Death, Too, For The-Heavy-Runner by Ben Bennett (review)

Reviews 171 it, thus carrying the downward spiral further. The generations inhabit increas­ ingly pauperized environments. These are powerful ideas, and in hands less careful than Shepard’s might be only passionate assertions. But he has built his argument on extraordinarily wide reading, taking no single source for granted, and on what seem to be fair-minded assessments of what he sees around him. The book is not a purely intellectual history of ideas: “. . . it is not philosophy as such that counts. It is how our daily lives are lived.” In Shepard’s view, pavement matters deeply, in ways we may not have guessed. It is intuitively obvious, perhaps, that the modern nation states, brandishing their weapons, consumed with missile envy, utterly unconscious of the richness and meaning of the natural world, repre­ sent a juvenile — possibly even infantile — stage of human development. Shepard, has, among other things, put a very interesting footing under this intuition. Nature and Madness is a book whose ground-breaking importance willbe widely recognized. THOMAS J. LYON, Utah State University Death, Too, For The-Heavy-Runner. ByBen Bennett. (Missoula, M T: Moun­ tain Press, 1980. 192 pages, $7.95.) As we generate a balanced historical viewpoint of the last century’s encounters between the tribal cultures of the West and the Anglo-European culture which dominated them and assumed control of the land, a number of disturbing ironies become evident. Dee Brown and other writers have given us a version of the frontier in which our pioneers are seen as invaders, and dash­ ing military personalities such as George Custer reveal themselves as fools if not murderers. The combined influence of racial misapprehension and mani­ fest destiny makes an integrated grasp of the frontier period difficult and occa­ sionally bitter. Mr. Bennett presents an account of the Baker Massacre of 1870, in which a peaceful, smallpox-stricken camp of Piegans led by The-Heavy-Runner was attacked and annihilated by the U. S. Army under command of Col. Eugene M. Baker. Because the men of the camp were absent on a desperate hunt for winter meat, the soldiers killed mostly women, children and the elderly. The purpose of the attack was to avenge killings of settlers by individual Indians, none of whom was present in this camp. The book explores the complex of personal and social events which cul­ minated in the massacre and the conflict of opinion which followed, the eastern press condemning the army while the military and various western politicians supported and defended Col. Baker and his men. The documentary evidence, in the form of letters and reports, shows a tendency toward bluster, rationalization and outright lying on the part of the military which is disturbingly similar to the aftermath of the My Lai incident 172 Western American Literature in Vietnam, except in this case there was no prosecution nor even a formal investigation. The response of Montana settlers, at least at this remove of years, seems shamelessly vicious, as in a document circulated by the citizens of the town of Highland, to wit: “Whereas, the U. S. soldiers under command of Colonel Baker did . . . wipe out certain red fiends known as Piegan Indians,” they resolved, therefore, “that we most heartily and sincerely indorse [sic] the manner of treaty then and there made with those and all others of our red brethren who inhabit the soil of Montana.” Quite obviously, the Indian viewpoint was not highly regarded by histor­ ians of that time, and the lack of these alternate versions hampers the writing of a book like this one. Mr. Bennett’s desire to flesh out the human aspect of this history by using the techniques of a novelist results in well-founded but fictional “visions” which fall between chapters of documented historical evi­ dence. The visions of Generals Sully, Sheridan and deTrobriand seem soundly based on documentation, but the corresponding visionsof Mountain-Chief and The-Heavy-Runner seem like forays into idealization, as does the initial chap­ ter on the Blackfeet prior to 1830. An event as significant to the tribe as this massacre should have left traces in the form of oral histories to be collected from living descendants near...