Summary of Stephen E. Ambrose's Crazy Horse and Custer

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Great Plains of North America stretch from the Mexican border to the Canadian frontier. They are semiarid and essentially treeless. They can be a delight for life, or a misery, depending on the weather.
#2 The Plains are a windy environment, and the animals that live there are accustomed to it. The climate is healthy and invigorating, and the grass is abundant. The buffalo provided an apparently inexhaustible meat supply.
#3 The horse was introduced to the Americas by the Spanish, and within a few decades was in use by the tribes of the southern Plains. The Indians enjoyed the horses, and when they acquired a gray or brown horse, the first thing they did was to paint the skin.
#4 The horse was another white man’s innovation that the Plains Indians were able to take advantage of. The gun gave the eastern tribes great advantages over their western neighbors, and the Sioux were the only Indian nation to defeat the United States in war and force it to sign a peace treaty favorable to the red man.

Sujets

• Military

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669356073
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Stephen Ambrose's Crazy Horse and Custer
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Great Plains of North America stretch from the Mexican border to the Canadian frontier. They are semiarid and essentially treeless. They can be a delight for life, or a misery, depending on the weather.

#2

The Plains are a windy environment, and the animals that live there are accustomed to it. The climate is healthy and invigorating, and the grass is abundant. The buffalo provided an apparently inexhaustible meat supply.

#3

The horse was introduced to the Americas by the Spanish, and within a few decades was in use by the tribes of the southern Plains. The Indians enjoyed the horses, and when they acquired a gray or brown horse, the first thing they did was to paint the skin.

#4

The horse was another white man’s innovation that the Plains Indians were able to take advantage of. The gun gave the eastern tribes great advantages over their western neighbors, and the Sioux were the only Indian nation to defeat the United States in war and force it to sign a peace treaty favorable to the red man.

#5

The Sioux, a tribe with many divisions, came onto the Plains at an ideal time. They were able to take control of a vast region stretching from the Missouri River on the east and north to the Black Hills on the west, and to the Platte River on the south.

#6

The Plains Indians were too rich for the white men’s liking. They were independent, and they would not work. The Indians exhibited an improvidence that impressed the traders. They did not have the slightest idea of a future, and they trusted to nature to supply needs as they arose.

#7

The Indian was for the white man an extreme example of everything he was not: lazy and improvident, but also extremely energetic and capable of great bursts of energy when needed.

#8

The Sioux were a tribe that constantly fought with the Ojibways, Crees, and Crows. They would gather on one side of a valley, and the Ojibways on the other. They would shout taunts back and forth, and occasionally a young brave would dash forward on his pinto and gallop into the Crow line.

#9

The traders found little to admire in the Indians, but they were still trying to make money off of them and exploiters rarely find many admirable characteristics among the group they are exploiting.

#10

The Oglala Sioux and the emigrants who passed through their territory in 1846 got along well, as they had always done when trading with the Indians. But when the emigrants became a flood, the Sioux were horrified at the lack of discipline among the whites’ children.

#11

The Old Smoke band was typical of Plains Indians, and they moved frequently. When the moving village crossed a stream, utter confusion reigned, in contrast to the emigrant trains. The horses and dogs plunged right in, their travois floating along behind.

#12

The Sioux were a conservative people who were well-liked by the whites who came into contact with them. They had no desire to change their way of life, but they wanted the goods that the whites had.

#13

The Sioux were a tribe that was split over how to respond to the challenge of the white man. Some wanted to obtain what the white man offered, while others wanted to keep their own culture.

#14

The United States was a country of striking diversity in 1839, with immigrants from all over Europe and Africa. There were few national institutions, but there were national feelings and traditions. Americans had unbounded respect for republican government and a deep loathing of monarchy.

#15

Ohio was a typical American state, with a diverse population that came from all over the country and the world. The state was rich due to the hard work of its residents, the influx of speculative capital from Europe and the eastern states, and the destruction of its natural resources.

#16

Americans worked hard because they believed it was their duty to do so, and they were always optimistic about the future. The American political system protected a man’s right to possess exclusively what he had earned or built, which encouraged him to earn or build more.

#17

The American West was a prime investment opportunity for European and eastern capital. Very few people in the West ever got rich, at least by eastern standards, but the largest share of the profits usually wound up in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or London.

