The Earth is Weeping

November 14, 2016
In this sweeping narrative, Cozzens (Shenandoah 1862), an expert on 19th-century warfare, confronts Dee Brown's classic text, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Cozzens finds it too reductive in its treatment of the various Native American tribes involved in the bloody contests over land that raged from the 1860s until 1890. He persuasively argues that those who allied with the U.S. government and took up arms against other tribes can't be dismissed as simply greedy, and he zeroes in on issues that motivated each tribe to choose sides. After opening on the plains of Wyoming with Red Cloud's War of the 1860s, the first half of the book builds to the crescendo of Custer's "last stand" at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Cozzens tucks into this section an insightful chapter on how Native Americans and the U.S. Army both trained men to fight. The second half ranges from the betrayal of the Nez Perce in the Northwest to the bitter conflicts in Apacheria in the Southwest, concluding with the 1890 slaughter at Wounded Knee. Cozzens excels in describing battles and the people who orchestrated and participated in them, expertly weaving in the relevant politics and never shying away from the role racism played in this destructive warfare. Maps & illus.