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  • Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails
  • R. Douglas Hurt
Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails. By Michael L. Tate. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8061-3710-X. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxiv, 328. $29.95.

Rumors about Indian hostilities and cruelties based on hearsay became accepted as fact among most emigrants on the overland trails during the mid-nineteenth century. Prior to 1850, however, emigrants had more reason to fear life-threatening diseases, accidents, and hunger than Indians. In general, the tribes of the central and northern Great Plains, including the [End Page 528] Lakota and Cheyennes, aided rather than hindered westward migration. They did so to enhance their opportunities to trade, particularly for metal cookware, steel knives, clothing, and tobacco. Nevertheless, by the late 1850s, wagon trains crossed the Great Plains in such large numbers that grass, game, and wood began to disappear and cause great hardship for the Indian people. Cooperation between Indians and whites gave way to hostile encounters. When westward migration became massive after the Civil War, Indian-white relations deteriorated to a state of periodic warfare that did not end until the tragedy of Wounded Knee in 1890. Yet, during the Indian Wars, the Great Plains tribes had more to fear from whites than the emigrants from Indians.

Although historians who have worked on Indian-white relations for the past decade know that reciprocity and negotiation governed most encounters, Michael Tate provides a well-researched and readable synthesis of Indian-white relations in the Great Plains from 1840 to 1870. This period enables analysis of contacts between the Indians and the early migrants, who were few, and the large number of whites who emigrated later. Tate carefully traces the manner in which misinformation caused early reciprocal contacts to give way to animosity and hostility. He also discusses cultural misunderstandings over the killing of game, Indian-white burial practices and the desecration of graves (real and perceived), blame for prairie fires, and white fear of captivity. Above all, Tate shows that the Indians of the central and northern Great Plains, across whose lands the migrants traveled, pursued their own interests, until overpowered by whites and technology. He does not discount all cases of conflict prior to the Civil War, and he acknowledges that Indian-white contacts varied between groups, tribal as well as emigrant. Cultural misunderstandings influenced all encounters, and conflicts could erupt quickly, even in the best circumstances. Tate contends that while travelers increasingly feared the Indians of the Great Plains during the Civil War years for reasons of their own making, cooperation still characterized most contacts and relationships. Many Great Plains tribes, for example, guided wagon trains and provided advice about where to camp and find water, wood, and grass. When the federal government moved the Indians from along the overland trails to reservations, this peaceful interaction ceased and only the hostile tribes and bands that refused to go remained and caused trouble for the emigrants and ultimately the army. Soon, however, the railroads carried the setters west without the need for Indian assistance.

Tate's study is well-grounded in primary sources but it is not as inclusive of the pertinent secondary literature as possible. This book, however, merits addition to all library collections with holdings on the Great Plains and Indians. It also will serve as a good source for courses on the Great Plains, American West, and Native Americans. Historians, students, and general readers with an interest in the American West will find this study an informative read.

R. Douglas Hurt
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
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