Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

I wasn't sure how much I'd like this book, the one we chose to read after Wit. Sometimes non-fiction is tough for me to get into. I sometimes feel like I am slogging through heavy reading, like when you try to walk in mud and it's hard to lift your feet. I told someone once that "I don't take non-fiction to bed." It often feels like too hard of work for nighttime reading.

I was pleasantly surprised by Blood and Thunder, though. I enjoyed it a lot and had no problem taking it to bed. :) The sub-title is: "The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West." I thought it would be mostly a biography of Kit Carson. It definitely did tell the story of his life, but much more of the book was about the settling of the West including a lot about the Navahos.

I found it really interesting. Hampton Sides, the writer, is good at characterization -- which I would normally only think of in relation to authors of fiction. He made me feel like I was getting to know several of the military characters who fought the Indians, some of the Indians themselves and others involved in settling the West.

Reading about how the Indians were treated as settlers moved in can be a sad story. I was especially saddened at the story of Narbona. He was a leader of the Navahos. The author said that the Navahos didn't really have just one chief, which was a difficulty for the military when they wanted to negotiate settlements. They would always ask for the chief and the Navahos had many clans but no one real chief. However, Narbona came closest to being that. He was close to 90 years old when he died and well known and respected by all the Navahos. He seemed like a very intelligent man who was sad about what was happening to his people but trying to be realistic about the fact that the way the Navahos had been living was going to have to change. 

The book describes several events in Narbona's life. The last one is when he went to a meeting with the Colonel Washington, who was leading an Army expedition into the Navaho country to "chastise them for their constant raids and thefts" but also so get them to sign a peace treaty. At the meeting Narbona and other leaders agreed that they were "lawfully in the jurisdiction of the United States now, and they must respect that jurisdiction," and that "their friends will be the friends of the United States and their enemies the enemies of the Untied States" and they were "willing to be at peace with all the friends of the United States."

At the end of the meeting, the author writes:

"The council broke up to everyone's apparent satisfaction, and for a moment matters between the Navajos and the United States of America seemed hopeful. But then one of the New Mexican militiamen spotted a horse among the Navajo warriors that, he insisted, was his. The militiaman was sure of it, he said. The natives had stolen his horse a few months ago, and now he demanded it back. The Navajos did not dispute that the horse had been stolen, but they indicated that it had passed through so many different hands that it was impossible to ascertain the true owner -- and that, in any case, something like a statute of limitations had taken effect. There was a brief scuffle and charges were shouted back and forth."

Colonel Washington demanded that the Navajo hand over the horse and "the situation had become a tense standoff." The colonel told them they'd be shot if they didn't hand it over. The Navajo with the horse took off for the hills so Washington told the militiaman to pick whatever horse he wanted. As he went to do so, the Indians turned around and galloped away. "At this, Colonel Washington ordered, 'Fire!'"

Afterward there were seven dead Navajos (no U.S. casualties) and one of them was Narbona's. "If their leader's death was not insult enough to the Navajos," the author writes, "then what happened next proved to be the final indignity. A New Mexican souvenir hunter walked up to the old man's corpse, leaned down, and raked a sharp knife across his forehead."

"In his diary, Dick Kern did not suggest that Narbona had done anything to cause the attack, but neither did he express any moral outrage over the incident, which may have been one of the most decisive events in the history of Navajo relations with the U.S. government. But Kern did admit that he was furious wiith himself for not having the presence of mind to secure the head of Narbona for his friend and patron back in Philadelphia, the skull researcher Dr. Samuel George Morton.

"'He was the chief of the Nation, and had been a wise man and great warrior,' he wrote Dr. Morton a year later. 'His frame was immense. I should think his height near 6 ft. 6 in. He was near 90 years old when killed. I very much regret that I had not procured Narbona's cranium, as I think he had the finest head I ever saw on an Indian.'"

After I read that I had to lay the book down and recover. Isn't it incredible that they could think of someone like Narbona in such a non-human way? As if he were an object, like a souvenir you'd pick up on a trip?

And that story also emphasized how one event, or one person, can be so very pivotal in the unfolding events of history. There were several events and people written about in this book that made me think of that. 

I also thought to myself, if we could do the settling of the West over again, knowing what we know now, what would we do? And not just what would we do, but what if we decided we were going to do it right, and treat the Indians fairly? How would we do it? The Navajo clans ranged around a vast area, moving from one part to another. With settlers coming, that kind of living just really wouldn't work out. How would we fairly and kindly get them to completely change their way of life?

When I was telling my dad about this book he said that he was reading one he liked (which I cannot remember what the title was) and one reason he liked it was the author didn't go on and on about how terrible the white people or Christians or Americans were. It is tiring sometimes, to read and hear so much of that. But although the event I wrote about above does seem to be a mighty example of how terrible the U.S. acted,  the book did not have that kind of tenor at all. When I was telling my dad about it I said that, to me, it was more like the author was saying, "Wow, look at how interesting this is."

When we discussed the book at our meeting, all of us who had read it enjoyed it. One member remarked how, even though she majored in American history, she hadn't really known or read much about the Mexican-American war. And another remarked on the fact that he hadn't realized how much the Civil War and the question of slavery was involved in the settling of the West.