The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop / Hamlin Garland. New York; London : Harper & Brothers Publishers. © 1901: Curtis Publishing Co., © 1902, 1930: Hamlin Garland
Hamlin Garland came to my attention because he wrote Joseph C. Lincoln, an Appreciation (1921)(link). I had not heard of him previously, but the more I looked into him, the more interested I became. There are several web sites describing his work and its significance, which is several more than for Joe Lincoln, so look him up yourself. He was part of the generation of regional writers, writers who wrote about particular parts of the US, in his case about the prairies and High Plains. Joe Lincoln's books were usually light, often nostalgic, as they described the people and places of Cape Cod. Garland's books were socially critical as they described events and people (I base this assertion on reading this one book and from scanning the Garland web pages.)
The main plot line - Captain George Curtis leads the Tetong in their resistance to rapacious settlers.
Curtis is a US Army officer, stationed in the foothills of the Rockies in the northern Great Plains. He is young, handsome, fearless, West Point trained, scholarly, fluent in sign language, and deeply sympathetic to the Indian tribes. He is sent to take over the Indian Office agent post, at the Tetong reservation, from a crooked agent. The Tetong are pleased to have him - they know his reputation already, and things could hardly get worse anyway. The Tetong are demoralized, slowly starving, cheated of even their paltry government rations by the agent and his cronies.
The Tetong were forced onto worthless land by the government (by the Army, in fact), prohibited from their traditional ways, and are being "civilized" by missionaries and the Indian Agency. There isn't much to hunt, it's too dry to farm, they're too poor to start ranching. But the settlers want even that land, and are actively trying to provoke any kind of Tetong retaliation as an excuse to exterminate all the vermin. The ranchers send their sheep and cattle onto the reservation to feed, they beat and shoot at protesters, they vandalize Tetong camps and property. The ranchers have the direct ear of the state's senior politicians, the newspapers are outrageously partisan, the settlers venomously racist.
Sub-plot - a group of artists and an anthropologist are at the reservation, including the beautiful daughter of one of the worst politicians. Elsie Brisbane shares her father's racist views, but of course she and Capt. Curtis are smitten. Osborne Lawson is the anthropologist - he's rich, well-connected, very talented, and engaged to Elsie. Curtis and Lawson become great friends as they defend the Tetong in Washington and on the reservation.
Curtis restrains the Tetong from direct retaliation for their abuse, and the Tetong respect his advice because he is such a worthy, but then a white shepherd is killed by unknown hands. A huge posse invades the reservation, intending to lynch somebody, but Curtis and crew distract them long enough for 2 things - a real investigation of the murder and calling in the cavalry (!) to protect the reservation. The real (Tetong) culprit is identified, and arrested by Curtis, but then lynched despite Curtis' efforts. This violence, however, brings out the hitherto silent decent folks to denounce the pirates.
This is not revisionist history - it was published in 1902, when these were current events. I don't know Garland's actual attitude toward the Indians: Curtis is passionately interested in the "vanishing" and "small" people, in letting them live out their quaint unsuccessful evolution in peace, somewhat like hospice care for a tribe. But at the end of the book he seems to think they'll do okay, if treated decently, keeping some traditions but joining the market economy. Garland certainly had a huge contempt for the settlers - violent, criminal, ignorant, drunken, obscene. Ditto for newspapers and politicians. Curtis has a condescending attitude toward the "darkies" in Washington.About a reservation missionary:
Curtis - "Miss Colson is a pretty girl--a very pretty girl ; but I can't imagine a man being in love with her. What could you do with such inexorable moral purpose? You couldn't put your arm around it, could you?"
Lawson - "You'd have to hang her up by a string, like one of these toy angels the Dutch put atop their Christmas-trees. The Tetongs fairly dread to see her coming--they think she's deranged."
Curtis - "I know it--the children go to her with reluctance ; she doen't seen wholesome to them..."
About the spread of "civilization":
Lawson - "I am interested in the cowboy and the miner--as wild animals--as much as any of you, but as founders of an empire! The hard and unlovely truth is, they are representatives of every worst form of American vice ; they are ignorant, filthy, and cruel. Their value as couriers of the Christian army has never been that great with me."
Parker (a sculptor) - "In a few years there will not be an Indian left."
Lawson - "The world will be the poorer.'
Parker - "They will all be submerged."
Lawson - "Why submerge them? Is the Anglo-Saxon type so adorable in the sight of God that He desires all the races of the earth to be like unto it? If the proselytizing zeal of the missionaries and functionaries of the English-speaking race could work out, the world would lose all its color, its piquancy. Hungary would be like Scotland, Scotland would be like Cornwall, Cornwall would duplicate London, and London reflect New York. Beautiful scheme for tailors, shoemakers, and preachers, but depressing for artists."
Parker - "You must be one of those chaps the missionaries tell about, who would keep men savage just to please your sense of the picturesque."
Lawson - "Savage! There's a fine word. What is a savage?"
Jennie Curtis - "A man who needs converting to our faith."
Maynard (cavalry officer) - "A man to exercise the army on."
Parker - "A man to rob in the name of the Lord.This is an interesting book, and I recommend it. The details of the people, landscape, and action are well described. The social point was and is important. The love story sub-plot is completely predictable. I'll read more of Hamlin Garland.
David Kew
June 16, 2001