To My Readers

CHEYENNE SPLENDOR is the long-awaited sequel to my first best-seller, CHEYENNE CAPTIVE, the Zebra novel that won the 1987 Best Indian Romance by a New Author Award from Romantic Times magazine. Yes, CHEYENNE CAPTIVE has been reprinted and is available at this time from Zebra Books, and eventually, I will do novels about all five of Summer’s children.

The novel you have just read is #12 of my Panorama of the Old West series. Iron Knife’s sister, Cimarron, had her own Zebra romance called CHEYENNE PRINCESS. The Van Schuylers’ red-haired Irish servant, Sassy Malone, became the heroine of her own novel, HALF-BREED’S BRIDE. Silver and Cherokee Evans also had their own book, QUICKSILVER PASSION. Someday, I’ll also tell the story of Wannie and Keso when they grow up and get caught in Colorado’s Ute Indian war. We also haven’t seen the last of the Van Schuylers, the O’Bannions, St. Claires, and some of the others.

By the way, there is no town in Missouri named Wartonville; it is strictly fictional.

Someday I’ll tell you the story of the worst wagon train tragedy in the history of the California-Oregon Trail, the one Deek Tanner mentioned. Some of you may think I’m speaking of the ill-fated Donner party that became stranded in the Sierra Nevadas and resorted to cannibalism to survive. You’re wrong. Believe it or not, there was a worse disaster than that; one very few people know about.

The year 1864 was the third bloodiest year in the Indian wars for the whites: 357 whites killed. The worst year was 1862, the year of the bloody Sioux uprising in Minnesota when 630 whites died. We can only guess at the number of Indian fatalities, but they must have been high; nor do historians agree on the number of casualties at Sand Creek. For more information on that time, you might enjoy a research book called THE INDIAN WAR OF 1864, by Eugene F. Ware.

I have been in Julesburg, Colorado, for research and walked that area where the battle was fought. I have also walked the ground at Sand Creek and talked with the rancher who owns the land. There’s not much to see except barren, windswept prairie, but if you’re curious, the site is about fifteen miles northeast of the city of Lamar.

In the ensuing outcry and investigation over the Sand Creek Massacre, the public forgot Chivington’s service as a minister of the gospel, his stance as an abolitionist, and the fact that he was the hero of Glorietta Pass. His career destroyed, he spent the rest of his life trying to justify his actions that November dawn. He died of cancer in 1894 and is buried in Denver’s Fairmont Cemetery. You may not know that John Evans, Colorado Territorial Governor in 1864, who encouraged action against the hostile Indians, was first offered the governorship of Washington Territory, or that he was one of the founders of Northwestern University, or that the city of Evanston, Illinois, is named for him. Of the men who rode with Chivington that day, Lieutenant George L. Shoup became Territorial Governor of Idaho, and Major Jacob Downing became a Colorado millionaire.

Some historians have suggested that the South may have possibly fomented and encouraged Indian trouble to keep Union troops busy. The Indian war spread over hundreds of miles into Kansas and Nebraska because the old chiefs could not always control hot-headed young warriors.

Black Kettle wrote to S.G. Colley, the Indian agent, in a letter dated August 29th, 1964:

.. . We heard that you have some prisoners in Denver; we have seven prisoners of yours which we are willing to give up, providing you give up yours. There are three war parties out yet, and two of Araphahos; they have been out sometime and expected in soon. . . .

Unfortunately, one of those prisoners, a Mrs. Snyder, committed suicide before she could be returned.

Later, scientists would dig up many of the Indian dead and send the bones to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. as curiosities. In the summer of 1993, attempting to finally bring justice to the slain, the Smithsonian turned these bones over to three Cheyenne elders, who brought them back to my home state, Oklahoma, to be reburied with proper ceremonies near tribal headquarters in the town of Concho.

There have been a number of books written about the Cheyenne and Sand Creek, one of them by an Oklahoma college professor friend of mine, Stan Hoig, published by University of Oklahoma Press, THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE. For the opposing viewpoint, you might be interested in reading I STAND BY SAND CREEK, by Lieutenant Colonel William R. Dunn, published by Old Army Press. For further reading, I recommend THE FIGHTING CHEYENNES by George B. Grinnell, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, and BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE: AN INDIAN HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WEST, by Dee Brown, published by Dell.

George Armstrong Custer was the youngest general of the Civil War, and while he might have been reckless and foolhardy, no one ever questioned his bravery. General Sheridan admired the young officer and his wife so much that he gave Custer the table on which the surrender was written as a souvenir for Custer’s wife, Libby. Today, that table is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. The marble-topped table on which the surrender was actually signed was presented to General Ord and is today owned by the Chicago Historical Society.

