Little Chief's Gatherings

[Californian]

Little Chief's Gatherings
by James A. Hanson, The Fur Press, Crawford NE 1996, 203 p.

On September 3, 1855, General William S. Harney routed Little Thunder's band of Brulé and Oglala Sioux in a brief but bloody battle at Ash Hollow on Blue Water Creek, Nebraska Territory. Afterwards, 25-year-old army lieutenant Gouverneur Kemple Warren, who had been a participant in the fight, roamed about the battlefield, ministering to many of the wounded Indians and, as ordered, gathering "plunder from the Indian camp." Much of this material was consigned to bonfires, but Warren succeeded in saving a large collection of artifacts, which he later donated to the Smithsonian Institution. Known to the Indians as "Little Chief", because of his sympathetic behavior at Ash Hollow, Warren would later figure prominently in western explorations, the Civil War, and Minnesota history. Although best remembered for his Civil War exploits as a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg and an important corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, Warren deserves equal recognition for his contributions to American ethnology, geography, engineering, and geology. In this beautiful and well-crafted book, Hanson, formerly with the Smithsonian Institution and currently a freelance writer, adds considerable documentation concerning Warren's early ethnological collections and geographic explorations. Little Chief's Gatherings is divided into two sections. The first opens with an excellent biographical sketch of Warren. The rest of the section is devoted principally to illustrating and analyzing the Smithsonian materials from the Blue Water Creek battlefield, one of the earliest and largest collections of Plains Indian material in existence. Beautiful photographs (30 in full color) document the exquisite craftsmanship of this material, including blankets, moccasins, leggings, dresses, children's dolls, Catlinite pipe bowls, headdresses, and saddles. The second section of the book contains the journals (minus some weather and astronomical observations) from the collections of the New York State Library that chronicle Warren's 1855 (Nebraska), 1856 (lower Yellowstone River), and 1857 (Black Hills) expeditions. Three of these journals represent Warren's writings on the respective expeditions, and two are by his subordinates - W. H. Hutton in 1856 and J. Hudson Snowden in 1857. Taken together, the journals contain a wealth of information on the Indian tribes of the Northern Plains (particularly the Sioux); the physical geography and natural history of the Nebraska and Dakota Territories; and navigation conditions on the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. In addition, Warren's was the first official exploration of the Black Hills, though his expedition was cut short by Indian opposition. From 1866 to 1870, Warren was chief of the St. Paul District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While stationed in Minnesota he helped with early efforts to stabilize St. Anthony Falls; studies the hydraulics and sedimentation of the upper Mississippi River and its tributaries; engineered various bridges on the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Minnesota Rivers; and recognized that the broad Minnesota River valley was formed by outflow from a great glacial lake in the valley of the Red River of the North-Lake Winnipeg basin. Yet all the while, he was fighting to clear his military record of the unjust stain of removal from the corps command at the Battle of Five Forks in the closing days of the Civil War. Hanson's book is a major contribution to Indian ethnology and the history of the American West. It also adds considerably to the reputation of Gouverneur Warren as a renaissance man who excelled as a military leader, engineer, geologist, and ethnologist. [Review by Jon D. Inners]