Description

"A long association with the Cheyennes has given me a special interest in them, and a special wish that they should be allowed to speak for themselves. What the Indians saw in the battles here described, I have learned during years of intimate acquaintance with those who took part in them."-George Bird Grinnell. Without critical comment or biased judgement, George Bird Grinnell-one of the truly great historians of the American Indian-has recorded the major battles that the Cheyennes fought. In this account the entire gallery of the heroic Cheyenne chiefs and warriors-Roman Nose and Black Kettle and Dull Knife and many others-emerge in full color as they strive against the greatest enemy of all: the failure of the white man to understand and appreciate their way of life and his ignorance of their real capacity for peace and cooperation. "[Grinnell's] integrity, sincerity, sympathy, and understanding made him welcome in every tipi. . . . He was one of the very few historians who knew how to get authentic information from Indians, and how to present things as they saw them in readable form."-Stanley Vestal in the foreword. George Bird Grinnell was a man of diverse talents-editor, author, traveler, and scientist. Born in 1849, he became, by turn of the century, one of the best-known and most popular interpreters of the American Indian.