The Lincoln assassination left even further tragedies yet to unfold. When John Wilkes Booth stabbed Major Rathbone as the brave officer attempted to disarm the actor, Rathbone’s blood splashed Miss Harris’ lovely satin dress. The major survived and later married Clara Harris, but Rathbone could not rid himself of guilt because he had not saved the president. Nor could his wife bring herself to either destroy or clean and wear that dress again. She finally had it walled up in a closet. Over the years, the self-tormented major began to go insane.

Christmas Eve morning of 1883, Rathbone shot his wife to death and attempted to commit suicide with a knife. He survived and was sent to an insane asylum where he lived another twenty-eight years. The year before his death, the couple’s son broke through the walled-up closet to retrieve the dress that had been hanging there forty-five years. He burned it as “cursed.” That son, Henry Riggs Rathbone, became a U.S. congressman and was instrumental in urging the government to restore Ford’s Theater as an important historical site.

You have heard, of course, that Mary Todd Lincoln gradually lost her mind and became such an embarrassment to her only living son, Robert, that he had her temporarily committed to an asylum in 1875.

Another player who ended up in an insane asylum was Boston Corbett, the police officer credited with killing John Wilkes Booth. In his later years, Corbett went berserk and tried to wipe out the Kansas legislature with two pistols.

Doctor Mudd, who was guilty of nothing but treating John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg, was eventually released from prison because he had helped battle an epidemic of yellow fever in jail. However, the dour prediction, “Your name is Mudd,” has become part of our folklore for the unlucky.

While it is ironic, John Wilkes Booth was actually standing close enough to Lincoln to have killed him during the inauguration. Because he was a celebrity, a legislator’s daughter had given Booth tickets to the ceremony.

American Indians fought for both sides in the Civil War; however, only in one battle were American Indians fighting on both sides and against each other; the Battle of Honey Springs in eastern Indian Territory during 1863, won by the Union. This was also one of the first battles using African-American soldiers, the 1st Kansas Infantry. In case you are interested, the very last Confederate general to surrender several months after the war officially ended was a Cherokee, General Stand Watie, in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

I am always glad to hear from readers. You may write me c/o Zebra Books, and they will forward your letter. I’ll send a newsletter and an autographed book mark to those who include a stamped, self-addressed #10 envelope. For those of you in foreign countries, please remember the U.S. government will not allow me to use your foreign postage, so please buy postal vouchers at your post office that I can exchange for American stamps.

What story am I going to tell next? One of the saddest and most heroic chapters of America’s Indian past is that of the Nez Percé tribe. Native to the great Northwest and known for their fine Appaloosa horses, they had always lived at peace with the whites—until settlers began to want their land. Trouble escalated when gold was discovered in the area. Then greedy whites clamored to move the Nez Percé to reservations, and the valiant warriors refused. What happened next is one of the most gallant and heartbreaking stories of American history as a handful of Nez Percé held the whole United States Army at bay during four months of 1877. Led by Chief Joseph, they decided to fight their way across fifteen hundred miles of the Pacific Northwest to cross the border into the safety of Canada. They hoped they could link up with Sitting Bull’s Lakota (Sioux) who had retreated north after Custer was wiped out at the Little Big Horn the previous year.

Some of you may recall Springtime, the tempestuous Indian girl who was murdered in HALF-BREED’S BRIDE. The heroine of my next book is a mixed-blood cousin of Springtime’s. Our heroine’s been raised back east and returns to the West to work as a teacher among the Nez Percé.

Remember that Iron Knife owns a fine Appaloosa stallion, Spotted Blanket, given to him by a grateful Nez Percé chief for saving his young son’s life many years before? That son is all grown up now, tall, darkly handsome, and a warrior riding with Chief Joseph. He’s too savage and untamed for our civilized teacher, and he resents her bringing her white ways to his people. Both of them are about to be swept up in a great adventure as the Nez Percé fight their way across the untamed frontier, attempting to reach Canada.

I promise you a three-hankie love story as we ride with this warrior and his love, as free as the wild north wind blowing from the vast reaches of the Canadian wilderness. Look for this #13 novel of my Panorama of the Old West series, a Zebra Super Release, tentatively titled WARRIOR’S SONG and set for early summer of 1995.

 

 

Hahoo naa ne-mehotatse,

 

Georgina Gentry