I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I'm in San Miguel de Allende with my family, celebrating my dad's 70th birthday and retirement. It's a beautiful city with exceptional food, baroque churches, charming colonial squares, colorful homes, and all manner of arts and crafts. The highlight has been a mojiganga-making class; my artistic skills are limited but I think my djellaba from Layla and my wedding in Morocco turned out nicely!
Alright, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Grant’s Betrayal: The Gilded Age Conspiracy to Steal the Black Hills from the Lakota is one of two deals that I closed in the Fall and am just now catching up on here. It tells a villainous story that has been forgotten by most Americans. In February 1877, the United States government illegally seized the Black Hills in response to its humiliating defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876. The Lakota viewed this sacred land, which they called “Paha Sapa,” as “the heart of everything that is.”
Unable to accept the loss of such an invaluable region, the Lakota Chief Sitting Bull said, “The Black Hills belong to the Sioux nation…I never will give up the Black Hills to the U.S. or to anybody.” Referring to the unjust land grab by the Grant administration, a U.S. Court of Claims declared, almost a century later in 1975: “The duplicity of President Grant’s course and the duress practiced on the starving Sioux, speak for themselves. A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.”
In addition to Ulysses S. Grant, four main characters are featured in this narrative nonfiction book—Ulysses Grant's corrupt brother Orvil Grant, the honest and stoic Lakota leader Eagle Woman, Sitting Bull, and Grant's close ally and friend Philip Sheridan, who infamously (and allegedly) said "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” Building on the interest in John's previous book, Soldier of Destiny, this book will examine Grant’s presidency, offering a more critical view of it than some recent accounts. Surprisingly, Grant’s rather damning connection to his administration’s corruption has been overlooked or dismissed by writers on the period.
Congratulations to John and his editor at Pegasus, Claiborne Hancock, on what will be their third book together!
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