A Travel Guide to the Plains Indian Wars,
by Stan Hoig, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2006, $21.95 paperback.
Several good Indian wars encyclopedias are out there to help researchers or anyone else who wants a quick summary of a certain battle, the various engagements in a particular year or geographic region, or all the fights involving a particular Army officer or Indian leader. Several good books about Western forts are also readily available. Frequently researchers enjoy going to the sites of 19th-century Western battles and forts and, indeed, consider it the only way to get a true feel for their subject. Those fellows will want to supplement their battle/fort volumes with this 217- page book, as will those of us who are Western history lovers and just aching to get on the road to “see” history.
Stan Hoig, the author of such well-respected books as The Sand Creek Massacre and The Battle of the Washita: The Sheridan-Custer Indian Campaign of 1867- 69, is as qualified as anyone to write this kind of more-than-just-a-travel guide. In the first part of the book, he has eight chapters devoted to the bitter war for control of the Great Plains. “Accounts of this great clash of cultures abound in our literature,” he writes, “but much of it also lies etched in battle sites, abandoned posts, and forgotten graves across the American West.” Of course, Hoig can’t say everything he might want to say on a subject as vast as the Plains itself, but he provides “books to read” after each chapter. The nine chapters of Part Two make up a visitor site guide, and the tours are divided by Plains state—Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. In each chapter, Hoig presents the battle sites and the fort sites, and he also suggests museums and other sites to see.
Some mostly familiar black-and-white images accompany the text, along with about 30 useful if simple maps. In the Colorado section, for example, there is a general map of the forts and battle sites in that state and road maps to the Battle of Beecher’s Island and the Sand Creek Massacre sites; an artist’s depiction of the Beecher’s fight that originally appeared in Harper’s Weekly; and a photo by the author of Black Kettle’s campsite at Sand Creek. The author says that “time has been kindest to forts in Texas” thanks to dry weather and much native stone construction. He does not include fur trade forts, few of which are around anymore. As for battle sites and forts in places like New Mexico, Arizona and California, readers will have to go elsewhere.
Originally published in the October 2006 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
