Review

Reviewed Work(s): Crimsoned Prairie: The Wars Between the United States and the Plains
Indians During the Winning of the West by S. L. A. Marshall
Review by: Roger L. Nichols
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Sep., 1973), pp. 461-462
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2936821
Accessed: 17-05-2018 14:08 UTC

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462 The Journal of American History

ing things. Thus after the Cheyenne derailed a train and looted the freight
cars, they looked upon the act as an adventure, not a tactic to hurt their
enemies and failed to repeat it. Only two Indian leaders get much praise.
Marshall calls Crazy Horse an excellent tactician for his use of ambuscades
and brief mounted attacks. Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph and his associates
also get high praise. Their campaign was the only one in which the Indians
scouted properly, launched surprise attacks, outmaneuvered and outfought
the soldiers. Army ineptitude made Joseph's task easier; still his campaign
was masterful.
This book has several flaws. The prose is preachy and annoying, and ref-
erences to military events from the fifteenth century to the present seem
unnecessary. Some items Marshall includes are minor and do not seem to
uphold his thesis. Then, one might ask why the Nez Perce receive such full
treatment. True, the late stages of their war occurred in Montana, but they
hardly qualify as Plains Indians. The most significant weakness, however, is
the lack of both footnotes and a bibliography. If one is to take Marshall's
ideas as reasonable, he must do so on faith rather than through the usual
scholarly process. Yet this book is not intended primarily for scholars.
More likely it is offered as a mild rebuttal of Bury My Heart at Wounded
Knee and similar books. As such it does the entire historical profession a
great service.

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ROGER L. NICHOLS

The Mystic Warriors of the Plains. By Thomas E. Mails. (Garden City:

Doubleday, 1972. xvii + 618 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliog
phy, and index. $25.00.)
From 1775 to 1875 the Indians of the Great Plains enjoyed the "golden
period" of their tribal histories. Those 100 years were the times of free-
dom, the buffalo hunt, inter-tribal wars, horse-raids, the Sun Dance, and
the satisfying life in an environment to which the Indian people easily
adapted. No single tribe or nation is singled out for comprehensive treat-
ment; instead, Thomas E. Mails attempts to present a generalized narrative
about the "life-way" of the plains warriors. He accepts the concept devel-
oped by anthropologists that the Indians of the plains developed a culture
with many common characteristics, such as dependence upon the horse and
buffalo, domination by warrior societies, a material culture reflecting mobil-
ity, and important ceremonies exemplified by the Sun Dance. Linguistically,
the plains Indians spoke a number of mutually unintelligible languages
hence a sign language, understood by all the peoples of the plains, was de-
veloped for trade, political, and diplomatic purposes.
The close scholar of Indian history will find little that is new here while

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