A Terrible Justice is a must read for the American Western enthusiast.
Terrible
Justice: Sioux Chiefs & US Soldiers
Criticism Of An
Otherwise Good Book
By Dakota
Wind
Chapters
like The Battle of Fort Rice are
lengthy and detailed. Nearly no soldier or Indian goes unnamed, and I almost
felt I was reading Homer’s Iliad. I
had previously read, and re-read Ben Innis’ Bloody
Knife: Custer’s Favorite Scout for basic information about what Innis
describes as a ten-day siege of Fort
Rice , and pretty much
leaves it at that. Chakey has gone back and scoured every known published source
(The Frontier Scout, military orders for
the day, muster roles, etc.) and has delivered the most complete telling of
Sitting Bull’s assaults on a military fort. More than just a siege or
stand-off, with Chakey’s version, one sees the battle as a battle.
Terrible Justice features maps by a Bill Wilson. Maps
which have been pain-stakingly reconstructed from explorers’, traders’ and military
maps to show where many of the Sioux (Dakota and Lakota) were known to be in
the time period the book focuses on. One of Wilson ’s maps even features a breakdown of
Sioux tribes and their dialects.
I love
maps. I love maps that showcase the Northern Great Plains .
Wilson’s maps are detailed with battles sites and forts, place names and state
lines, all the standard fare and more that one expects in a map of Dakota
Territory. I can appreciate the time and detail that has gone into creating the
two maps that are featured in Terrible
Justice.
There are
only two maps in all of Terrible Justice’s
408 pages, but the book could have used one more. I’m sure that there are
resources out there, but the only book with a map – a single map too – that attempts
to recreate the landscape as the Great Sioux Nation knew it, is Royal Hassrick’s
The Sioux, though not enough detail
was put into his single map, only major waterways and major landmarks.
I’m not
tearing down Chakey’s book, nor Wilson ’s
maps, they’re both wonderful resources to have in your library collection. I’m
just sighing at the lack of a map that have traditional native names associated
with them. Wilson ’s
maps are only an indication of Western/American mentality, the landscape
wherein the indigenous have been pushed out or wiped out and the landmarks
renamed. The identity of the landscape is made over.
In the
chapter hauntingly titled Babies On The
Battlefield, Sibley’s 1863 campaign against the Dakota and Lakota covers
the running conflict from Big Mound through Dead
Buffalo Lake
through to Sibley’s final conflict with the Sioux at Apple Creek between
present-day United Tribes Technical
College and the University of Mary .
The running conflict is concisely covered in just two pages.
In this
same chapter is the account of Ta’Oyáte
Duta’s (His Red Nation; aka Little Crow) son Wówinapĥe (A Place Of Refuge) who reported that his father had
attempted to find allies among the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan Nation at Fort
Berthold, but they were in turn attacked for their recruitment effort. Wówinapĥe also shared with Sibley’s men
that his father had attempted to reach out the Chippewa up at the Turtle Mountains
and find allies, but too was unsuccessful finding friends there. I had only
ever heard this story as oral history from Humanities Scholar Jerome Kills
Small.
This same
chapter, Babies On The Battlefield,
goes into far more detail about Sully’s campaign which culminated at Whitestone
Hill. Chakey’s strength is entirely academic and shows in this retelling. The
only other place one may find a more complete account of the Whitestone Hill
conflict is Clair Jacobson’s Whitestone
Hill, the only difference here is that Jacobson includes as much of the
native perspective of the conflict as well as the Sully’s and his command’s
accounts.
On page 176
the reader learns the awful reasoning behind the chapter’s title. Soldiers’
accounts of the days display a kill and let die philosophy in their carnage. Shooting
dogs who drug travois carrying babies were shot, and if they missed, the baby
was at rest. The harsh use of language clearly dehumanizes the Sioux, and that’s
the sad truth of Sully’s campaign. Babies who were found, the innocent survivors,
were given to the women prisoners.
There is no
mention of the two pictographic accounts of the Whitestone Hill conflict. The absence
of these two recorded primary documents is a resounding silence, the Lakota and Dakota remain voiceless without the inclusion of these firsthand accounts.
My concerns
are few (maps and pictographs) but I feel important. Chakey’s Terrible Justice deserves a spot on the
bookshelf of the student of American History or Native American history. Footnotes
rest at the bottom of nearly each page; a wonderful bibliography follows the
conclusion of the book which takes the reader up to the Fort Laramie Treaty of
1868.
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