Death on the Prairie: The Thirty Years' Struggle for the Western Plains

Death on the Prairie, The Thirty Years' Struggle for the Western Plains will definitely take any reader to the edge of dismay and shame. Cruelty and maltreatment of the Indian by the military and Indian Agents, along with disrespect and a complete lack of understanding and empathy for the misplaced, cheated American native, led the Western Plains Indians to wage brutal war with the whites. Time and time again, however, these wars were prompted by the white man's maltreatment of the Indian. Famous Indian Chiefs of the Western Plains Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces, Sitting Bull of the Sioux, Little Crow of the Cheyenne, are just a few of the famous chiefs and their tribes that Wellman details in this book. In every single case, with every single tribe, war was declared by the Indians against the whites because of flagrant, ruinous transgressions and violations of the very treaties that the whites insisted the Indians agree to. Repeatedly, it was the white man who violated these treaties. Every time the Indians were given a "reservation" and were unhappy but managing to get along amicably, the whites would uproot them and send the residents off to a worse location, usually because gold was discovered on Indian lands, and earth grubbing whites would arrive and destroy the hunting grounds, water and habitat where the Indian lived. Buffalo Herds Slaughtered Equally appalling, however, as the slaughter of the native Americans, whose land it was before the whites simply grabbed it, was the mass slaughter of the buffalo by the white man. According to Wellman, what happened to the buffalo was "...the most disgraceful slaughter of animals the world has ever seen" (p. 103). The Plains Indians depended entirely on the buffalo for their existence, using every single part of the buffalo for food, clothing, shelter, etc. Custer and His Infamous Last Stand American History only dwells on the pompous Custer and his last stand. Text books may mention the few times the Indians went on a rampage and killed civilians, but it conveniently overlooks the tens of thousands of Indians that were humiliated, dishonored and killed, including mass numbers of women and children. Always these deaths were for white man's profit or because of white man's ignorance and paranoia. Death on the Prairie just involves so much murder and destruction that it can be difficult to keep reading. The numbers of deaths reported are horrendous. The Indian war parties often numbered over a thousand members, sometimes as many as two thousand, resulting in astronomical death tolls. Also, it was appalling how the military hunted these people down, even when they were just trying to escape to Canada, to live peacefully, like Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces. One must ask, why would the military care if they left the country? This happened with other tribes also who rebelled against being locked up, fed foods not fit for a dog and treated like vermin. All in all, both Death in the Desert (als

A friend of mine gave me this book and I couldn't believe I hadn't discovered Paul Wellman before. As a newspaper man, Wellman writes in a straightforward style, giving fair shift to both sides in the Indian Wars on the Prarie during the last half of the 19th century. He reviews all of the major battles and leaders on both sides in a compelling, page turning book. He describes each battle with a military historians precision but without pedantry. He shows both sides stradegy and tactics and reviews the leaders with objectivity. It is a highly readable and informative book with a great bibliography. Any student of frontier history will do well to have this book on his shelf.

Wellman's "Death on the Prairies" is a comprehensive account of American wars against the plains and mountain Indian tribes. As such it is beautifully written, graphic and gives us a small ideas to the horrors of Indian warfare and, what it must have been like, to be a pioneer trying to eke out a living on the prairie when suddenly hostiles are battering down your door to torture and kill both you and your family. At the same time, Wellman gives us a sense of the pathos that was the destruction of whole peoples and a wonderful way of life. Who can blame the native americans for not wanting to live on a reservation as farmers. They were used to wandering a limitless land with limitless skies and limitless game. I would have fought, too. Still, it occurs to me that much of our contempt for 'enemies' is disapproval of their age-old patterns of warfare. To the native americans, torture, rape and killing, was their way of war and way of life. They had been waging war, in similar fashion, against other tribes for millenia. Why was the white man different? Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

Well before, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee there was "Death on the prairie" Wellman tried to be more objective than Dee Brown without being a waxjob. Written at a time when to question American history was not so vogue.As I recollect Wellman was from OK.and was part NDN, back when a minority was good and quiet.Like my family except he never forgot, and we can't seem to remember. His writing is good and history as well.