Red Cloud

Oklahoma Western Biographies #13

by Robert W. Larson, Aline Weill (Translator)

314pages. 24x16x3cm. Broché.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography

314 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

Reviews

[Brimley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guy is my great-great-great-great grandfather. I had heard about him growing up, but never spent much time researching him until the last few years.

[Via · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not only was this book ... well, pretty bad, I have to recommend against reading anything by this author. That's because his approach is incredibly flawed. He appears to have been determined to be even-handed in his treatment of his subject, meaning for every Nice Thing he said about Red Cloud, he would also say one Bad Thing. Maybe he thought this would make him appear fair and neutral, but due to his lack of cultural competency, it simply does not. Lack of in-text citations is also, obviously, not great. I don't know that I've ever read a biography that gave me less of a sense of who a person was.

[Kent McInnis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting biography. Red Cloud was the one leader of the Lakota Sioux who failed to have a good press agent to tell his story. All the glory went to Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. A clever diplomat, when all else failed, he was the go-to guy.

[Eugenia]

I am not going to give this a star rating because it just depends on how interested you are in Red Cloud. If he is someone you want to learn more about, this is a great book for you. It gave me more insight into the time period and the relationship between the US govt and the Great Plains tribes, in particular, the Lakota Souix under Red Cloud's leadership.