True West Magazine
The Sioux chief Sitting Bull was arguably the greatest Indian chief of all the tribes in the American West in the 19th century. In the decades since his death, his name has become known to most Americans and treasured by many as the supreme embodiment of Sioux values. He lived from 1831 to 1890. – D.F. Barry, Courtesy Library of Congress –
The Sioux Leader’s Final Flight to Freedom
Sunday, June 25, 1876, was a clear, hot, sunny day in the valley of Montana’s Greasy Grass River, which the white man’s maps labeled the Little Bighorn. Six tribal circles of Lakotas and one of Northern Cheyennes, the coalition of winter roamers, sprawled for nearly three miles down the narrow valley, rimmed on the east by the snow-fed river. The Hunkpapas occupied the extreme upper end of the village, the Cheyennes the lower. In between rose the lodges of Blackfeet, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Oglala and Brule. It was an unusually large village: 7,000 people, 2,000 warriors, hous
True West Magazine
In 1965, historian Robert M. Utley was in his second year as the National Park Service’s Chief Historian in Washington, D.C. Two years later he would publish Frontiersmen in Blue; the United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865 (Macmillan) the follow-up to his first book, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (Yale University, 1963).
I first met Robert M. Utley in May 1977. He came to Bloomington to receive a Distinguished Alumni Service Award from Indiana University. I was a graduate student in history at IU at that time, and as soon as I learned that Utley was coming to campus, I sought out my mentor, Martin Ridge, to beg for the opportunity to pick up our guest at the Indianapolis airport and deliver him back. I assured Ridge that I would positively die for the opportunity to meet Utley. He thought this but a slight ambition (and never tired of reminding me of it in later years), but agreed to allow me to play chauffer. This eventful meeting was as Bogart s
True West Magazine
The late author-screenwriter Jeb Rosebrook, editor Stuart Rosebrook, Paul Andrew Hutton and True West’s Bob Boze Bell share a grand moment at the joint Arizona-New Mexico History Convention in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2017, where Stuart had just moderated a panel discussion by Hutton and Bell on one of their research subjects, Mickey Free.
– Photo by Dorothy Rosebrook, Courtesy Paul Andrew Hutton –
Do you remember the first time you read Paul Andrew Hutton? He immediately captured my interest and imagination with his double-barreled literary prose and academic virtuosity in the pages of his first book,
Phil Sheridan and His Army (University of Nebraska Press, 1986; new edition, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). Whether or not you were knowledgeable about General Sheridan before you read Hutton’s award-winning biography, this book hooked you and made you eager to read more history written and interpreted by Hutton. He was an academic historian who wrot
True West Magazine
Robert M. Utley (right), author of True West’s best Western history nonfiction book of 2020, The Last Sovereigns: Sitting Bull and the Resistance of the Free Lakotas (University of Nebraska Press), has been a Western history hero and mentor to fellow historian Paul Andrew Hutton (left) since their first meeting at Indiana University in 1977. Utley’s The Last Sovereigns is excerpted on pages 18-25, followed by Hutton’s profile of his mentor on pages 26-27.
– Courtesy Paul Andrew Hutton –
If 2020 taught us anything as readers of Western history and fiction, it was that we depend on our storytellers to help us endure hard times. Whether in person, curbside or from a bookseller’s website, we consumed Western history and fiction last year, not only because we love it but to help us through the isolation and remind ourselves of the strength and determination of those who came before us, all of whom overcame much greater odds and conditions than we endu