Globe Pequot / TwoDot
Pages: 392
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4422-4475-7 • Paperback • June 2015 • $18.95 • (£14.99)
Subjects: History / Native American,
History / United States / 19th Century,
History / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
Norman E. Matteoni is a long-time student of the American West and the life and times of Sitting Bull. Both a legal scholar and practicing lawyer, he has written extensively in law review articles, appellate briefs and a two volume treatise on the Law of Eminent Domain in California. He also is an amateur photographer; and in 2008 he photographed areas of the northern plains, home of the Lakota.
Lawyer Matteoni presents the parallel lives of Dakota chief Sitting Bull and Indian agent James McLaughlin, two men who would ultimately clash in the Dakota prairie country. The volume begins with the Minnesota River Valley uprisings of the 1860s, documenting the ensuing conflict between the U.S. government and the residents of the Northern Plains. Sitting Bull’s life is revealed beyond the context of Gen. Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn as the author documents Sitting Bull’s exodus to Canada, continued resistance to reservation life, metropolitan tours with Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, and controversial death after McLaughlin ordered his arrest. Matteoni mines McLaughlin’s writings, government treaties, and later biographies of Sitting Bull. . . .The author also utilizes his legal knowledge to provide background to the various treaties broken by the U.S. government, occasionally sprinkling 'interpretive quotations' into the text to give voice to the account. . . .[T]he book achieves an information-rich narrative of latter 19th-century Dakota history. An informative debut for those seeking a focused, detailed portrait of Sitting Bull’s life and the struggle for dominance of the American Plains.
— Library Journal
Prairie Man: The Struggle Between Sitting Bull and the Indian Agent James McLaughlin is a carefully researched and detailed historical scrutiny of a conflict not just between individuals, but also worldviews. After the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn, the infamous defeat of General George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull was publically vilified for refusing to sign treaties, and personifying resistance to U.S. intrusion upon Lakota lands. Indian Agent James McLaughlin represented the U.S. Government's point of view - the desire to 'kill the Indian and save the man' by forcibly moving native tribes to reservations, dismantling their culture, and transforming them into Christian farmers. The story of the conflict between Sitting Bull and James McLaughlin reflects the stormy history between the U. S. and its native peoples, and is at once both worrying and edifying. Extensive notes and an index round out this welcome addition to public and college library Native American Studies or American History shelves.
— Library Bookwatch
Prairie Man: The Struggle Between Sitting Bull and the Indian Agent James McLaughlin is a carefully researched and detailed historical scrutiny of a conflict not just between individuals, but also worldviews. . . .The story of the conflict between Sitting Bull and James McLaughlin reflects the stormy history between the U.S. and its native peoples, and is at once both worrying and edifying. Extensive notes and an index round out this welcome addition to public and college library Native American Studies or American History shelves.
— Midwest Book Review