it was nice to review this history through what felt like a more intimate, narrative lens that read like fiction. but this was still a tough read. it was just battle after battle, death after death. in the end, while it's a very important story to be told, i couldn't keep the people or the battles straight, except for the two main leaders of the cheyenne groups (little wolf and dull knife). what i will take away is a terrible view of how the government so often (has and still does) subverts the will of the many. according to this history, many white people tried to help the indians, but the government purposefully didn't send the food or water or fulfill their promises, even though the people wanted them to. which isn't to say that all the people wanted to do the right thing, but i had kind of assumed that virtually none did, so that was a pleasant surprise. still, the brutality of the government, and right after the lessons of reconstruction (although maybe that makes sense because the white people are all feeling so threatened by the idea of losing their power) is nauseating.

and it's shameful that this history remains virtually unknown to white people.

"By 1864, with the nation at war ostensibly to free the black man from slavery, the public had been prepared to accept a policy of extermination for the red." ( )

Cheyenne autumn by Mari Sandoz
This book is about the Indians that were told to leave and head west to Yellowstone but they just wanted to go back to their places and survive.
Many battles and you get to hear what the Indians as well as the army troops were contemplating. At one point the army was told to kill all Indians 12 years old and higher, that would make them extinct and not be able to survive with just females.
Broken treaties, skirmishes throughout the years and how they are able to survive.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device). ( )

I have never gotten past my fascination with cowboys and Indians. Well, actually, I have never gotten past my fascination with Native Americans. The cowboys I can do without, especially after reading another of Mari Sandoz’ books on the plains Indians. Maybe it’s a love for the underdog; maybe it’s just a desire for justice. Cheyenne Autumn is a book about a desperate people crushed under the wheels of the nobly named policy of Manifest Destiny. Unfortunately, that doctrine was not noble at all, but an excuse to seize land and property with little regard for treaties, laws, or propriety, and to essentially commit genocide. The author’s sympathetic treatment of the Cheyenne humanizes what is treated dryly in our school history books, brushing over the details.

The Northern Cheyenne were sent south to Indian Territory from their ancestral hunting grounds along the Powder and Yellowstone rivers in Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. They were sent there with the promise that they could return if the didn’t like it there. Of course this promise was not written down anywhere. But the Cheyenne didn’t rely on writing for things like that, they relied on a man’s word. And guess what? They didn’t like it there. So after they had enough of being sickened and starved in Oklahoma, 278 men, women, and children fled north with their chiefs Little Wolf and Dull Knife. Between them and their homeland were rivers, railroads, ranchers and homesteads, the army, and winter. Amazingly, the two leaders managed to get their people North of the Platte into Kansas dispite the army’s best efforts. There they split and went to their separate fates. Sandoz does a great job of bringing their heroic journey to life without glossing over the injustice done to this noble people. This story needs to be read and known to put the U.S. settlement of the west in perspective and so that the people crushed by that settlement are not forgotten.

I found Cheyenne Autumn by Mari Sandoz a difficult book to read due to its’ subject matter In the autumn of 1878 a band of some 800 Cheyenne break out from the reservation in Oklahoma where they were placed. Their plan is to trek over fifteen hundred miles to their homeland in the Yellowstone Country. Sick, starving and homesick they felt that they would rather be killed fighting to reach home than to die like dogs on the white man’s reservation.

Eventually the group splits to evade the soldiers, but the group being led by Dull Knife is caught and marched to a military outpost in Dakota. At first well treated, they are eventually told that they must return to Oklahoma. The Indians refuse saying they would rather die. First the doors and windows of their building are sealed, then food is denied and eventually water as well. When the Cheyenne smash their way out of the building many are killed, the ones that do escape into the hills are hunted down and slaughtered until only remnants of this group are left.

The other Cheyenne under Little Wolf, manage to evade capture through the winter, and make it through to Montana where they are eventually given a small reservation in the southeast corner of the state, not far from the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn.

One thing that stood out in this book was how varied the treatment these Indians received was. Some white people were considerate, helpful and tried to work in the Indian’s best interest, while others were both cruel and sadistic, delighting in the indignities that were forced upon the natives. One young officer went out of his way to collect the wounded and get them to a military hospital, while another went out of his way to put bullets in the heads of the wounded where they lay.

Written in a straight forward almost flat style, this was still an extremely emotional book to read.. Cheyenne Autumn is an important and moving story from America’s history, and once again points out how ever changing politics and military might decided the final outcome for the original native people of North America. ( )

A sad tale of the end of Cheyenne resistance. ( )