#18

The forties were a time of increasing specialization of labor. The sewing machine, patented in the decade, relieved women of the task of making men’s clothing by hand. Factories took over that job. The American’s dynamism was dedicated to transformation, and it was seen in the assault on nature.

#19

The American tendency was to attack and destroy, then build. The Americans eliminated the forest and the game, and even earlier they had eliminated the native human inhabitants of the valley.

#20

The American public saw the Indian as a more exciting and challenging obstacle than a tree. The Indian was seen as a noble savage by some, and a filthy savage by others.

#21

The American’s ambivalent attitude toward the Indian was due to the fact that they used him to prove different theories. They used him to prove that non-white peoples were inferior, that the primitives were beasts, and that social equality and a closeness to nature made for a happy life.

#22

The American conquest of the West was crucial to keeping the economic boom and the boom psychology alive. It not only added to the strength of the nation, but it also nurtured in the breast of millions of young men the hope that they too could get rich.

#23

The American was lonesome, as he was expected to improve himself and his station in life, which was a revolutionary expectation. There was no real security, and no sense of place for the rich or famous.

#24

The American character was shaped by ambition, the key to the country’s success. It was the motive power that got the work done, and it was shared by all white Americans, who were otherwise so diverse.

#25

The Black Hills are a sacred place for the Sioux, and George Armstrong Custer led an expedition that opened the Hills to white gold miners in 1874. The Belle Fourche River runs along the northern base of Bear Butte, which has a special place in Indian mythology.

#26

Curly’s family was a solid, respected one among the Indians. He was raised on a cradleboard, and was fed on demand. He had a strong sense of being welcome and of belonging, for he had a wide variety of personalities to deal with and a knowledge that his well-being was a tribal, not just a family, responsibility.

#27

The Sioux children were taught many things by their elders, but they also learned many things on their own. They learned how to play games, how to socialize with each other, and how to prepare for adult responsibilities.

#28

The myths of the Sioux taught the children about the relatedness of life, and that everything had a place and function. They also emphasized the balance between good and evil, and the importance of everything.

#29

The idea of the animals as teachers was deeply ingrained in Indian life, and was one aspect of what the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss calls the science of the concrete. Indians knew the medicinal properties of more than 2,000 plants, and they understood weather patterns.

#30

The Oglala boys were encouraged to emulate the young warriors of the village, who were the center of attention and the heroes of the tribe. The warriors were highly boastful, but they were also highly picturesque when bedecked for war.

#31

The most daring boys in their group would plan an expedition, watch as the party left the village, and then that night crawl out of their tipis and ride off to join the warriors. They would try to talk the neophyte into returning to the village, but they did not try very hard since each of them had already gone on his first war party.

#32

The Sioux tribe had many techniques to encourage their warriors to be brave, such as growling like a grizzly in times of danger or uttering the war whoop. But these sounds frightened the enemy and encouraged those who made them.

#33

The Sioux had a number of devices to keep any one akicita society from becoming dictatorial. First and foremost, they rotated the authority. Second, no man could simultaneously be a head of an akicita society and a tribal chief or member of the governing council.

#34

The Sioux were a society without compulsion. They had no loyalty to an individual chief or village, and they did not expect or demand anything from their children. They respected the choices of their children, and they did not consider those choices to be any kind of failure.

#35

The Oglalas were a very individualistic people, and as a result they were poorly organized and unable to defend themselves from outside forces. They never developed a true national leader or a national policy.

#36

The Oglalas were constantly getting drawn into conflicts with the white emigrants passing through their territory. The Sioux were drawn to the good things the whites had to offer, but they were also constantly getting drawn into conflicts with the emigrants.

#37

In 1851, the Sioux and Cheyennes were hit hard by a series of epidemics, which led to a large assembly of Indians at Fort Laramie. The whites wanted to pay the Indians to let them pass through their lands, but the Indians wanted revenge.

#38

The Sioux were given the right to use the Oregon Trail, which was the point of the treaty. The whites promised to pay annuity goods to the value of $50,000 yearly to the Indians.

#39

In 1853, the Oglalas were given annuity goods by the whites. The Indians wer