Indians of the Plains

by Eugene Rachlis

No people have stirred the interest and imagination of the civilized world as have the North American Indians of the Great Plains. For thousands of years before the first European explorers appeared on the grasslands between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, the Indians of this region hunted the big, shaggy buffalo. As American settlements moved westward during the nineteenth century, the Plains Indians came to know the trader and the trapper, the missionary, the overland trail emigrant, the gold seeker, the cattleman, and the prairie farmer. As the white man's civilization relentlessly closed in upon them, some of the most powerful tribes fought back to preserve their traditional hunting grounds. Indian chiefs, experienced only in intertribal warfare, matched wits and courage with experts in military science of the United States Army. The Indian Wars of the Plains provided some of the bitterest battles and some of the most dramatic action in the history of warfare. Here is the dramatic story of the Plains Indians.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1988

Reviews

[pjr8888 · Rating 4 out of 5]

my copy: First Edition, 1960
a gift subscription Americaan Heritage Junior Library from my parents

inscribed by my father:
To Paul
From Mother and Dad
Christmas 1960

[William Razavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was prepared to rip this book apart for a while but by the end the text itself started to do the job for me.
Unlike the French & Indian Wars volume from this series this book doesn’t just devolve into essentialism and paint the Native Americans as savages. But that’s a pretty low bar.
This is still a text that throws around the words “red man” with too much ease. Even when it’s setting the record straight about how Native American face and body paints were the origin of the term it fall over itself with mid 20th century skin color racism trying to clarify exactly what color skin they actually were/are.
As for the waves of settlement and the near extinction of the bison species and the people who lived off them for most of the book it shrugs and says “Oh, well, our white ancestors were sneaky. What can you do?”
In the last couple of chapters you can see the beginnings of a better kind of historical analysis and a critique of the mythology of the West and the depictions of native Americans that are key to that mythology.
Maybe it’s just that the history involved is so bad that there’s no way to avoid being critical of the broken treaties and bad intentions. I mean Sand Creek and Wounded Knee are hard to sell as “battles” but that didn’t stop the people who perpetrated those massacres and the kind of apologists who whitewashed events then are still running amok among us trying to peddle their “patriotic” narratives.
At any rate the narrative of the book doesn’t whitewash the clearly evil intent of the people who are very clearly jerks. But that’s a pretty low bar too.
I get the sense that this book is trying to be the equivalent of the Civil War narratives that shrug and say “bad things were done, but we’re all Americans now” the last part of which is the message that comes out clearly when the author briefly mentions Native American contributions in the two world wars.
There’s an effort here to start in a good direction but it feels ambivalent in no small part because a book like this traffics in the mythology that it then tries to correct (sort of). This is epitomized in the conclusion which basically shrugs and says that the mythological narratives will always be around because myths don’t die. “Oh well, John Wayne and whatnot. What can you do?”
It’s the shrug of the person who says “kids love playing cowboys and Indians and I love a good minstrel show and that’s how it’s always been and will be.”
But that kind of shrug misses the point that myths die all the time. Sometimes they fade away. Sometimes they’re suppressed and buried. And sometimes you can drive a stake right through their heart.
This is not the bold book that could do that. And so, despite the great illustrations and the glimpses of good narrative this is a relic that makes for an interesting study but is best looked at after you already know the story from better sources.
Oh, and before you argue that this book is a product of its time (a decade before Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) just look up Helen Hunt Jackson who wrote A Century of Dishonor in 1881. That’s nine years before the massacre at Wounded Knee. People have always known better. Myths are created and peddled. We never had to buy them and we can sure as hell kill them if we want.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a subject I have done a lot of reading about. Oh, I started my reading life with a juvenile biography of Custer, some sixty years ago. He is not a man I came to admire, when I read more, and I know enough about U.S. history to have some acquaintance with the late 19th century Indian wars but other details about the Plains Indians in general I acquired willy nilly. This is an introduction to the subject, not just a history book. It is well written. I am going to check out Eugene Rachlis' other books.

[Krishnan Seshasayee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short,crisp, and informative

Very well written. Engaging, well researched, and to the point. Learnt a lot about the lifestyle and simplicity of the Indians. Particularly enjoyed reading their customs and rituals.

Custer's last stand battle narratives are gripping

Author did such a great job of packaging wealth of information and still kept it short and interesting.

[James McColl · Rating 3 out of 5]

104 Pages is not enough to give a complete history. It had an abridged feel about the content,nevertheless quite good.