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Reviews
Morning Star Dawn: The Powder River Expedition and the Northern Cheyennes, 1876
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By Jerome Greene
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University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2003. Illustrations, photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 356 pages. $44.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Timothy Lehman
Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana
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| On november 25, 1876 — exactly five months after Gen. George Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn — Col. Ranald Mackenzie and eleven hundred soldiers under his command attacked a Northern Cheyenne village at Red Fork Canyon on the Powder River in northern Wyoming. This dawn attack was part of the Great Sioux War, the U.S. Army's largest military operation since the Civil War and the last significant Indian resistance on the northern Plains. After fighting all day for control of their village, chiefs Morning Star (also known as Dull Knife) and Little Wolf led their people away from the soldiers and into the Bighorn Mountains. Bitter winter cold and near starvation forced the Cheyenne to surrender in the weeks and months to come. This story of the military campaign and the Cheyennes' defeat is the subject of Jerome Greene's thoroughly researched and well-written monograph. Greene, a research historian for the National Park Service, narrates the story of this particular event in a larger struggle with an engaging style, an eye for revealing detail, and a balanced treatment of all sides. |
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In the aftermath of Custer's defeat, the army changed its strategy for dealing with "hostile" Indians on the Plains. At the direction of Lt. Gen. Phil Sheridan and with the full support of army commander Gen. William T. Sherman and the U.S. Congress, the army forced Indians living at the agencies to give up their guns and horses, rendering them completely dependent on the army for food and shelter. The army reasoned that with their families and friends effectively disarmed and dismounted, the Lakota and Cheyenne followers of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull might become more cooperative. Those Indians who refused agency control were to be pursued and punished with winter campaigns that would put a definitive end to Indian resistance on the Plains. |
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Greene provides more detail than the casual reader might want to know about this campaign, but often these specifics enliven the narrative and illuminate the larger picture. Through his meticulous attention to military sources we learn, for instance, about the supply lines that were necessary for a winter campaign to be successful. Hundreds of pounds of grain for horses and tons of food, clothing, and equipment had to be transported by wagon across a frozen Wyoming landscape. Another example of compelling detail is Greene's description of the "priceless artifacts" (p. 136) that the army captured and burned in the Cheyenne camp. These included artwork, food supplies, religious items, elaborately decorated clothes, cooking utensils, and a necklace made of human fingers. |
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Equally adept at using both Native American and army sources, Greene provides insight into all sides of this story. Despite the victory over the Cheyennes, field commander Gen. George Crook remained at the center of a storm of controversies. Some military figures charged that he mismanaged the campaign, was insufficiently aggressive in pursuing the Indians, and relied too heavily on Indian allies for scouting and fighting. Greene skillfully recounts the motivations and battlefield activities of three hundred or so Pawnees, Shoshones, and others who enabled the army first to find Morning Star's camp and then to defeat the chief and his followers. Some civilians charged that Crook's strategy of making a surprise attack on a village, killing noncombatants, and destroying pony herds and property caused unnecessary suffering. |
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Morning Star Dawn provides a balanced, factual account that will appeal to anyone with a strong interest in military history and Plains Indian warfare. Greene's terse treatment sticks closely to the immediate facts of the story but does not engage the larger political argument about the morality of the army's actions. He states matter-of-factly that Mackenzie's dawn attack, "though seemingly immoral by modern standards, nonetheless offered means of success to a frontier army charged with protecting white citizens" (p. 97). Any moral judgments about the actions of commanders, the tactics of the army, or the larger goals of white society will have to come from readers. |
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