Customer Reviews

Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indian

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This book tells the story of six "friends of the Indian" who also happened to be friends of TR. When he became Commissioner of the Civil Service, and later Vice President and President, these friends naturally tried to influence his policies. This book tells these stories. The overall arc of the narrative is the steady loss of these friends or their retreat from the battlefield, though Hagan does not think about why this is the way the story unfolded.

Hagan knows his stuff, both forest and trees. But he seems more interested in the trees. He spends most of the time telling of various minor incidents, when the friends interceded for or against a particular Indian agent or tribe. For readers with his expertise, those incidents are probably pregnant with meaning. For the general reader, though, they aren't. (Indeed, many readers may not know that "friends of the Indian" had a specific meaning in TR's day.)

More views of the forest and more guidance to the significance of these stories would enliven the book. So too would greater narrative distance - - why tell this story, and what lessons do we draw? Without that, this book serves as a reference for specialists but too dry for the general reader.