A magisterial dual biography of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders, who triumphed at the Battle of Little Bighorn and led Sioux resistance in the fierce final chapter of the "Indian Wars."
The Earth Is All That Lasts is a fast-paced and highly absorbing read, but the attempt to squeeze Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse into the same frame breaks little new ground in our understanding of the epic fight for the nation’s midsection...Instead, after a rousing opening chapter on the Battle at Little Bighorn, Mr. Gardner settles into a straightforward recapitulation of the Plains Indian Wars featuring its best-known episodes—from the Grattan Fight (1854) to the Fetterman Fight (1866)—as well as some other violent encounters that will be less familiar to many in his audience...Only rarely does the author raise his eyes to take in events happening elsewhere in the United States—most notably the Civil War, which conditioned U.S. military policy toward Native Americans during the conflict and especially afterward, in the era of Reconstruction...But if Mr. Gardner is unsuccessful in the effort to tell a new story, he enhances our appreciation of the brutality of this grinding conflict by documenting in graphic detail the horrors committed by both sides.
Gardner takes ahold of the well-known and brings the stories alive through strong scholarship and literary prose. Gardner, like his contemporary chronicler John Boessenecker, keeps his readers guessing as to his choice for his next subject. Without a doubt the intrepid historian’s next volume will provide a new perspective and fresh conclusions gleaned from primary sources previously untapped. I, for one, will be at the front of the line waiting for it, whether it be a presidential biography, a law-and-order opus or another dual biography. Whatever it is, I will be eager to be enlightened and entertained.
Spur Award winner Gardner delivers a stirring account of the resistance campaign led by Lakota holy man Sitting Bull and war chief Crazy Horse in the 1870s...As Gardner makes clear, however, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s greatest victory set the stage for their eventual defeat...After Little Big Horn, they had the permanent attention of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who vowed to force the anti-treaty bands onto reservations, or 'exterminate them'...Sharp characterizations and evocative imagery—'The warrior’s head was promptly cut off and taken to Deadwood, where it was paraded around town, earning its keeper enough whiskey to get him falling-down drunk'—make this a standout portrait of the Old West.
