Gall: Lakota War Chief
by Robert W. Larson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert W. LarsonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-30
ISBN: 0806138300
Number of pages: 301
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Book Reviews of Gall: Lakota War Chief
Book Review: Not much new info here
Summary: 3 Stars
As I read less non-fiction, I wonder if it has made me more nit-picky than I used to be. Like everyone else, I was excited for this book. I waited for years wondering when this man would finally get his own biography, and alas, here it is...sort of.
There is not enough information on Gall to warrant a full length hardcover biography. The information on Gall in this book could quite easily have been put into a 50 page pamphlet. Nothing against Larson in this respect, but he tried to find information that just isn't there.
As Gall was not nearly as famous as his contemporaries (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Joseph, and Geronimo) history lacks a lot of the information that makes for a life story. Taking on a biography of Gall is like taking on Crow King, Two Moons, or Low Dog. All of which do not have biographies.
This book spends the first 170 pages or so repeatedly saying he probably was here, he probably was there, he might have done this, he might have gone there, but there is very little concrete evidence. Larson can't even place Gall at such large scale actions as the Bozeman War or the Battle of the Rosebud (he states that if Gall was there, he was probably near the fight holding warriors in reserve).
Overall, the book gives a nice overview of the Lakota war for the Northern Plains and is a nice intro for new historians or folks with a basic understanding of this theater. Of course, this book says the focus is Gall and not necessarily the story going on around him. Larson lives off of Utley's Lance and the Shield and Vestal's interviews. There are a lot of secondary sources in the footnotes.
There are numberous errors throughout the book such as saying Custer led a Black Hills expedition in 1875, claiming Wooden Leg was a Cheyenne leader at the LBH (still a teenager), saying Crazy Horse was fatally shot at Ft. Robinson instead of stabbed, saying women NEVER participated in war dances, and the one that really got me, seeing as this is a book on Gall is the following:
The Hunkpapa camp was at the far eastern edge of the LBH encampment. Larson says that when the fight started, Gall was near the Hunkpapa encampment. He then goes on to say that Gall had to go get his horses from the herd near the Cheyenne village. The Cheyenne village was at the western end of the encampment. Even by conservative estimates, the village was at least a mile and a half in length. I can't imagine Gall going all that way to get a horse when his village was being attacked. Even more than that though, what war leader wouldn't have had his horses tethered outside his tepee, especially with soldiers crawling all over the country? Yikes!
Overall, the history is decent, the reservation years are pretty well covered and if you haven't read the Lance and the Shield, most of the Sitting Bull information is in this book. There are plenty of better books out there, but at least Larson's intentions were good in writing about this man.
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