The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America
H.W. Brands
Doubleday Books
Copyright 2022 by the author

A while back I got involved in a discussion on what movies or TV series could not be made today. The 60s comedy F Troop immediately came to mind. Even in what was clearly a comedy, there’s not a chance in heck that you’d be able to get away with stereotyping the natives in such a manner today.

The contrarian in me started wondering what you’d have to do if you wanted to have your “pitch” for a reboot taken seriously. Obviously, the natives would have to be the only sane, decent, honorable, and intelligent characters. And you’d want them played by Native American actors (assuming you could get enough willing to take the roles).

Then you’d want to get a decent enough grasp on the history of the “Indian Wars”. That’s where H.W. Brands comes in.

The title is a bit of a misnomer; I suspect it was put on the book by the publisher’s marketing department. While it does use biographies of Sherman and Geronimo as “brackets” to the work, it gives the impression that the two leaders faced each other directly in a long and grueling campaign (on the order of Grant and Lee, or even Montgomery and Rommel). The work actually looks at the entirety of the “Indian Wars”, from the Indian Removal Act all the way through to the end of the nineteenth century.

Nor is it really a comprehensive overview of the matter. There’s almost no discussion of the politics in Washington DC about the fighting. Brands chooses to tell the story mainly through eyewitness accounts and official reports on the battles. Even then, he picks and chooses what to tell. Much of it will undoubtedly be new to the reader. A Sioux account of the Battle of Little Bighorn. The Siege of Adobe Walls. The Modoc War in northern California…. It’s really gripping stuff! Add to it some cool trivia – like how Sherman, instead of fighting in Mexico during that war, was attached to the government of the California Territory and happened to be along for the trip when the governor went to investigate the report of gold at Sutter’s Mill (Sherman even drafted the official report), and Geronimo lived long enough to make decent money selling photos and autographs at the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904 – and you get a very fine read.

By restricting himself to the purely military aspects of the “war”, Brands does a decent job of not picking sides. The Indian Removal Act that started it all was a matter of politics, and some at the time made the quite valid argument that being relocated west was the best option to preserve tribal sovereignty. And it might have actually worked out OK if gold hadn’t been discovered in California.

If there were debates, they probably went something like this:

“You should move; we can’t keep settlers from harassing you.”

“That’s not our fault, is it.”

“Now if you would just assimilate and become citizens, then we could protect you.”

“Fine, but we want to keep our own laws and customs on our own lands.”

“But that would be a ‘state within a state’! How would that even work?”

(Pretty much like the current reservation system, I’d say….)

While most members of most tribes did see what was inevitably coming and accepted life on the reservation, others struck back. And because the Federal government was at first preoccupied with the Civil War and then Reconstruction, the actual management of Indian Affairs got short shrift. Agents were often incompetent or corrupt, and it was left to the Army to keep the peace. The Army has never been designed or intended to be used as law enforcement, so it is understandable that they’d make a mess of arresting cattle rustlers or serving eviction orders.

Brands is a bit naïve in his belief that at least some of the tribes that chose to accept to be moved to reservations are doing well and even thriving. While I’m sure that some tribes are doing well enough, I’m even more sure that they’d much rather prefer to be back on their home lands. And also that the federal government would hold up their end of the agreements made over a century ago.