Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story Of George Bent - Caught Between The Worlds Of The Indian And The White Man - Hardcover

David Fridtjof Halaas; Andrew E. Masich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306813203 ISBN 13: 9780306813207

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2004

Synopsis

The uncommon life of George Bent-"halfbreed"-spanned one of the most eventful epochs in American history. Caught uneasily between two cultures in constant conflict, it is a life mirrored in the fictional character Jack Crabb in Thomas Berger's classic novel Little Big Man.Born in 1843 to the prominent white trader Colonel William Bent and his Indian wife, Owl Woman, George Bent was raised as a Cheyenne. After receiving an education in white schools, Bent fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and went on to become a Cheyenne warrior. He survived the horrific 1864 Sand Creek Massacre-and then fought for revenge with the ferocious Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. Bent later served as a prominent interpreter and negotiator for whites and an adviser to tribal leaders. He rode side-by-side with the great Indian leaders Red Cloud, Tall Bull, and Roman Nose, and he hobnobbed with frontier legends Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, and George Custer.Toward the end of his life, George Bent felt a passionate need to set the historical record straight and preserve the memory of the Cheyenne Indians as a free people. The greatest historians and ethnologists of the day sought him out to hear and read his stories of the Cheyennes. George Bird Grinnell, George E. Hyde, James Mooney-all agreed that what they knew of nineteenth-century Cheyenne life came largely from George Bent.As a mixed blood, Bent lived between two worlds right up until the time of his death in 1918-never entirely fitting into either world, always on the fringes of both. His story is compelling human drama: action, love, tragedy, war, all unfolding against the epic backdrop of the Civil War and America's westward expansion.

About this title

About the Author:

David F. Halaas is the Director of Library & Archives of Pittsburgh's Smithsonian-affiliated Senator John Heinz History Center and Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum. Andrew E. Masich is the President of Library & Archives of Pittsburgh's Smithsonian-affiliated Senator John Heinz History Center and Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.

From Publishers Weekly:

The son of white Southwest trader William Bent and his Cheyenne spouse, Owl Woman, George Bent (18431918) receives rich biographical treatment from Halaas (former Library of Congress historian and now director of Pittsburgh's Heinz History Center) and Masich (president and CEO of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania). They show Bent growing up more attuned to his mother's culture than his father's, but receiving a conventional white-world. education at the latter's insistence. George was in St. Louis when the Civil War broke out and promptly joined the Confederate Army. He later deserted, returned to the camps of the now beleaguered Southern Cheyenne and survived the horrifying Sand Creek Massacre of noncombatant Cheyenne by Colorado militia. George then spent several years as an effective Cheyenne Dog Soldier warrior before becoming a mediator, agent and, in due course, a major source for the history of the Cheyenne through his prodigious correspondence with several white scholars. He battled poverty, financial scandals, broken marriages, alcoholism and the problem of not being fully trusted by either Cheyenne or white, all of which are recorded meticulously along with his more public achievements. One suspects that some of George's martial prowess was "remembered with advantage," but the research on both the man and his times and places appears painstaking. The narrative as presented by Halaas and Masich is coherent if not necessarily fluent, and the book emerges as a powerful chronicle of a man who stood squarely in the middle of the tragedy of the Plains Indians, seeing and being seen by both sides.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0306813203
• ISBN 13: 9780306813207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496