An authoritative account of a disturbing chapter in the relations between the U.S. military and Indigenous peoples.
The author of Tecumseh and the Prophet and The Earth Is Weeping returns with a new history of the Creek Indians’ war with U.S. settlers, focusing on the role of Andrew Jackson.
Based largely in present-day Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama, the Creeks were descended from the Native peoples who lived in the area before Hernando de Soto’s Spanish conquistadors plundered it. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1700s, despite being divided into small towns with no central authority, the Creeks were “the dominant Indian power in the Deep South.” Cozzens shows how this way of life came under pressure from White settlers eager to exploit the rich farmland inhabited by the Natives. The Creeks’ response was inspired by a group of prophets who preached war against the White men, beginning around 1812. Their followers—called Red Sticks after the wooden war clubs favored by the Creeks—at first attacked isolated White settlers and tribe members who had abandoned traditional ways. The August 1813 attack on Fort Mims, a White stronghold in southwestern Alabama, ended in a brutal massacre, with more than 250 dead, including women and children. That battle ignited a determination among Whites in the region—especially Jackson, who was from Tennessee—to end the uprising by whatever means necessary. Cozzens gives detailed, diligently researched descriptions of the subsequent battles, which culminated in early 1814 at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, where Jackson’s forces annihilated a Red Stick stronghold, killing some 850 Creeks and allied tribesmen. Jackson parlayed this victory into command of the armies that defeated the British in New Orleans early the next year. A seasoned historical storyteller, Cozzens portrays both Jackson and his Creek adversaries without minimizing their flaws, though he is clearly appalled by Jackson’s later treatment of the Indians during the Trail of Tears. The author includes 10 maps to keep readers oriented.
An authoritative account of a disturbing chapter in the relations between the U.S. military and Indigenous peoples.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780525659457
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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