White Man's Paper Trail

This is Stan Hoig's latest narrative history of the Indians of the central Plains, and in it he examines the treaties with the United States signed from 1815 (the date of William Clark's great intertribal treaty council at Portage des Sioux) to 1871 (when Congress ended the practice of Indian treaty making). Hoig also looks at treaties with the Republic of Texas and the Confederate States of America. The book focuses primarily on the Comanches and Kiowas, the Cheyennes and Arapahos, and the Sioux. Most narrative histories of this period focus on the conflicts between Indians and whites; the uniqueness of Hoig's narrative is its focus on peacemaking, rather than conflict: White Man's Paper Trail is a kind of antihistory of the Indian wars. The author has consulted a wide range of published, archival, and newspaper sources to build his narrative. He offers a convenient chronological account that will be especially useful for students who are just beginning to engage with this historical era. Beyond the narrative, there is an almost total lack of analysis of the treaties from any point of view, Indian or non-Indian. Because of this lack, the book will have limited value for professional historians, though it may be useful as classroom reading. Unfortunately, in a book that concerns itself with the dispossession of Indian lands, there is not a single map to orient readers and graphically display the extent of land loss from one treaty to the next

Art · Literature · Narrative · Newspaper · Peace treaty · Peacemaking · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Treaty · White (mutation · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Law