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Nothing can change the terrible facts of the Sand Creek Massacre.
The human toll of this horrific event and the ensuing loss of a way
of life have never been fully recounted until now. In Sand Creek
and the Tragic End of a Lifeway, Louis Kraft tells this story,
drawing on the words and actions of those who participated in the
events at this critical time. The history that culminated in the
end of a lifeway begins with the arrival of Algonquin-speaking
peoples in North America, proceeds through the emergence of the
Cheyennes and Arapahos on the Central Plains, and ends with the
incursion of white people seeking land and gold. Beginning in the
earliest days of the Southern Cheyennes, Kraft brings the voices of
the past to bear on the events leading to the brutal murder of
people and its disastrous aftermath. Through their testimony and
their deeds as reported by contemporaries, major and supporting
players give us a broad and nuanced view of the discovery of gold
on Cheyenne and Arapaho land in the 1850s, followed by the land
theft condoned by the U.S. government. The peace treaties and
perfidy, the unfolding massacre and the investigations that
followed, the devastating end of the Indians' already-circumscribed
freedom - all are revealed through the eyes of government
officials, newspapers, and the military; Cheyennes and Arapahos who
sought peace with or who fought Anglo-Americans; whites and Indians
who intermarried and their offspring; and whites who dared to
question what they considered heinous actions. As instructive as it
is harrowing, the history recounted here lives on in the telling,
along with a way of life destroyed in all but cultural memory. To
that memory this book gives eloquent, resonating voice.
When Edward W. Wynkoop arrived in Colorado Territory during the
1858 gold rush, he was one of many ambitious newcomers seeking
wealth in a promising land mostly inhabited by American Indians.
After he worked as a miner, sheriff, bartender, and land
speculator, Wynkoop's life drastically changed after he joined the
First Colorado Volunteers to fight for the Union during the Civil
War. This sympathetic but critical biography centers on his
subsequent efforts to prevent war with Indians during the volatile
1860s. A central theme of Louis Kraft's engaging narrative is
Wynkoop's daring in standing up to Anglo-Americans and attempting
to end the 1864 Indian war. The Indians may have been dangerous
enemies obstructing ""progress,"" but they were also human beings.
Many whites thought otherwise, and at daybreak on November 29,
1864, the Colorado Volunteers attacked Black Kettle's sleeping
camp. Upon learning of the disaster now known as the Sand Creek
Massacre, Wynkoop was appalled and spoke out vehemently against the
action. Many of his contemporaries damned his views, but Wynkoop
devoted the rest of his career as a soldier and then as a U.S.
Indian agent to helping Cheyennes and Arapahos to survive. The
tribes' lifeways still centered on the dwindling herds of buffalo,
but now they needed guns to hunt. Kraft reveals how hard Wynkoop
worked to persuade the Indian Bureau to provide the tribes with
firearms along with their allotments of food and clothing - a hard
sell to a government bent on protecting white settlers and paving
the way for American expansion. In the wake of Sand Creek, Wynkoop
strove to prevent General Winfield Scott Hancock from destroying a
Cheyenne-Sioux village in 1867, only to have the general ignore him
and start a war. Fearing more innocent people would die, Wynkoop
resigned from the Indian Bureau but, not long thereafter, receded
into obscurity. Now, thanks to Louis Kraft, we may appreciate
Wynkoop as a man of conscience who dared to walk between Indians
and Anglo-Americans but was often powerless to prevent the tragic
consequences of their conflict.
Jewish War Records Of World War II, By Samuel C. Kohs; Jews In The
Armed Forces, By Louis Kraft. From The American Jewish Year Book,
V47.
Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (1853-96), an educated Virginian, served in
the Sixth U.S. Cavalry as the commander of Indian scouts. Gatewood
was largely accepted by the Native peoples with whom he worked
because of his efforts to understand their cultures. It was
precisely this connection between Gatewood and the Indians, and
with Geronimo and Naiche in particular, that led to his involvement
in the last Apache war and his work for Indian rights.
Realizing that he had more experience dealing with Native peoples
than other lieutenants serving on the frontier, Gatewood decided to
record his experiences. Although he died before he completed his
project, "Lt. Charles Gatewood & His Apache Wars Memoir" is an
important firsthand account of Gatewood's life as a commander of
Apache scouts and as a military commandant of the White Mountain
Indian Reservation. Louis Kraft presents Gatewood's previously
unpublished account, complementing it with an introduction,
additional text that fills in the gaps in Gatewood's narrative,
detailed notes, and an epilogue. Kraft's work offers new background
information on Gatewood and throws the manuscript into new relief
as a fresh account of how Gatewood viewed the events in which he
took part.
Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (1853-1896), an educated Virginian, served
in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry as the commander of Indian scouts.
Gatewood was largely accepted by the Native peoples with whom he
worked because of his efforts to understand their cultures. It was
this connection that Gatewood formed with the Indians, and with
Geronimo and Naiche in particular, that led to his involvement in
the last Apache war and his work for Indian rights. Realizing that
he had more experience dealing with Native peoples than other
lieutenants serving on the frontier, Gatewood decided to record his
experiences. Although he died before he completed his project, the
work he left behind remains an important firsthand account of his
life as a commander of Apache scouts and as a military commandant
of the White Mountain Indian Reservation. Louis Kraft presents
Gatewood's previously unpublished account, punctuating it with an
introduction, additional text that fills in the gaps in Gatewood's
narrative, detailed notes, and an epilogue. Kraft's work offers new
background information on Gatewood and discusses the manuscript as
a fresh account of how Gatewood viewed the events in which he took
part. Louis Kraft, an independent scholar, is the author of
Gatewood & Geronimo and Custer and the Cheyenne: George
Armstrong Custer's Winter Campaign on the Southern Plains.
The two pre-eminent warriors of the Apache Wars between 1878 and
1886, Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood of the Sixth United States
Cavalry and Chiricahua leader Geronimo, respected one another in
peace and feared one another in war. Within two years of his
posting to Arizona in 1878, Gatewood became the armys premier
Apache man as both a commander of Apache scouts and a reservation
administrator, but his equitable treatment of Indians aroused the
enmity of civilian and military detractors, and the army shunned
him. In the late 1870s Geronimo, a medicine man, emerged as a
brilliant Chiricahua leader and fiercely resisted his peoples
incarceration on inhospitable federal reservations. His fight for
freedom, often bloody, in New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico triggered
the deployment of hundreds of United States and Mexican troops and
Apache Scouts to hunt him and his people. In the end, the United
States Army recalled Gatewood to Apache service, ordering him into
the Sierra Madre of northern Mexico to locate Geronimo and
negotiate his bands surrender. Showing the depravity and
desperation of the Apache wars, Louis Kraft dramatically recreates
Gatewoods final mission and poignantly recalls the United States
governments betrayal of the Chiricahuas, Geronimo, and Gatewood at
the campaigns end.
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