BRAVE EAGLE'S ACCOUNT OF THE FETTERMAN FIGHT

The defeat of Captain Fetterman, who boasted that he could "Whip the whole Sioux nation with only 80 men," retold (as amended and enlarged by the authors) with the same mixture of pride and sorrow that permeated Red Hawk's Account of Custer's Last Battle (1970). Brave Eagle was present at the Fort Laramie council where the Great White Father's representatives (they "did not look very important; they had not painted their faces and their hair was cut short as if in mourning") demanded a right of way along the Bozeman Trail through Sioux territory. Later, when Red Cloud refuses and Fetterman's men are finally decoyed into ambush, Brave Eagle is a witness to bravery on both sides (though the dose formations of the soldiers made them easy prey for Sioux arrows — "it was a strange way to fight and keep alive") and the tragedies within the battle — his pony's death, the shooting of a dog who was the last survivor of Fetterman's band, the finding of a picture of a wife and children inside a soldier's jacket ("The memory of it does not leave me"). The columns of blue-clad soldiers advancing across the pages, Indian ponies running free, even fallen warriors tumbling head over heels down the page are both more colorful and more controlled than in the previous volume. Like Red Hawk, Brave Eagle proves an outstanding witness.