That I picked up this book was mostly due to a desire to learn a bit more about the Cheyenne tribe in their prime, before I tackled something more academic, and I suppose that objective was achieved. However, the author writes much of this work in a voice that can be best described as "get off my front lawn," and I really have to wonder if Mort had any other objective but to spout rhetoric. A particular low point is, when writing about the U.S. Army at this moment in time, Mort snarls that matters might have gone better had Congress not "spent money on an army of bureaucrats and cronies." I'm not going to dispute the prevalence of corrupt behavior in the U.S. Congress of the late 1860s but, speaking as a recently retired federal archivist, who had reason to work with the period records of the Indian Bureau, Mort can just back off on anachronistically projecting back in time his apparent contempt for the current federal work force. If you take a few minutes to examine the 1869 "Registry of the U.S. Government (readily available on-line)," you'll see that barely 500 individuals worked for the Indian Bureau in that year; hardly an "army." Just another over-worked cadre of people trying to implement federal policy while keeping their heads above water.

I will note that Mort's retelling of the fight at Beecher Island is actually pretty good, but it's only about twenty percent of the book; another example of a strong magazine article trying to escape from a pot-boiler. ( )

In Cheyenne Summer, Terry Mort takes a close look at one battle in eastern Colorado during the Indian Wars of the late 1800s. In the Battle of Beecher Island in 1868, Cheyenne and Sioux warriors fought US Army scouts, including two battalions of Black "Buffalo Soldiers."

Although Mort describes the battle as not strategically significant, he concludes that it was culturally and historically important. He uses the battle to frame a discussion about one of the most transformative periods in America's history -- including a discussion of what motivated the white settlers, the Cheyenne, and the US soldiers, both white and Black.

Having grown up at both ends of the Oregon Trail -- Nebraska as a child and Oregon from a teenager on -- I've picked up some of the sad history of how our country treated the Native Americans during the settlement of the Western frontier. But there is a lot to learn. Terry Mort’s new book was a fine place for me to start. ( )