Overview

"An ""indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent"" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe's long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world."

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9780140144567

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Reviews

“By the time I had turned the final page, I felt angry enough […] to want to shout from the rooftops, ‘Wake up, America, before it’s too damned late!’ For Matthiessen, in this extraordinary, complex work, powerfully propounds several large and disturbing themes which the white majority in America will ignore at extreme peril.” —Nick Kotz, The Washington Post   “A giant of a book . . . indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent.” —The Los Angeles Times   “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is really about contemporary America and the way American law is seen through the eyes of American Indians. . . . It is one of those rare books that permanently change one’s consciousness about important, yet neglected, facets of our history.” —The New York Times Book Review “[Matthiessen] is neither gullible nor uncritical. He realistically portrays individuals, landscapes, customs, and problems that, though wholly American, are unfamiliar to most American citizens.” —The New Yorker “One of the most dramatic demonstrations of endemic American racism that has yet been written—a powerful, unsettling book that will force even the most ethno-pious reader to inspect the limits of his understanding.” —The New York Review of Books

A comprehensive and impassioned account of American Indian activist warriors: what they struggle for and why, what they and all Americans stand to lose. Matthiessen (The Snow Leopard, etc.) concentrates on the bloody shoot-out between FBI agents and Indians that took place June 26, 1975, on the Pine Ridge Reservation and ended in the execution of two wounded agents. Were they killed by Indian warriors Dine Butler and Bob Robideau, acquitted of murder charges in a Cedar Rapids court which heard evidence of FBI lies, set-ups, and coercion? Or by Indian activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of the same charges in a Fargo court which ruled most of his defense inadmissible and sent him to prison for two consecutive life terms? Matthiessen, who believes Peltier innocent, builds a persuasive case for a new and fair trial. But Peltier, a poor Indian turned activist, dogged by the FBI to violence, railroaded into prison, and apparently set up by the feds to be neutralized there, is only one example of what has been happening to Indians all along. Matthiessen sketches the historical trail of broken treaties and the dismal fate of Indian leaders - Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse - betrayed and bumped off by the prevailing system of institutionalized greed. He traces the rise in the late 1960s of the American Indian Movement (which wanted the US to honor its treaties: that is, give back the uranium rich Black Hills); the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee and the resultant trials of AIM leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks; the betrayal (by FBI informers) and murder of one leader after another, culminating in the diastrous shoot-out. The bottom line, according to Matthiessen and the Indians he quotes profusely, is the land itself, precious to Indians, raped by strip mining corporations with the collaboration of Bureau of Indian Affairs puppet tribal governments and their enforcing goon squads. It's a complex tale and a grim one (fuller, here, than in Rex Weyler's recent Blood of the Land, p. 929) - compellingly told all the way. (Kirkus Reviews)

By the time I had turned the final page, I felt angry enough [...] to want to shout from the rooftops, 'Wake up, America, before it's too damned late!' For Matthiessen, in this extraordinary, complex work, powerfully propounds several large and disturbing themes which the white majority in America will ignore at extreme peril. -Nick Kotz, The Washington Post A giant of a book . . . indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent. -The Los Angeles Times In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is really about contemporary America and the way American law is seen through the eyes of American Indians. . . . It is one of those rare books that permanently change one's consciousness about important, yet neglected, facets of our history. -The New York Times Book Review [Matthiessen] is neither gullible nor uncritical. He realistically portrays individuals, landscapes, customs, and problems that, though wholly American, are unfamiliar to most American citizens. -The New Yorker One of the most dramatic demonstrations of endemic American racism that has yet been written-a powerful, unsettling book that will force even the most ethno-pious reader to inspect the limits of his understanding. -The New York Review of Books

Author Information

Peter Matthiessen was the cofounder of the Paris Review and is the author of numerous works of nonfiction, including In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Indian Country, and The Snow Leopard, winner of the National Book Award.

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