Book Report! “Cheyenne Summer…”, by Terry Mort

I’ve been reading “Cheyenne Summer, The Battle of Beecher Island A History” (Pegasus $27.95 9781643137100) these past few weeks.  I almost put it down and returned it to the public library, but “pressed on”, in the lingo of those U.S. Army Calvary Generals Sheridan, Fetterman, Major Forsythe, Custer (yes that “Custer of “the last stand”) and Beecher who Terry  quotes often. The complete and teasing Introduction sets the table and is why I kept reading through the 270 enlightening hardcover pages!

Depending upon how you feel about the conquest or resettlement of native Americans (“Indians” when I was growing up), or as is fashionable to say nowadays, “indigenous peoples” (not bad, I kinda like it), this book is either historically neutral and exciting, uncomfortable, sad, disturbing or adventurous.

Civil War, U.S. post civil war Calvary buffs and early American expansionist railroad enthusiasts will love the accurate descriptions of weapons, injuries, attire and the politics of those days.  The read reminded me of, and brought to mind the many “Cowboy and Indian” movies I watched as a young man growing up in the 1960s through the 1980s, and in-particular, 1964’s “Cheyenne Autumn”, starring Richard Widmark, James Stewart, Sal Mineo Ricardo Montaban and Carroll Baker, which is why it caught my eye on the library’s “new” shelf; but I digress… This book is a precise read and even gives credit to the freed slave men or “Buffalo” soldiers (so named by the Indians because they wore coats made of Buffalo hide during the harsh plains winters). Mr. Mort spends most of the pages setting-up the events on the continental plains east of Missouri that lead to a questionably “decisive” battle between the Calvary “Scouts” and the Cheyenne Indian nation with other tribes supporting them.  The battle is rather anti-climatic, except for the demise of one of the apparently greatest and fearless Cheyenne warriors, Roman Nose, who Mort gives graphic descriptions of throughout the book!

You’ll be able to put together the various historical aspects of how our country applied “manifest destiny” – a term I’d not read since high school – to justifying the rapacious [one of several new words I learned from the book] advance from the east coast to the west, including frequent mentions of how the “gold rush” and those 49ers played a huge part in perpetuating it.   

I would have enjoyed more photos of the battle scene in the picture pages, but forgive on that due to available photography in the late 1800s.  With the recently apparent denial of true history by too many people, this is an even more necessarily compelling read and could even be a supporting class assignment on the high school or college level! I learned much by suffering through it.  Therefore, I scalp it with 4.5 tomahawks!!

Remember, history is our reflection and available so that succeeding generations do not repeat past mistakes!

**Pick Hit…”I love ‘Cheyenne Summer’ as a first and middle name for a girl!

If You Could Choose Your Skin Color, Which Would You Choose?

I thought this was “settled”!  Then came a lull and apparently Uncle Sam allowed too many colored immigrants to become “citizens” without qualifying them as to the history of how American Blacks fought to overcome segregation and conduct ourselves correctly while raising our kin to do likewise. The police are not our enemies – this is not the 1960s!  So to you newbiees, Cocoanuts from the Caribbean and you from wherever you are who is reading this post, I ask, “If you had a choice of skin colors, which one would YOU choose?”

I remember when this song came out and WWRL AM 1600 in New York City (Woodside, to be exact) played it.  It was a cause célèbre because the late Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions had, once again, articulated an argument musically that was going on at the time. I don’t agree with all of the words the lyrics have to say, but the song, unfortunately, still resonates today.

Therefore, it amazes me that it is still a source of American political and social illness here in 2015!

Yet I know why: I am like Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions in that we are Black Americans; descendants of slaves on this continent who came up via the American south lands and whose parents ultimately and after the American Civil War into the beginning of the twentieth century, migrated northward on the east coast. Over time in the mid-to-late twentieth century, “the man” [angry white man establishment who still did not want to embrace us, who were never any threat to the slave master] allowed a whole influx of similar looking people from Caribbean and continental Africa into the continental USA, who have no clue as to the struggle or gains we made and that Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions sang their song unto.

“With just a little bit more education and love for our nation would make for a better world for you and for me.”

Please choose your choice of skin colors in the “comments” below – and I will tell you mine, which I told my parents, waay back in the 1960s when I was a little boy! They were surprised, lol

ALL lives matter.

Poem # 2

It eta no surprise to me
Many southerners in the USA
Still “fight” the American civil war philosophically.
I was called a “Yankee” often when I lived in Nashville;
Didn’t take it personally;
There is a baseball team they may mean.

Southern traditional Christian churchers killed by a BOY.
They watch TV cover the worst ad-nausea,
Copy/act upon misconceptions
No home training to enable common sense.
Today’s media “news directors” cover the worst man has to offer
Where is the good news balance?

As a veteran Black American, I understand both sides.
One is steeped in southern comfort confederacy,
The other having overcome except
Government allowed influx of similar beings;
Meanwhile were not educated to get the memo.

One state still flies the “crossed stars”.
This kid learns distorted history with rednecks in bars
Copycat actors and corporate deceptive news race card protractors,
Keeping the poison flowing in the (un) United race States;
“They reinforce it at the dinner table”,
My dad would always say.

Government-encouraged family decapitation;
Beheaded family now causes poor deportment repetition.
As too many again watch TV cover a sad example.
Of American multicultural mismanagement;
Yet another racial worldwide national embarrassment.
Upon their first brown-skinned President’s watch.