Uniting the Tribes
The Rise and Fall of Pan-Indian Community on the Crow Reservation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5706414 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Smith (0000-0002-8852-6976), Sherry L Smith (Southern Methodist University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 100 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 219-220 |
| Publication date | 2013-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jat014 |
| OpenAlex | W2007728019 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Many people prefer simple stories; it is the role of historians to complicate them. Frank Rzeczkowski masterfully complicates the story of nineteenth-century northern plains intertribal relations, before and after the creation of reservations. He focuses on the Crow but incorporates Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Cree into his analysis, making this much more than a tribal history. It is about human relations in a time of great stress and deprivation and how, even when people war with one another, they find ways to interact beyond violence. Sometimes they trade, learn new rituals, engage in diplomacy, or capture and adopt or marry one another. Friendly relations among enemies may seem contradictory, but they turn out to make abundant sense. Violence is not constant. Comity happens. Further, once hostilities end and the sides share the consequences of conquest, the author demonstrates, ties strengthen. We now know a great deal about the contest for control of the plains and the native people who formed alliances to protect their interests. The Crow, under pressure from Blackfeet to the northwest and Lakota and Cheyenne from the east, allied with the U.S. government. Rzeczkowski demonstrates, however, that the lines of communication among all Indians remained open, with the Crow maintaining a “delicate political balancing act” in relationship with the Lakota, in particular (p. 12). Of course, American military victory brought universal application of the reservation policy, regardless of former alliances. In the reservation context, earlier interactions became the foundation for deepening relations and new identities
Archaeology · CONTEST · Context (archaeology · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Victory · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2020 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |