Regarding Mary Stange’s essay on place names, I
grow very tired of those who want us to discard our history simply
because it isn’t the kind of “Hollywood” pretty they demand
it might be (HCN, 2/6/06: Living with the Ghosts of the Indian
Wars). It is true that those Army generals of the mid-to-late 19th
century were “Indian fighters,” and their task was to facilitate
the settling of the American West — and the taking of Indian
lands that it entailed. But those who imply that it was out of
character with the history of that land are simply not telling the
truth.
Tribal wars over land and the dominion of that
land were a fact of life in the West. The West was not a bucolic
place where all Indians lived in peace with each other. They were
every bit as brutal as the U.S. Army. Our “tribe” was simply more
successful at consolidating dominion than others. Not pretty
— but a part of our history we must understand and
acknowledge.
My ancestor, Gen. George Crook, took many
“shots” from some of his fellow generals because of his belief that
fighting Indians was a last resort and not the way to approach the
“Indian problem,” as it was called back then. He was widely known
among the tribes he dealt with as an honorable man who never lied
to them and who opposed draconian measures.
The history
of the West is not as black-and-white as Ms. Stange would have you
believe. Only fools would banish history from any age’s
landscape.
R. Barry Crook
Aspen, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline History isn’t black and white.
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