runs threadbare.
The Cheyenne are soft spoken people according to this account. The way these people responded to their diaspora and eventual forced starvation speaks well enough of their character. The emergence of Little Finger Nail a young warrior and the shattering of Black Coyote's spirit and mind struck me deeply. Little Finger Nail finds himself wailing in supplication for the gift of a new way of life. He is a bone thin man, a young warrior who seems to recognize he needs to burry his ego's needs in the earth for the benefit of his people. Black Coyote turns his violence towards his own people. I couldn't help but think of some of the mass shootings of recent years.
I most certainly found the book worth the time and effort. If I don't find a book to be worthwhile, I rarely bother to review it. The book is full of movement. The Cheyenne are nearly always on the run. Cheyenne Autumn, is rather dense I suppose. I have read other books concerning the life of the Cheyenne and other tribes of the plains. I believe that previous reading very much allowed me to appreciate the clarity and quality of the prose. I felt the structure of her writing was intended to slow a reader down closer to a walking pace. Any attempt at rereading a passage to get events or characters straight is likely to force a reader to relive a traumatic event.
I will give more thought concerning the prose. Something about that criticism fascinates me quite a bit. The confusion described by some reviewers strikes me as being analogous to what a person living through such an event might experience. She may not have intended the book to be easy, I don't know. Without having given much previous thought, I believe her style succeeds.
The Cheyenne are soft spoken people according to this account. The way these people responded to their diaspora and eventual forced starvation speaks well enough of their character. The emergence of Little Finger Nail a young warrior and the shattering of Black Coyote's spirit and mind struck me deeply. Little Finger Nail finds himself wailing in supplication for the gift of a new way of life. He is a bone thin man, a young warrior who seems to recognize he needs to burry his ego's needs in the earth for the benefit of his people. Black Coyote turns his violence towards his own people. I couldn't help but think of some of the mass shootings of recent years.
I most certainly found the book worth the time and effort. If I don't find a book to be worthwhile, I rarely bother to review it. The book is full of movement. The Cheyenne are nearly always on the run. Cheyenne Autumn, is rather dense I suppose. I have read other books concerning the life of the Cheyenne and other tribes of the plains. I believe that previous reading very much allowed me to appreciate the clarity and quality of the prose. I felt the structure of her writing was intended to slow a reader down closer to a walking pace. Any attempt at rereading a passage to get events or characters straight is likely to force a reader to relive a traumatic event.
I will give more thought concerning the prose. Something about that criticism fascinates me quite a bit. The confusion described by some reviewers strikes me as being analogous to what a person living through such an event might experience. She may not have intended the book to be easy, I don't know. Without having given much previous thought, I believe her style succeeds.
February 28, 2011
I loved this book. It was like reading a gentle stream. Mari Sandoz as expected shows the great humility and perseverance of the Cheyenne. The most pleasant surprise of this book was how Mari wrote it. In the beginning she explains that she is going to the best of her ability express the beauty of some Cheyenne words and phrases that she states really have no place in the English language. I believe she references to a Cheyenne word for how a breeze feels upon the face. And to her credit she pulls it off and hence you feel like you are reading a gentle stream.
December 23, 2019
This was a difficult novel to read because it documents another shameful chapter in the U.S. Government’s brutal treatment of Native Americans who were desperately attempting to preserve their way of life. As Mari Sandoz writes in the preface of her novel, “Of all heroic attempts to preserve their people from starvation and disease, none outshines the 1,500-mile flight of the Northern Cheyennes from Indian Territory back to the Yellowstone country, through settled regions netted with telegraph, across three railroads, and straight through the United States Army,”
While the book is a novel, it’s based on extensive research using source materials, archival documents and interviews that tell the harrowing story of that journey during the winter of 1878-1879. It’s a story full of broken promises and unspeakable cruelty as the U.S government broke one treaty agreement after another, determined to round up the fleeing Indians and force them to surrender. But it’s also a story of unflagging courage and resiliency on the part of the Indians who were willing to put up with unspeakably harsh conditions in their desperate attempt to return to their homeland.
