Lakota Cowboy

by John Hafnor

“Here, manifest destiny collides with native mysticism.”
Meet the last open range cowboy and the last nomadic Native American. Better yet, be present for their first handshake in the pages of Lakota Cowboy. Their stories become entwined in an unlikely friendship, but cannot change the inexorable march of history.
You’ll witness that march from the back of a horse as they trot across the Little Bighorn, into the Canadian wilderness, past Wounded Knee Creek, to finally arrive in a homestead world of badlands hardship and romantic heartbreak.

This unsentimental and moving portrait is sweeping in scope but intimate in detail. The easy-reading pages are in fact a deep cultural dive into two societies once thought of as irreconcilable. Inspired by true events, Lakota Cowboy the novel is your eyewitness encounter with the winning, and losing, of the American West. “I have been reading the chapters you sent. I must say they are deep and touching for me as a Lakota reader. You are a writer in possession of empathy for detail and human feelings. You’ve managed to shed light and understanding on Lakota thought, philosophy and most of all reverence or as I say, spiritual intelligence.” —Jhon (not John) Goes In Center, noted Oglala Lakota elder

437 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2021

About the author

John Hafnor’s Lakota Cowboy is winner of a gold medal in the Will Rogers Western Lit Awards, and follows a series of non-fiction titles. He launched the "strange history" book phenomenon in 1982 with Black Hills Believables. Later came Strange But True America, Strange But True Colorado, Trekking the Last Badland, and the German-language Wahres aus dem Wilden Westen. Hafnor lives in the Colorado, splitting time between Denver and a writer’s cabin on a high mountain lake. He is single and has three grown sons.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is about 80% Lakota, 20% Cowboy.

Though nominally about the author's maternal grandfather and his Native American friend, as the story unfolded I came to conclude that the real interest was in the Native way of life, with the cowboy elements thrown in occasionally for the sake of perspective and context.

My personal interests would have been better served if the balance had been more evenly maintained. The Native stories told leaned heavily on spiritual/existential ways of seeing, lapsing occasionally into excuses for lecturing, explaining, telling with words. In a shorter book this could have been kept tolerably interesting for me; in a 400-page tome it became wearisome, repetitive, almost cliche-ridden. Though I'm far from an expert on Native culture, I've been hearing and learning about these stories since at least 1970, with the Hollywood movie Man Called Horse. Speaking of which, I found the author's treatment here of the Sun Dance Ritual dismissive in its brevity, considering the profundity of the experience and its impact on the men who endured it. He certainly owes it to himself to return to his study of that ceremony and truly learn about it.

The occasional references to the cowboy life were brilliantly told, crystallizing the challenges of European settlement of this wild country. Several of them I read aloud to my wife's rapt attention. One, a story of a young rodeo rider, was truly heartbreaking, and I will remember it for a long time.

The unfolding of historical events in the management of Native relations and US government policies and actions was told here with clarity and compassion. The author does an excellent job showing the real-life consequences of the conflicts and betrayals on Natives I came to care about, and I was reminded of the murkiness of deciding who's the good guys and who's the villains. In these days of climate change resulting from abusive industrial energies and capitalism's excesses, a book like this gives one pause to think about different ways of seeing our relationship with the forces of nature.

Considering this is a Novel Inspired by True Events, I confess to having no clue how the author is actually related to the characters in the story, even after studying the last few pages closely. Clearly there is no ancestral tie with the lead character in the huge majority of the pages, the Native called "Stands for Them". Just as clearly, the Cowboy is a grandfather. The relationship between these two men is marginal, tangential, never advancing through the language barrier that remained throughout their lives. Beyond that, I can't say.

Had I not been reading this for a book club, I'm not sure I would have persisted through the length of the book, particularly the 14th time the Native is invited to lecture on his way of life. Having said that, some stories were powerful and moving and enlarged my view of the world.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just an outstanding book on the history of early Indian and cowboy life especially through two unlikely friends, James Stands For Them and Cleve Berry. Following their lives through the later 1800's then the early and mid 1900's and the friendship they shared is an amazing story. I just can't tell you how much I learned about Indian life, the battles they fought, the life they had to endure during the coming of the white man and the friendships they had with certain settlers. This book follows both of their lives from their very early years, through the friendship they obtained and to the final resting of each. I was never one to think about this time in history but this book makes me want to read and learn much more. I'm positive you'll enjoy this book from the very first page to the end of these two characters lives. The research and time that must have gone into this book is phenomenal and written perfectly.
I won this book through GoodReads and I'm so happy I did. It has opened my eyes to a whole new world.