Indian Wars History Redux

Several years ago a documentary filmmaker invited me to New York to appear as a "talking head" in a new production about George Armstrong Custer. I felt honored to be asked, but turned him down. I had nothing "new" to say about the man and doubted anyone else did either. Hadn't the topic been exhausted? I went on to suggest a fistful of fresh topics related to Western and Native American history that had been overlooked by filmmakers and the general public. The filmmaker listened, probably with irritation. Needless to say, I never heard from him again.

Although I was not sorry I had taken that position, I realize I was misguided on two fronts: first, there is an audience with an insatiable appetite for stories about Custer and the Indian Wars. Second, there are always new audiences who know nothing about these things. Scholars, writers, and filmmakers should continue to produce work that addresses these audiences, appetites, and knowledge-seekers. The collaboration is most satisfying to all, however, when popularizers keep up with and acknowledge the debt they owe to scholars and scholars, for their part, appreciate the special skills filmmakers and popular writers bring to stories that capture the general public's attention. While scholars prefer work that pushes beyond current theories, there is tremendous value in sharing what we "now know" with audiences beyond the academy. Collaboration and mutual respect can create powerful partnerships.

Two new books, covering the oft-told tales of warfare among and between Native Americans, Europeans, and Anglo-Americans attempt something along those lines. One will appeal primarily to non-scholars. The other hopes to reach that audience, as well. Both books recount stories familiar to specialists and rest on the work of many scholars, offering a blend of secondary and some primary sources in notes and bibliographies. Historian David J. Silverman's Thundersticks is the more innovative. It emphasizes the economic, political, social and cultural implications, for native people, of firearms and what he calls the "arms trade" that played out across the continent from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. This impressive book ranges from the Iroquois country of the Northeast, to the Carolinas, Great Lakes, coastal Pacific Northwest, Southern Plains, and ends with an epilogue at South Dakota's Wounded Knee in 1973. As he revisits episodes such as King Philip's War, the Seminole Wars, and Blackfeet warfare in the Northern Rockies, for example, Silverman offers a fresh perspective, albeit not a fundamentally new interpretation, of how native people strategized and attempted to prevail in conflicts with other Indian groups and with non-native colonizers and conquerors. That they ultimately failed does not diminish the centuries-long efforts. That those efforts accelerated and amplified violence among Indian people also needs acknowledgement.

Peter Cozzens's The Earth is Weeping tightens the geographic and chronological focus. Its less ambitious scope zeroes in on the twenty-five-year period between 1866 and 1890 and the familiar stories of Red Cloud's War, the Sioux War of 1876 (including the Battle of the Little Bighorn), the Nez Perce War, Ute War, Apache Wars of the Southwest, and Wounded Knee. Cozzens, the author or editor of sixteen books on the American Civil War and the Indians Wars of the American West, is interested in writing a compelling narrative that emphasizes action. Vivid prose and emphasis on battles trump innovative interpretation and, at times, integration of more recent scholarship. Many readers probably will not mind. Scholars, however, may regret the lost opportunity to bring fresh perspectives to wider audiences.

Silverman's decision to "follow the guns" makes abundant sense, yet as he notes, few historians have acknowledged the critical importance firearms played not only in warfare but in revolutionizing Native Americans' lives. Featuring weapons...