How they managed to elude the pursuing army as long as they did in sub-zero, blizzardy weather without adequate food, clothing or shelter is truly amazing and made for fascinating reading. “Some of the men had butchered the dead soldiers’ horses, and the weary women moved about the fires roasting the meat for the hungry. The rest was stripped and hung on brush over the coals to dry for the carrying. The skins were dried too, some stretched over fire pits to harden for quick-made moccasin soles. Other Indians tried to ease the hurt and the frozen ones as well as it might be done.”
The book was fascinating to read for another reason as well because of the way it was written since Sandoz tried to capture aspects of the Cheyenne language. “It’s the story of a people with much that is difficult to say in white-man-words,” Sandoz explains, adding that she has tried to use a simple vocabulary as well as phrases and sentences drawn from Cheyenne life.
As heartbreaking as it is to read this book, I feel it should be required reading for anyone looking to understand the great cost in human life and misery that took place as the United States pursued its course of Manifest Destiny.
While the book is a novel, it’s based on extensive research using source materials, archival documents and interviews that tell the harrowing story of that journey during the winter of 1878-1879. It’s a story full of broken promises and unspeakable cruelty as the U.S government broke one treaty agreement after another, determined to round up the fleeing Indians and force them to surrender. But it’s also a story of unflagging courage and resiliency on the part of the Indians who were willing to put up with unspeakably harsh conditions in their desperate attempt to return to their homeland.
How they managed to elude the pursuing army as long as they did in sub-zero, blizzardy weather without adequate food, clothing or shelter is truly amazing and made for fascinating reading. “Some of the men had butchered the dead soldiers’ horses, and the weary women moved about the fires roasting the meat for the hungry. The rest was stripped and hung on brush over the coals to dry for the carrying. The skins were dried too, some stretched over fire pits to harden for quick-made moccasin soles. Other Indians tried to ease the hurt and the frozen ones as well as it might be done.”
The book was fascinating to read for another reason as well because of the way it was written since Sandoz tried to capture aspects of the Cheyenne language. “It’s the story of a people with much that is difficult to say in white-man-words,” Sandoz explains, adding that she has tried to use a simple vocabulary as well as phrases and sentences drawn from Cheyenne life.
As heartbreaking as it is to read this book, I feel it should be required reading for anyone looking to understand the great cost in human life and misery that took place as the United States pursued its course of Manifest Destiny.
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July 19, 2012When I read about the Holocaust, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and the genocide in Rwanda and Sudan, I have to remember it happened here, too. In September of 1878, the Cheyennes left Indian Territory for their home country up north. The US government had told them if they didn't like Indian Territory, they could leave. So they did. What the government didn't say was they would send the army after them, to kill them. Those captured were imprisoned in Fort Robinson without food or water. So much suffering, death, and violence comprised the tragedy of Manifest Destiny.
July 3, 2025
An excellent, somewhat fictionalized account of the escape of a tribe of Cheyenne Indians from Oklahoma in 1878. The event is based on government records but some verbal exchanges may be reconstructed, thus my description of "fiction." It is quite a well-written account of our mistreatment of indigenous people, and well worth a read.
