Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation [Hardcover]

Paul Van Develder (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0316896896 | ISBN-13: 978-0316896894 | Publication Date: August 25, 2004 | Edition: 1ST

A Civil Action meets Indian country, as one man takes on the federal government and the largest boondoggle in U.S. history--and wins.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Raymond Cross is a Yale-educated attorney and the youngest son of Martin Cross, an American Indian tribal chairman who spent the bulk of his life fighting a losing battle against the construction of a post–WWII dam near the upper Missouri River that would forcibly remove hundreds of families from their ancestral lands. VanDevelder's exhaustively researched book uses the Cross family story—and Raymond Cross's eventual transformation into Coyote Warrior, the term given to a growing group of Ivy League–trained lawyers working on American Indian rights issues—to help trace the century-long struggle of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes to protect their North Dakota homelands. The author, an investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker, provides a glimpse into the vagaries of federal Indian law and its effects that avoids preachiness, preferring to let research and recollections by the Cross family tell the story. "It doesn't take long with Indian law before you realize you're breathing a different kind of air," notes one attorney who oversaw legislation to terminate federal wardship over American Indian tribes. The book is at its most accessible when it chronicles the personal struggles of the Cross family, but its sometimes tedious descent into legal jargon and switchback chronology may put off general readers.
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From Booklist

This enlightening chronicle by investigative reporter VanDevelder takes on the complex issue of Indian law as it's being molded by a new generation of Native American lawyers, called coyote warriors, who are part of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Beginning with three landmark decisions made by Chief Justice John Marshall in the 1820s, Indian tribes were recognized as "domestic dependent sovereign nations." When Martin Cross, the great-grandson of the Mandan chief who befriended Lewis and Clark, brought his passionate yet uneducated protest against the proposed Garrison Dam to the Senate floor in 1945, his argument that the land where three tribes had lived "from time immemorial" would be destroyed was overridden. But then his son, Raymond, a Yale-educated lawyer whose life was shaped by the dam's deleterious effect, took up the fight. Returning to North Dakota as the lawyer for the Three Affiliated Tribes, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court for reparations for those tribes who suffered ill effects caused by the dam's destructive environmental impact so that finally justice was done. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1ST edition (August 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316896896
• ISBN-13: 978-0316896894
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,190,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Law of the West, November 3, 2004

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doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation (Hardcover)

At first glance this book would appear to be a rather standard documentary of the struggles faced by a particular Indian nation. That is true to a certain extent, as the book covers the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara), who until the 1950s were the most successful and self-sufficient Indians in the country, then saw their productive lands disappear under a Missouri River reservoir. After forced relocation and disenfranchisement, and political bullying from government agencies pushing through water reclamation projects that were probably a giant boondoggle, the tribes went instantly from success to destitution and dependence on the government. VanDevelder illustrates their long-term suffering through the decades-long travails and heartbreaks of the Cross family, whose father Martin led a valiant but hopeless struggle to save the tribes' livelihood and culture. The story continues through their traumatic uprooting and torn connections to their community, up to the current successes of son Raymond who has become one of the leading Indian attorneys in the nation.

VanDevelder's extensive coverage of the careers of Martin and Raymond Cross is what makes this book unique, and much more than your typical respectful but depressing expose on current Indian affairs. VanDevelder unveils the extremely complicated nature of Indian law in general, with issues of sovereignty and broken treaties from centuries ago still mucking up court cases to this day. He also gives in-depth (though occasionally over-detailed) coverage of the particular legal maneuvers and challenges faced by the Three Affiliated Tribes and the Cross family, which thanks to the legal brilliance of Raymond and some powerful allies, finally resulted in partial justice after several decades of suffering and cultural ruination at the hands of the U.S. Government. VanDevelder writes of legal maneuvering and governmental shenanigans with a surprising amount of suspense, and somehow even makes a Supreme Court exploratory hearing seem dramatic. A bonus is VanDevelder's unique descriptions of legal precedents going back to medieval Europe in the thirteenth century, and the far-reaching historical development of Indian law in America to the present day. [~doomsdayer520~]

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional introduction to Indian legal rights and more, April 8, 2005

By 

Chainsaw (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation (Hardcover)

I have published an award-winning law review article on Federal Indian Law, worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (until I couldn't hold my nose any longer), and had the great good luck to learn Indian Law from Prof. Raymond Cross at The University of Montana School of Law. But Paul VanDevelder taught me new things about all three.

Mr. VanDevelder deftly explains some of the more arcane aspects of Federal Indian Law in a way that, at least for me, filled in more of the puzzle pieces - but while also making it easily accessible to even the non-professional. Mr. VanDevelder taught me that the Corps of Engineers can be even more insidious and arrogant than even I had suspected. And, given the good professor's reluctance to blow his own horn, Mr. VanDevelder taught me that merely having known Raymond Cross was far more an honor than I could have ever guessed.

If you have any curiosity about Indian legal rights, or seek understanding about the grave damage government administrators can do when they embody the worst kinds of ignorance, arrogance, and egomania, or merely hope to be inspired by a ripping good yarn about the undeniable perseverance of the human spirit, Coyote Warrior is your book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effective Native American Self-Determination, March 3, 2007

By 

Along Red River of the North "JMS" (Moorhead, MN) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation (Hardcover)

Considering that very few people will witness Raymond Cross's dynamism in person or read his eloquent legal briefs and law review articles, Paul VanDevelder's "Coyote Warrior" provides a persuasive account of another Native community's fight for justice in America. The legal struggles of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples for their land and sovereignty, as seen from their standpoint, provides valuable insights into the institutionalized bad faith of federal Indian policy. The author achieved his goal of making the compelling story of three tribe's contentious political relationship with the United States accessible to a wider audience.