Description
Book SynopsisThe exciting history of intertribal conflict among the tribes in the northwest United States
Trade Review“One of the book’s most valuable features is a long bibliographical essay, which lists and evaluates numerous primary sources and secondary works. A graduate student or budding scholar interested in Plains Indian history would find this a useful place to begin.”—Roy W. Meyer,
American Historical Review“McGinnis has produced a useful synthesis of tribal warfare and a compelling argument that brings some order out of the confusion of shifting alliances and short interludes of peace that dominated Indian life on the Northern Plains. Understanding the role that combat played in the lives of Plains Indians is essential to comprehending why Plains warriors found a life of enforced peace empty of meaning.”—Thomas R. Wessel,
Western Historical Quarterly“In preparing this book, Anthony McGinnis consulted a wide variety of sources, including early travelers’ accounts, government reports, and studies by other authorities, to present a comprehensive history of the conflict. Some content has been dealt with elsewhere, though not as sweepingly as here. Most significantly, McGinnis helps to further define the Indians’ motivations and explain their responses to the ideas, products, and events that affected them throughout the culturally critical mid-1800s. . . .
Counting Coup and Cutting Horses merits attention as a worthwhile contribution to the field of Indian history.”—Jerome A. Greene,
Montana: The Magazine of Western HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsPrefaceCHAPTER ONE - From Time Immemorial . . . Deadly Enemies: Intertribal Warfare, 1738-1800CHAPTER TWO - Killed Them Like Birds: Explorers, Traders, and Intensified Warfare, 1804-1810CHAPTER THREE - Very Impatient of Insult: The Growing Complexity of Warfare, 1810-1830CHAPTER FOUR - Their Name Is A Terror: Warfare in Blackfoot and Crow Country, 1830-1850CHAPTER FIVE - War Is the Breath of Their Nostrils: The Sioux Advance on the Eastern Plains, 1830-1850CHAPTER SIX - Disregard Their Treaty Obligations: Early Treaties and the Sioux Advance, 1851-1865CHAPTER SEVEN - Scourge of the Missouri: Warfare in the Age of Sioux Suzerainty, 1865-1877CHAPTER EIGHT - Superior in Daring and Enterprise: The Climax of Warfare, 1865-1877CHAPTER NINE - A Source of Great Apprehension and Anxiety: The End of Sioux Suzerainty, 1877-1881CHAPTER TEN - Those Days of Which I Now Only Dream: The End of Intertribal Warfare, 1881-1889Bibliographical EssayEndnotesBibliographyIndex