May 19, 2014
In chronicling the 1878 flight of the Northern Cheyenne from their overcrowded and disease-ridden reservation in modern-day Oklahoma, accomplished Nebraska author Mari Sandoz (1896-1966) presents a thoroughly harrowing and ultimate tragic account of one horrific episode in the centuries-long conflict between North America's indigenous peoples and the waves of Euro-American settlers who flooded the continent. Cast (as Sandoz tells the reader) in "the rhythym, the idiom, and the figures of Cheyenne life," her narrative follows these few hundred refugees north across the Great Plains as they struggle to reach their familiar homelands in Montana Territory. Pursued remorselessly by the United States Army, a few of the Cheyenne will survive and eventually resettle on a reservation in southwestern Montana; most will succumb to disease, hunger, exhaustion or combat. Drawing upon her relationships with Cheyenne survivors and their descendants beginning in her childhood days, Sandoz evokes the folkways and spirit world that sustain these people in their odyssey. Blessed with an exceptionally sharp eye for the details of the landscapes and the seasons of the year, Sandoz incorporates them into her portrayal of the world of the Cheyenne. Sixty years after its initial publication, Cheyenne Autumn remains a powerful testament to the courage and resilience of the Cheyenne in the face of unrelenting disaster
June 17, 2009
Mari Sandoz has a unique way of providing the reader with a factual account by keeping the dialogue and language based on her interviews with Native Cheyenne.
This was a very moving account of the atrocities that occured during the period post Battle of the Little Big Horn.
I had the privilege of visiting the current Northen Cheyenne Reservation in April 2009, and paid respects at the gravesites of Chief Dull Knife and Chief Little Wolf.
So to read the book and then go to their home was very emotional and exciting.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gaining a better understanding of how the Cheyenne were treated during those sad and dark times.
This was a very moving account of the atrocities that occured during the period post Battle of the Little Big Horn.
I had the privilege of visiting the current Northen Cheyenne Reservation in April 2009, and paid respects at the gravesites of Chief Dull Knife and Chief Little Wolf.
So to read the book and then go to their home was very emotional and exciting.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gaining a better understanding of how the Cheyenne were treated during those sad and dark times.
November 9, 2015
No matter how often I read about all the broken promises to the different Native American tribes and their desperate attempts to continue their way of life in harmony with nature - it always makes me sad.
Mari Sandoz had a lot of history to process in her book which made it seem a bit choppy at times as she talked about the different bands that tried to flee back north to their homeland and the situation from the Army's or newspapers' point of view. Nonetheless, Mari Sandoz did a wonderful job describing the Cheyenne's lives at that time.
Mari Sandoz had a lot of history to process in her book which made it seem a bit choppy at times as she talked about the different bands that tried to flee back north to their homeland and the situation from the Army's or newspapers' point of view. Nonetheless, Mari Sandoz did a wonderful job describing the Cheyenne's lives at that time.
June 25, 2017
I wish I had liked this book better. It tells of the flight of Cheyenne Indians as they fled Indian Territory in the Fall of 1878. The book brings out the horror of the trek from present-day Oklahoma to present-day South Dakota and Montana. It brings out an important story in American history but I found it quite hard to read. Mari Sandoz said that she changed the diction to fit how the Cheyenne spoke. It may have fit but made it very hard to read. I kept going back and forth to the timeline and map, but still often felt lost. An important book but I found the writing hard to follow.
November 10, 2020
A grim tragic episode in Native American and American histories, told poignantly and artfully by Mari Sandoz. We must learn from it, to understand our histories more honestly and truly, and to do better in dealing with other people.
June 4, 2009
This is not a feel good book, but very sad. I really felt awful after reading this story of unbelievable forced hardship.
July 29, 2012
Hasn't really grabbed me yet
March 5, 2013
Not a bad story, and well written, but very depressing, detailing a trek of Cheyenne trying to get back to their old lands after being forced to a reservation. I would not recommend it.
June 14, 2017
Interesting, but it didn't hold my attention. It's a sad story worth knowing, but not my style.
February 3, 2019
Excellent story. Reads like a novel but it's all true.
May 29, 2019
True poetry. Not meant to be read fast, but to be absorbed and understood. An excellent read for a strong reader
December 16, 2018
Interesting read about a band of the Northern Cheyenne Indians breaking out of horrible, sickly and starving conditions in a southern reservation and making their way back to their old hunting grounds in the north. Along the way most of them were killed by the pursuing army and only a very few survived to see a new reservation established in the north for them. They did, however, draw attention to the horrendous treatment afforded them on the reservations, due in large part to graft and corruption among government contractors charged with their provision.
