The heart of everything that is The untold story of Red Cloud, an American legend

Review by Booklist Review

Award-winning author duo Drury and Clavin have penned a number of best-selling works of military history. This is the carefully adapted young readers' version of their most recent adult book, which tells the story of Red Cloud, a powerful Oglala Lakota chief who lived during the nineteenth century in the American West. His biography reads like an adventure tale, from his nomadic youth, to his attacks as a young warrior on U.S. outposts, his diplomatic missions to Washington, D.C., to meet with two American presidents, and his ultimate defeat and relocation to the infamous Pine Ridge Reservation. Much of this information is only available due to Red Cloud's newly discovered autobiography, and the authors create a vividly painted characterization by digging deep into historical records, artifacts, and even Red Cloud's own surviving ancestors. By recounting the story of one warrior, the book retells the tragic story of an infamous frontier conflict from an oft-ignored perspective.--Anderson, Erin Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 6 Up-While nominally a celebration of the life of Red Cloud, a renowned Oglala Lakota leader, this young readers edition of the 2013 work of the same name disappointingly reinforces many offensive stereotypes. Red Cloud, a contemporary of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, was a masterful military and political strategist who formed alliances with other tribes, leading successful raids against encroaching white settlers. Waters presents Red Cloud's fight to save his people against the backdrop of the U.S. government's focus on the Civil War, westward expansion, the discovery of gold in Montana, and the construction of the railways. The text is enhanced by photographs and maps. Unfortunately, the authors use outdated, value-laden, and exoticizing language ("braves grunted and yipped" and "jeered [and] shrieked"): teaching young people hunting strategies is framed as "knowledge and wisdom that dominated conversation in each tepee," and some Lakota are described as "docile." By contrast, whites are differentiated as well-rounded individuals of varying temperaments and viewpoints. For example, the killing of General Custer and his soldiers is a "shocking slaughter." Statements such as, "For the Lakota were not finished dying" also convey the mistaken impression that the Lakota Nation no longer exists. There are frequent references to American Indians scalping whites, including sensationalistic chapter headings (for instance, "Scalped Alive"). It does a disservice to readers and the subjects of this book when white people's reactions to death and devastation are described, evoking sympathy ("frantic, terrified cavalrymen"), but not those of American Indians, who are portrayed as "cunning," "sly," and "turbulent and vicious." VERDICT Not recommended for purchase. Consider Joseph Marshall III's In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse instead for a fictional look at a Lakota leader.-Laura Simeon, Open Window School, Bellevue, WA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

