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A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captivities in the West 1830-1885 By Gregory MichnoSusan Michno ( Caxton Press )
Release Date: 2007-10
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 A lot of the same story
It was interesting reading. But a lot of of the stories are almost the same.
After you read 30-40 of these they start to get kind of boring. It isn't like a normal book that progresses from start to finish.
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 If a history book will ever get tears to form in your eyes, this is it.
In this age of multiculturalism, it is difficult to find a book about the American frontier that sticks to the facts of the 19th century. Unlike their fellow historians, Gregory and Susan Michno, authors of A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captivities in the West, 1830-1885, do not attempt to gloss over the brutalities the settlers faced. While taking their no-hold-barred approach, they debunk many of the interpretations recently introduced by historians with an agenda.
The book is presented in a logical and coherent manner with chapters dedicated to Revolutionary Texas, Republican Texas, wagon trains and travelers, pre-Civil War Texas, the Minnesota Uprising, the Civil War years, the Central Plains, Reconstruction Texas, and the years of the last captives. Within each chapter, there are numerous accounts that relate the experiences of those who were enslaved, tortured, raped, mutilated, and or killed by their captors. If a history book will ever get tears to form in your eyes, this is it.
Despite the horrific treatment of the captives, including numerous accounts of despicable murders of babies, the book is not anti-Indian by any means; the authors simply present the reality of the moccasins and boots on the ground at the time. In fact, much of the condemnation--if you can get by the atrocities of the Indians--is reserved for the practices of the United States government and white society in general. For example, the bullets that were lodged into the settlers came from the government-ran agencies, and the lack of protection for the former Confederate state of Texas compared to that of the former Union state of Kansas.
There has not been a book published, in recent memory, that deserves the space reserved on your bookshelf more than this one.
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I find sadness
I am not reviewing this book. I just felt I needed to make a comment. I am not being "PC" and I am white, with a big Germanic history going back until at least early 1800s. I do NOT romaticize the Native American, I RESPECT them. MY culture, MY ancestors, stripped them of EVERYTHING. WHAT they did was essentially genocide, all in the name of "conquering" and "developing" a "new land". While I live freely (not so much in these times), I still wonder how much of our lives would be BETTER, if the white settlers had tried to learn the native ways, and tried to honestly integrate them into modern movement. I feel that ANYTHING the NATIVES did to protect and preserve their families, their livelihoods, was justified. They weren't savages, until us whites dubbed them so.
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 A Fate Worse Than Death ( reed32455 )
This book details the real life experiences of old west travellers and settlers attacked and captured by Indians. Not a book to warm the hearts of Indian appologists, it helps balance the scales a bit from the noble Indian concept so politically correct today. I would recommend it for anyone interested in a broader perspective of life in the old west.
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I'm not surprised... ( rbusko )
I'm not surprised that A Fate Worse Than Death by Gregory and Susan Michno has fallen between the cracks in terms of being publicized. We live in such a "PC" world that any book that contradicts the "noble savage" theory, even if based on fact, is largely ignored. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but admiration for native Americans. I have studied Custer and the LBH Battle most of my adult life and have a significant library on the subject. As a culture living in the wilderness under sometimes harsh circumstances and as fighters the American indian is unsurpassed.
A Fate Worse Than Death examines real cases of captivity of whites by indians. It is unvarnished and may even shock. The brutality of frontier life is displayed for anyone who wants to look.
Gregory Michno's The Mystery of E Troop is unsurpassed. I suspect A Fate Worse Than Death will be equally regarded.
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