Their relations with other Indian nations, mainly the Sioux, were revealed in their many complexities. Also interesting is the fact that General Custer had a son with a Cheyenne woman and he was present at the onset.
I wish there were some books reaching back farther in time to tell of things before the white settlers came, but this one gets us about as close as we come to that, with it's mention of some of the old legends.
Their relations with other Indian nations, mainly the Sioux, were revealed in their many complexities. Also interesting is the fact that General Custer had a son with a Cheyenne woman and he was present at the onset.
I wish there were some books reaching back farther in time to tell of things before the white settlers came, but this one gets us about as close as we come to that, with it's mention of some of the old legends.
September 12, 2020
This is an account based on Cheyenne and other Native American as well as other sources of the 1878 attempt by a large party of Cheyenne to leave the "Indian Territory" ( now Oklahoma) reservation and return to their ancestral lands in the Yellowstone country and the Dakotas. It is not the easiest story to read and has little to nothing in common with tales of "the Old West" other than some of the characters. Read carefully it offers some insights into Cheyenne culture and the ways in which they responded to the arrival of "white settlers" i. e., non-native Americans into their territories, and what they thought about that arrival and those settlers. John Ford reportedly drew on this account as well as other sources for his film of the same title, "Cheyenne Autumn", which frankly was why I wanted to read this and see how much of little he drew on this account. It is worth reading in its own right especially if you have even the slightest interest in more fully understanding the history of these United States.
October 26, 2020
Sandoz brings her eloquence and attention to detail to the story of the Cheyenne who in 1878 left Oklahoma Territory, where they had been sent, in order to return north, fleeing through soldiers and multiple attacks through a very harsh winter. This is a harrowing story, not for the faint of heart, with much injustice and sadness. There were moments where I questioned whether I could go on, but Sandoz's writing is so beautiful and compelling and she recounts this story with such attention and appreciation for the indigenous people from whom she collected oral accounts.
October 23, 2023
Surely this is one of the saddest, most horrifying, heart-wrenching books ever written. The power of the story—of the tragic winter flight of northern Cheyennes from starvation and disease in the Oklahoma territory back to their ancestral home in present day Montana—is amplified a hundred fold by Sandoz’s telling of it in language reflecting not only the Cheyenne point of view but their very culture. It is brilliantly done, in a form another reviewer aptly called prose poetry, and draws in the reader as no straightforward history could ever do.
September 29, 2024
Not sure that I can add anything to the excellent reviews here. This is hard reading - think German concentration camps, Japanese POW camps, any winter during the Russian Civil War, Stalin's collectivization, China's cultural revolution, slave ships outbound from Africa - how stupidly and wastefully we are as a species. The introduction is particularly worthwhile re Sandoz, her research and persistence. I've never watched the John Ford movie version. Generally speaking I try to limit the depressing things I read or watch. But, on the other hand, I don't want to forget either.
September 26, 2018
Beautifully written account of the historic quest of the Northern Cheyenne to return, against staggering odds, from Indian Territory to their historic lands in the north. To an impressive extent, the author captures what seem to be authentic Cheyenne language rhythms and views of the world and human nature, etc. With this and her other books, Sandoz provides a lens into this world that few if any authors have been able to give us.
November 23, 2022
This is an unbelievable story. I was just shaking my head constantly at the bad luck, unfair treatment, and atrocities the people endured. Yet they did endure. Their strength and will is beyond comprehension. Thankful for Sandoz’s research and these stories which should be known.
November 2, 2017
Elegant writing of harsh but important history.
June 26, 2018
I found this to be a heartbeaking story about the horros white man commited on the Indians – a real tragic blemish on our history and yet it should never be forgotten so as it will never be repeated.
February 11, 2020
Returned by Kindle. It was a good read. Enjoy!
May 16, 2024
I found it very hard to follow. It is another sad tale of the destruction of the Cheyenne culture.
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