Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent—Caught between the Worlds of the Indian and the White Man (review)

Over the last ten to fifteen years Early American historians have rendered a new interpretation of Indian-white interaction, focusing on people of mixed—Indian and white—ancestry. For many of these historians, people of mixed heritage lived lives that defied the easily identifiable patterns of mainstream Indian or white society, crossing back and forth between the Indian and white worlds. In this book David Fridtjof Halaas and Andrew E. Masich train their lenses on one of the West's best-known but misunderstood mixed-blood characters, George Bent. Like Andrew Montour and other mixed bloods who lived on the colonial frontier during the eighteenth century, George Bent struggled to find his place in the competing social, economic, and political milieus that developed in the American West during the age of expansion nearly one hundred years later.

Halaas and Masich divide Bent's story into three parts. In the first section of this book, including chapters 1–3, Halaas and Masich illustrate the world into which George Bent was born. The authors begin with the story of Bent's father, William Bent, a well-known fur trader who spent many years trapping in the Rocky Mountains before establishing a trading post on the Arkansas River in what is now southeastern Colorado. Over the course of his life the elder Bent married three Cheyenne women, but it was his first wife, Owl Woman, who gave birth to their son George Bent. William Bent, though all but completely immersed in Cheyenne culture, understood the value of his white heritage and how a white education could benefit his children, and so he sent his children, including his son George, east to attend school in Westport and St. Louis.

In the East George Bent obtained his education in both academics and white society. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he joined the secessionists fighting with the Missouri State Guard. After the war Bent returned to the West, but his time in the East had left its mark on him, and although he would adapt nearly all the customs of his Cheyenne heritage, his Indian kin would never completely accept him as being fully Indian.

The second part of the book, chapters 4–9, begins with Halaas and Masich's vivid portrayal of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. For young George Bent, now in the prime of his young manhood, the Sand Creek Massacre spelled the end of his association with white society. Joining Cheyenne warriors in retaliatory raids, Bent began to redefine himself as a Cheyenne warrior. The combined talents of his formidable skills on the battlefield and his literacy put Bent in a unique position. On the one hand, Cheyenne warrior societies vied for Bent's membership in their lodges, and, on the other, Cheyenne leaders called on Bent to interpret for them and write letters to government agents and military leaders on their behalf. Over time Bent's prestige grew, and soon government agents, both military and civilian, called on him to serve as interpreter for treaties and peace talks between them and the Cheyennes. Although Bent served the Cheyennes to the best of his abilities, he also served himself, acting as a commercial trader, an avocation that soon earned him the enmity of those who envied his wealth and prestige. Walking the middle road is always perilous, and in the years following the pacification of the Cheyennes Bent faced hard times. In the final section of this book, chapters 10–12, Halaas and Masich reveal the grave challenges facing Bent in his later years. His family broken, his income diminished, socially outcast, and drinking heavily, Bent struggled to hold on to the little bit of glory that had come his way only to slip from his hands too quickly. Cheyenne in his...