Journal of the Southwest

Life of George Bent, Written from His Letters by George H. Hyde; George BentReview by: Henry P. WalkerArizona and the West, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1968), pp. 387-388Published by: Journal of the SouthwestStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40167346 .

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REVIEWS 387

LIFE OF GEORGE BENT WRITTEN FROM HIS LETTERS. By George H. Hyde. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. 389 pp. $5.95.

George Bent was a most unusual man, if not absolutely unique. He was the half-blood son of William Bent of Bent's Fort and Owl Woman, a daughter of the chief medicine man of the Southern Cheyenne Indians. He was literate and attended school in Westport and St. Louis for eight years, until the beginning of the Civil War. In addition, he was interested in preserving the history of "My People, the Cheyennes." To achieve this goal he was willing to write long let- ters and to interview older Indians. Born in 1843, George could draw on the

personal recollections of Indians born as early as the 1820s, and their store of oral legend running back another two centuries or more. From his own recollec- tions he carried the story of the Cheyennes down to 1877.

The history of the book itself is interesting. Over the thirteen years pre- ceding Bent's death, he and George E. Hyde (author of Red Cloud's Folk, Spotted Tails Folk and other works on the American Indian) had exchanged many letters. From these letters Hyde put together an autobiography. The manuscript carries

marginal notations in Bent's handwriting as well as Hyde's, indicating the care exerted in its preparation. Hyde notes in his introduction that while Bent could recall accurately the years in which events occurred, he used the Indian calendar of moons; therefore, specific days and months were only approximations. From various officials records Hyde provided the true dates of many incidents. Unable to interest a publisher during the Depression of the 1930s, Hyde sold eight of the fifteen chapters of the manuscript to the Denver Public Library. Here they have been drawn on heavily by scholars. After thirty-six years the complete manu-

script has come to light through the efforts of Savoie Lottinville, Director Emeritus of the University of Oklahoma Press. Lottinville has provided additional foot- notes mostly based on more recent scholarship.

From about 1600 A. D. to about 1826, the Cheyennes had been driven

slowly but steadily from their ancestral home on the shores of the Great Lakes southwestward to their final range in Colorado and Kansas. The pressure came from tribes living to the east who were provided with firearms by French and

English traders. Bent talked in 19 12 with an old Cheyenne who told him many stories of life on a large lake in Minnesota. The narrative increases in detail with Bent's return to his father's home on the Purgatoire River in the fall of 1862 as a paroled Confederate prisoner of war. In the following spring George joined his mother's people with whom he spent the next fifty-two years. He suffered all the tribulations of his people from the Sand Creek Massacre to the Treaty of Medicine Lodge. He took part in many of the battles against the United States

Army and talked with survivors of other engagements. His bitterness toward the treatment of the Cheyennes is clear and understandable. Bent made clear the role of Soldier societies, chiefs and war leaders, and the problems of political structure within the tribe. He describes in detail the preparations for battle and the methods of hunting antelope and buffalo.

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388 ARIZONA and the WEST

The University of Oklahoma Press has turned out its usual fine work, with one exception. This reviewer has heard of padding books, but never before seen it done by printing a nine-line paragraph twice on one page (p. 220)!! Enthnol-

ogists as well as historians should find this work of great value.

Henry P. Walker

Dr. Walker is assistant editor of this journal and has recently finished editing the reminis- cences of an army private of the 1880s.

0^1

BARONIAL FORTS OF THE BIG BEND: Ben Leaton, Milton Faver and Their Private Forts in Presidio County. By Leavitt Corning, Jr. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1967. 146 pp. $4.00.

The Big Bend country of Texas was seldom visited or crossed until the 1 840s. Traffic then increased, with a wagon train occasionally passing through en route from South Texas to California, and in time a handful of Anglo-Ameri- cans decided to make their home in the region. Ben Leaton settled near present day Presidio, Texas, at the site of old Fortin de San Jose. He constructed or added to an adobe structure, built with an interior court large enough to hold animals and equipment, and made it a small fort with strong walls. Its location, on a low bluff with fairly open country on the other three sides, made it easy to defend. Leaton married a Mexican woman who had lived there prior to his arrival, and made any visitors welcome to his home. A number of private and military expeditions stopped at or near "Fortin" at one time or another during his lifetime and later. At his death, Lea ton's estate was fought over in a manner that was typical for his time and for years to come. Another early settler was Milton Faver, who had three main holdings. He fortified two of them, married a local Mexican woman, had a number of retainers, was famous for his peach brandy, and his estate also fell apart after his death. Faver is probably the favorite character of local history and folklore. In the last of four chapters, Pro- fessor Leavitt Corning gives additional information on both Leaton and Faver, and states his reasons for using them to exemplify a "unique baronial pattern."

Coming's research is very good and the editing and general appearance of the book is above average. As a journal article this book would have been out- standing, for there are only fifty-four pages of text. Forty-six pages of appendices, which would have best been incorporated into the text; eighteen of illustrations, of which only three are photographs; ten of bibliography, index, preface, acknowledgments, and a few blank pages leave little room for anything else. One wonders if Corning was rushed into publishing his paper, "The Private Forts of Presidio County," which was given at the seventieth annual meeting of the Texas Historical Association, without enough time to make a worthwhile book out of his research.

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