| Title | : | Cheyenne Summer: The Battle of Beecher Island: A History |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1643137107 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781643137100 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published July 6, 2021 |
| Awards | : | Spur Award Western Historical Nonfiction (2022) |
In September 1868, the undermanned United States Army was struggling to address attacks by Cheyenne and Sioux warriors against the Kansas settlements, the stagecoach routes, and the transcontinental railroad. General Sheridan hired fifty frontiersmen and scouts to supplement his limited forces. He placed them under the command of Major George Forsyth and Lieutenant Frederick Beecher. Both men were army officers and Civil War veterans with outstanding records. Their orders were to find the Cheyenne raiders and, if practicable, to attack them.
Their patrol left Fort Wallace, the westernmost post in Kansas, and headed northwest into Colorado. After a week or so of following various trails, they were at the limit of their supplies—for both men and horses. They camped along the narrow Arikaree Fork of the Republican River. In the early morning they were surprised and attacked by a force of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors.
The scouts hurried to a small, sandy island in the shallow river and dug in. Eventually they were surrounded by as many as six hundred warriors, led for a time by the famous Cheyenne, Roman Nose. The fighting lasted four days. Half the scouts were killed or wounded. The Cheyenne lost nine warriors, including Roman Nose. Forsyth asked for volunteers to go for help. Two pairs of men set out at night for Fort Wallace—one hundred miles away. They were on foot and managed to slip through the Cheyenne lines. The rest of the scouts held out on the island for nine days. All their horses had been killed. Their food was gone and the meat from the horses was spoiled by the intense heat of the plains. The wounded were suffering from lack of medical supplies, and all were on the verge of starvation when they were rescued by elements of the Tenth Cavalry—the famous Buffalo Soldiers.
Although the battle of Beecher Island was a small incident in the history of western conflict, the story brings together all of the important elements of the Western frontier—most notably the political and economic factors that led to the clash with the Natives and the cultural imperatives that motivated the Cheyenne, the white settlers, and the regular soldiers, both white and black. More fundamentally, it is a story of human heroism exhibited by warriors on both sides of the dramatic conflict.
Cheyenne Summer: The Battle of Beecher Island: A History Reviews
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Terry Mort has written an academic and thoroughly interesting book about the Plains Indians, the Army, the transcontinental railroad and the mistakes and atrocities about the development of the American west. The battle of Beecher Island comes at the end of the book which took me by surprise, but it worked out well since it sets up the framework for the battle and the men on both sides. If you are an aficionado of all things western and Indian, you will enjoy this book. I certainly did.
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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 on the topic, 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. -
This is a well-researched book that covers the entire westward movement, the Plains Indians, and a few battles with Beecher Island being only the last chapter. The midsection of this country was being "invaded" by prospectors looking for gold, trappers seeking beaver, hunters killing buffalo, Mormans seeking their Kingdom, and the poor seeking freedom and cheap land, all caring less who "owned" the vast plains. The "natives" had had enough and began to resist and the "rules of war" had not yet been explained to its participants. The brutality of the Sand Creek Massacre by John Chivington, killing old men, women, and children, who then entered Denver as a hero displaying body parts of those killed. Not much later the "natives" responded with the Fetterman Massacre on the Boseman Trail with like behavior.
This tit-for-tat battle happened for several years across the great plains, how was it to be stopped?
U S senator John Sherman (1867) said, "If the whole USA army stood in the way, the wave of emigration would pass over it to the seek the valley where gold was to be found." George Bent, 1/2 Cheyenne, son of a trader on the Arkansas, fought with the Cheyenne and called the white man "CRAZY".
This book explores the "thinking" of both the Indian and the white settlers -
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.
I’m not a big fan of military history. So I appreciated that the bulk of Mort’s 270-page book was not spent describing the actual Battle of Beecher Island. Most of the book provides context for the battle. The first third or more is a detailed account of the Cheyenne, their history, culture, and nomadic tradition. The next third is a brief history of the U.S. Army and civilian settlers during the period of the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and western expansion. This was a perfect introduction for a reader like me to the various players in the Indian Wars, with their conflicting desires and goals. -
As my rating indicates, I'm right in the middle of the road on this book. I like the author's overall style and he writes well; however, way too much is spent on extraneous information. For example, the first 100 pages are dedicated to the Cheyenne and a very robust history of the tribe...where they came from, lifestyle, etc. Continuing this theme, the next 100 pages are dedicated to the US Army and way too much background here as well...the Mexican-American War, lots of detail on the Civil War, and lots of history on westward expansion. It's not until page 200 that you get to the main players and lead-in to the battle and then only about 70 pages are dedicated to it. So a book about the Battle of Beecher Island devotes less than 1/3 of it's pages to the battle. This book is good if you want a high level overview of the battle and do not have any background knowledge on any of the belligerents in the Indian Wars.
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If you pick up this volume in anticipation of reading a book about the Battle of Beecher Island, you will be disappointed. Out of 270 pages, only about 100 of them discuss the battle, its participants, preliminaries, and aftermath. The balance of the book is consumed by a brief history of the trans-Mississippi West. While it's always good to "set the stage" and include information which places a battle in context, this is a bit much. And it certainly wasn't what was promised by the book title. Mort writes a good narrative, though he's guilty at times of making some assumptions and generalizations. The bottom line here is that there's only so much you can write about the battle, so you evidently have to fill in the balance of the pages with something. Read it as you will.
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The interesting thing about Mort is that while he does feature the history of the conflict between Forsyth and his Cavalrymen and the Cheyenne led by Chief Roman Nose, he also explores the economic and expansion aspects that brought White and Red to conflict. He argues that the training of Forsyth's men plus their repeating rifles, was the difference between victory and death at Beecher Island, but it was a near close thing.
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This was good. I learned a lot about the army at that time, the cost to the government for cavalry as opposed to infantry. The warrior culture of the Cheyenne and how they came to be plains nomads for a rather short time.
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Well researched and inciteful account of the Cheyenne and the building of America.
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I enjoyed the book. The actual battle of Beecher Island is brief so the the author Terry Mort takes the opportunity to present in a readable manner both the Cheyenne tribe as well as the settlers, soldiers and guides as well as the nature of the conflict. I learned so much about the Cheyenne nation. I was not as prepared to enjoy this part as much as I did. I finished the book with the feeling I was better informed about the conflict. Terry Mort did an incredible amount of research to bring this story to his readers.
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You can read my review at Shelf Awareness:
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/reade...
