12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Little Phil, Indian Fighter or Indian Hater?, January 8, 2002
Phil Sheridan lacks a worthy biography, but this is the best around. It focuses on the post-Civil War period but ( I think)
could have done more to save the General's reputation from that of a 'bigot and Indian hater'.
For example, the unfair ascription of the so-called proverb 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian' is not challenged, I wonder when it ever will be. From my own limited research, I have found the first recorded public use of this phrase by a Montana politician in 1868, one year before Sheridan is supposed to have uttered similar words. Further, Sheridan's brother Mike also traces the phrase to Montana, saying 'some fool' ascribed the words to Sheridan. Finally, we only have the hearsay evidence
of a single witness (ie someone told someone else who wrote it down), written down 20 years later, that Sheridan used the words at all.
There is of course the larger accusation, that whatever Sheridan said, this is how he felt. Hutton effectively refutes that charge, I only wish he had come out and roundly stated it somewhere in the book. Sheridan shared the objectives of his contemporary humanitarian critics - he wanted Indians to settle down on reservations and adopt white ways, or just live of the bounty of the government. Where he differed was how he treated 'hostiles' or recalcritant Indians. Sheridan believed in waging war on the Indians just as he had made war in the Shenandoah Valley - devastate the enemy's resources, limit his power to make war by depriving him of supplies, with the added extra of rounding up families to be taken to where they white soldiers could watch them.
In essence, Sheridan was given a dirty job, and did in the only way he knew. But he had no especial hate for the Indians - he was not a Himmler figure, as some have made him out. He was fair to Indians who kept the peace. For example, he adjudicated in a dispute between Indians and cattlemen who had leased reservation land. Despite his personal feeling about development, he came down firmly on the Indian side, and thanks to him, the cattlemen were given 3 months to remove their herds, which humbered hundreds of thousands head of cattle.
Sheridan also sponsored early efforts to study Indian lore and customs, and was instrumental in preserving Yellowstone National Park for the nation.
In short this man was not a saint. He had glaring defects - for example, he aggressively defended subordinates even when they were in the wrong, he looked after cronies in the Army and outside. But he was totally uncorrupt in a corrupt age (his personal fortune was quite small at the end of his days, even though he could undoubtedly had many opportunities to enrich himself illicitly). Also, one feels that someone who said "If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas" can't be all bad! Right or wrong, he had a certain spirit, that Little Phil!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Bio: Sheridan's CW Valley Campaign Goes West, July 13, 2003
If anyone wonders how Custer could have been so driven to relentless pursue Sioux and Cheyenne to the Little Big Horn one must understand his mentor Phil Sheridan. As Hutton points out, Sheridan aggressiveness from his men and he could inspire them to such great lengths that one Union Soldier at the battle of Five Forks shot through the primary artery in the neck starts to seek medical help only to be blistered by Sheridan. Although mortally wounded, the young man turns to continue to attack and then immediately collapses to his death. The picture of the angular red haired cadet Sheridan at West Point looks just like the devil and his temper was evident there as he almost bayonets an upper classman that chews him out on parade. Sheridan applies his aggressive nature to the Indian campaigns such that if he is unable to capture the Indians (typical), he systematically destroyed their way of life by eradicating anything they needed to exist. Whether its buffalo, horses or village food stuffs, Sheridan essentially does to the Indians what he did to the Virginia Shenandoah valley during the Civil War where he or Grant made the comment that "a crow would have to carry rations if it flew over the valley" after Sheridan got through. Sheridan's effective Indian campaigns were often fought in the winter when the Indians had less food and were less mobile. Custer and Terry's campaign was desperate from the start since it started in the summer when the opposite was true. Hutton demonstrates Sheridan's black and white side and his Victorian views when Sheridan refuses to trade six horses for a captured white woman because he imagined her to be too sullied by the Indian braves and thus unfit for civilization. Hutton states in his introduction that he hopes that his daughter never has to meet a man like Sheridan which if he were your enemy it would be a relentless challenge without rules of war.
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