In 1868, Red Cloud, a respected Oglala chief, led an intertribal war against the U.S. Army and won. Waters' adaptation reiterates the subtitle's claim that it's an untold story ("his story has long been forgotten by conventional American history"), though this is far from the first book about him, and contemporary tribal nations honor his legacy. Unfortunately, this book's outsider perspective is all too evident. In the text, Lakota men and women are labeled as "braves" and "maidens" and the Lakota Sun Dance ceremony as "fearsome," when it was an annual sacred ceremony to honor the Great Spirit. Often the tone is condescending. When the Mormon Trail opened in 1847, readers are told "the Lakota, in particular the Oglalas, were initially helpless in the face of this onslaught," eliding the fact that the Oglalas were well-trained warriors. Further, Red Cloud is often portrayed as brutish: "Sometimes it just felt good and natural to go out and steal horses. If he took some scalps in the process, so much the better." Finally, there is a glaring chronological error: in 1868, when Gen. Philip Sheridan closed Fort Laramie, the Lakota were told "if they wished to trade, they were free to do business at Fort Randall on the Missouri River in distant southeast South Dakota, about as far from [their Black Hills homeland] as one can travel and still be in the state." South Dakota did not achieve statehood until Nov. 2, 1889. This adaptation will diminish Red Cloud's legacy, perpetuate negative stereotypes, and provide incorrect information to young readers: skip. (afterword, acknowledgments, timeline, glossary, historical sites, further information, index) (Nonfiction. 10-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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The Heart of Everything That Is 1 Early Life One quiet night on the plains of Nebraska, a glowing red meteor raced across the sky. Below it, a band of Brule Lakota Indians camped. Those who saw the meteor knew it was a sign of some kind--whether it was good or bad would be determined in the future. A few days later at the edge of the camp, a woman named Walks as She Thinks spread a brushed deerskin blanket over a bed of sand on the banks of Blue Water Creek and gave birth to her first son. When the infant's father, Lone Man, announced to the band that he had named the boy after the strange meteorological occurrence to appease the Great Spirit, the Brules agreed that he had done a wise thing. This is how the child came to be called Makhpiya-luta, or Red Cloud. •  •  • When Red Cloud was only four years old, his father, Lone Man, died because of his addiction to what the white man called whiskey. In reality, the drink, sold or traded to the Indians, was a shuddering mixture of diluted alcohol, molasses, tobacco juice, and crushed red pepper. Native Americans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had no more immunity to alcohol than to smallpox. Lone Man's death left a lasting impression. Red Cloud hated the distilled mini wakan--"the water that makes men crazy"--for the rest of his life. After Lone Man's death Red Cloud's mother, Walks as She Thinks, left the Brule camp and took him, his younger brother, Big Spider, and an infant sister back to her original Oglala Lakota band, which was led by Old Smoke. Old Smoke recognized her as a "sister," a term that meant that she was either his true sibling or a close cousin with the same status as a sister. Although Old Smoke was by then in his early fifties, he was still a vibrant war leader; he had been a head man for close to two decades, and his band was the largest, strongest, and most influential of all the Oglala tribes, if not of the Sioux nation. The Sioux instilled in their children a respect for reserve and poise. Another uncle, a warrior named White Hawk, taught the young Red Cloud to control what he called the boy's "unusually headstrong impulses." In the future, these impulses would help to establish Red Cloud's reputation for vicious behavior in war. White Hawk was also responsible, along with Walks as She Thinks, for the child's education. They interpreted for him the messages to be found in every birdsong and the track of every animal, the significance of the eagle feather in a war bonnet, and the natural history of the Sioux. By the age of six, Red Cloud was sitting at council fires with his elders. When Red Cloud was thirteen years old, he watched Old Smoke suppress his own cousin Bull Bear's attempt to take control of the band. Bull Bear--a sour man, with a face like a clenched fist--had strength in numbers. But Old Smoke had the loyalty of his brother White Hawk's less numerous but better-armed akicita, the tribe's select male society of warriors and marshals. In the end, Bull Bear's followers thought better of challenging them. Under Lakota custom and with White Hawk's braves at his back, Old Smoke could have confiscated Bull Bear's horses and women as punishment for his behavior. Instead, he banished Bull Bear and his followers, greatly weakening his own band in the process. Humiliated, Bull Bear threw dust in Old Smoke's face before riding out of camp. It was an act of disrespect Red Cloud never forgot and it is the likely reason Old Smoke's band got a new name. Their sullen, fierce reaction to the insult may be why they became known as the Ite Sica, or Bad Faces. •  •  • The Lakota rarely stayed in any one location, following the game along rivers that acted as natural highways through the western plains, seeking fresh pasturage for their expanding herds of ponies, and camping along trails in places that had acquired mystical significance. These journeys pushed the tribe farther and farther west and southwest out of South Dakota. Life on the lush prairie offered Indian men and boys plenty of opportunity for self-reflection and long, thoughtful conversations deep into the night as the camp's women did most of the hard work. Red Cloud had ample time to absorb his uncles' wisdom and insights regarding the Sioux philosophy of existence. The Sioux regarded the universe as a living and breathing--if mysterious--being. And though they recognized the passage of time as measured by the predictable movements of the sun, the moon, and the stars, to their eyes mankind was but a flickering flame in a strong wind. Their concepts of past, present, and future were blurred so that all three existed simultaneously, on separate planes. Americans steeped in Christian culture and Victorian science failed to understand this Indian approach to life. They often threw up their hands and resorted to the cliché of Indian spirituality as a blend of ignorance and superstition. Ignorance of Indian ways also contributed greatly to the white man's description of Indians as untamed, savage, wild people lacking personal discipline. There was, however, a precise structure supporting Sioux religious beliefs, even if it remained largely unrecognizable to outsiders. Sioux religious philosophy flowed from their recognition of what the famous Oglala holy man Black Elk described as the "Sacred Hoop" of life. That hoop consists of a series of concentric circles, divine rings, the smallest of which surrounds one's immediate family. The hoops expand outward, growing ever larger to include extended households, bands, tribes, entire peoples, the earth and all its living things, and finally the universe, Wakan Tanka. Excerpted from The Heart of Everything That Is: Young Readers Edition by Bob Drury, Tom Clavin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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