The Indian Frontier: 1846-1890: Histories of the American Frontier

“The Indian Frontier: 1846 – 1890” by Robert Utley “The Indian Frontier: 1846 – 1890” by Robert Utley This book is one of the ones that established Utley as one of the premier historians addressing the American scene of the 18th and 19th centuries in general and the Native American/White relations of that era specifically. To make a long story short,. This book is still one of the most thoughtful, insightful and cut-to-the-chase objective treatises on the American Indian and their experiences with the American Whites during the last 50 years of truly traditional Indian existence. It is VERY GOOD !!!HOWEVER... This book – published in 1984 - is substantially the same as Utley's 1973 tome titled “Frontier Regulars”. In fact, many passages here were lifted word-for-word from “Frontier Regulars”. Both books are good reads.

Background of the Indian Wars of the late 1800's that you never knew. It wasn't all major battles and massacres. There were dozens of tribes to deal with, and the policy changed several times, from peace to war to extermination. The author pulls no punches, tells it like it was.

Utley makes a real effort here to make sense of the sad history of Native American-Euroamerican relations; he does so with balance and understanding toward all concerned. He presents a solid and understandable account -- or rather, multiple interwoven accounts -- of the diplomatic, political, and military aspects of the indigenous/immigrant relationship, and helps the reader understand the background for the strange zigs and zags that U.S. government policy toward Indian tribes has taken over the years.

Fast service, product as advertised

The book was in excellent condition, barely used. The content provided a good summary of Indian culture in the desired period. Great value!

A+

On a summer evening in Denver, Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin, chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, rose in the Opera House to speak. Every mushroom townlet west of Paducah threw up a clapboard opera house first thing. In them, baggy pants comedians sang coon songs and recited dialect kneeslappers to expand the cultural horizons of the whites. Possession of an opera house was how you knew you were in the presence of civilization. Indians didn't have them.As historian Robert Utley recreates the scene, Doolittle told his hearers that the question at hand was whether the Indians should be placed on reservations and taught to support themselves or simply be exterminated.Doolittle, at least up to that night, seems to have entertained an exalted view of the attainments of his countrymen. Utley quotes him: "There suddenly arose such a shout as is never heard unless upon some battlefield;-- a shout almost loud enough to raise the roof of the Opera House -- 'Exterminate them! Exterminate them!' "This happened in the year of grace 1865.And so they did. Back in Wisconsin, at the next poll they exterminated Doolittle, politically."The Indian Frontier of the American West" is one of 20 volumes by leading scholars in the Histories of the American Frontier Series. Lavishly (though somewhat muddily) illustrated and tightly written, it takes, like Senator Doolittle, the high road.It makes revolting reading.Utley's theme, written in 1984, long before Professor Samuel Huntington got rich saying the same thing, is that the world views of the American Indians and the Euro-American invaders were so divergent that they never could understand one another. He locates this originally in religion -- the Indians believed in positive and negative deities who could be recruited or propitiated to keep nature going, the whites in an acquisitive deity who wanted them to make nature holler uncle.The whites misunderstood their deity, who -- in a message sent later, called the Dust Bowl -- intended the buffalo range to be left alone.Admitting brutish behavior on both sides, Utley calls in his summation for judging the whites not by our standards but by theirs. This is strange, since our professed standards are what they professed at the time.Curiously, the great, great grandsons of the men who knew that the One True God intended all of the West beyond the 100th meridian to be settled by farmers and ranchers, now argue that the One True Free Market Economy demands that the farms and ranches be wound up so that cheaper beef and wheat can be imported from far parts, on the never-never.It is no wonder the Indians could never figure out the white man.From the moment the Europeans set foot in America, the one thing they all agreed upon was that the Indian must go. Utley contends that "public sentiment overwhelmingly favored destruction by civilization rather than by killing." This is manifestly not so.Public opinion supported, from first to last, extermination by starvation. The Americans' policy was exactly that followed later by the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, except that while the Stalinist assault on the Ukrainians lasted only two years and killed only a small percentage of them, the American assault on the Indians lasted nearly 300 years and killed almost all of them.He makes much of the Lake Mohonk reformers (named for the spa where they met each summer in the Catskills) who wished a kindler, gentler extermination. The Mohonks, all evangelical Protestants, "saw nothing worth saving" in Indian culture. The Indians and the Catholics felt pretty much the same way about evangelical Protestantism, with rather more justification.The army, the railroads, the traders and the settlers went about exterminating the Indians via the tried and true methods perfected in colonial times. That great Democratic institution, the Congress, forswore itself on hundreds of occasions, until by 1886, at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, the last organized resistance of the Indians was destroyed.Utley calls for evaluating this carnage in light of the highmindedness of the reformers, who displayed "a strange mixture of genuine humanitarianism and crass self-interest." It was strange all right, amounting to a demand to "give us your land and your children." One might call it biblical.There is another way, though, to look at idealism -- whether of Crow Dog, a school Indian who murdered an army officer in order to be received back by his people, or of educationists who wanted to give the Indians "Just what we need for a better life! French horn, Italian, water polo . . ." (from "Temporarily Humboldt County," Firesign Theater). It is the way of Isaiah Berlin, who experienced much idealism in his long life.He learned to distrust idealists of all kinds.

Robert Utley's book on the Indian Frontier traces the decline of the domination of the Native Americans in the Trans-Mississippi West from the takeover of the northern part of Mexico by the United States in 1846 until 1890 when the Sioux were demoralized after the Wounded Knee massacre. The author presents a balanced presentation of the material in his book assigning total blame to neither the Indians nor the whites for the dying off of the culture of Indians during this time. Various factors led to this decline. The opening up of land to setttlement, the discovery of gold, intratribal feuds and the superior manpower of U.S. Army were major factors in the elimination of the native's former way of life. For the plains indians, the senseless destruction of the buffalo herds prove devastating to the Cheyenne, the Arapaho and especially the Sioux nation. The author noted that while these tribes were unjustly swindled out of their lands, these tribes actaully took the lands earlier in the 19th Century from tribes like the Crow and Shoshoni.What I like about this book is that it gives an overview of all of the conflicts in the West, not just in the Great Plains, but also in Arizona and in the Pacific Northwest where the Modocs held out against incredible odds at the lava beds around Tule Lake where they held off the army. The Five Civilzed Tribes and their role in the Civil War is mentioned. The sad story of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce is told as well while at the end of the book there was a brief mention of existence and rights of the Alaska natives. If it were a bit longer, this book would qualify as a textbook in Indian history for high school or a college course. I highly recommend this book. Five stars.