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Little Big Man: A Novel Paperback – September 1, 1989
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After surviving the massacre of his pioneer family, ten-year-old Jack is adopted by an Indian chief who nicknames him Little Big Man. As a Cheyenne, he feasts on dog, loves four wives, and sees his people butchered by horse soldiers commanded by General George Armstrong Custer. Later, living as a white man once more, he hunts the buffalo to near-extinction, tangles with Wyatt Earp, cheats Wild Bill Hickok, and fights in the Battle of Little Bighorn alongside Custer himself—a man he’d sworn to kill. Hailed by The Nation as “a seminal event,” Little Big Man is a singular literary achievement that, like its hero, only gets better with age.
Praise for Little Big Man
“An epic such as Mark Twain might have given us.”—Henry Miller
“The very best novel ever about the American West.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Spellbinding . . . [Crabb] surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed.”—Time
“Superb . . . Berger’s success in capturing the points of view and emotional atmosphere of a vanished era is uncanny. His skill in characterization, his narrative power and his somewhat cynical humor are all outstanding.”—The New York Times
- Print length480 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDial Press Trade Paperback
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 1989
- Dimensions5.25 x 1.01 x 8.26 inches
- ISBN-100385298293
- ISBN-13978-0385298292
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Review
“The very best novel ever about the American West.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Spellbinding . . . [Crabb] surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed.”—Time
“Superb . . . Berger’s success in capturing the points of view and emotional atmosphere of a vanished era is uncanny. His skill in characterization, his narrative power and his somewhat cynical humor are all outstanding.”—The New York Times
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I AM A WHITE MAN and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten.
My Pa had been a minister of the gospel in Evansville, Indiana. He didn’t have a regular church, but managed to talk some saloonkeeper into letting him use his place of a Sunday morning for services. This saloon was down by the riverfront and the kind of people would come in there was Ohio River boatmen, Hoosier fourflushers on their way to New Orleans, pickpockets, bullyboys, whores, and suchlike, my Pa’s favorite type of congregation owing to the possibilities it afforded for the improvement of a number of mean skunks.
The first time he come into the saloon and started to preach, that bunch was fixing to lynch him, but he climbed on top of the bar and started to yell and in a minute or two they all shut up and listened. My Pa could handle with his voice any white man that ever lived, though he was only of the middle height and skinny as a pick handle. What he’d do, you see, was to make a person feel guilty of something they never thought of. Distraction was his game. He’d stare with his blazing eyes at some big, rough devil off the boats and shout: “How long’s it been you ain’t seen your old Ma?” Like as not that fellow would scrape his feet and honk his nose in his sleeve, and when my brothers and sisters carried around cleaned-out spittoons for the collection, remember us kindly for our pains.
Pa split the collection with the saloonkeeper, which was part of the reason he was let to use the place. The other part was that the bar stayed open throughout the service. My Pa wasn’t no Puritan. He’d take a shot or three himself right while he was preaching, and was never known to say a word against the drink, or women, or cards, or any of the pleasures. “Every kind of sport has been invented by the Lord and therefore can’t be bad in itself,” he would say. “It’s only bad when the pursuit of it makes a man into a mean skunk who will cuss and spit and chew and never wash his face.” These were the only specific sins I ever heard my Pa mention. He never minded a cigar, but was dead set against chewing tobacco, foul language, and dirt on a person. So long as a man was clean, my Pa didn’t care whether he drank himself to death, gambled away every cent so that his kids starved, or got sick from frequenting low women.
I never suspected it at that time, being just a young boy, but I realize now that my Pa was a lunatic. Whenever he wasn’t raving he would fall into the dumps and barely answer when he was spoke to, and at his meals he was single-minded as an animal in filling his belly. Before he got religion he was a barber, and even afterward he cut the hair of us kids, and I tell you if the spirit come over him at such a time it was indeed a scaring experience: he would holler and jump and like as not take a piece of your neck flesh with his scissor just as soon as he would hair.
My Pa was making out right well in that saloon—although it is true there was a movement afoot among the regular preachers to run him out of town because he was stealing their congregations aside from them middle-aged women who prefer the ordinary kind of Christianity that forbids everything—when he suddenly decided he ought to go to Utah and become a Mormon. Among other things he liked the Mormon idea that a man is entitled to a number of wives. The point is that other than cussing, chewing, etc., my Pa was all for freedom of every type. He wasn’t interested himself in having an additional wife, but liked the principle. That’s why my Ma didn’t mind. She was a tiny little woman with a round, innocent face faintly freckled, and when Pa got too excited on a day when he wasn’t going to preach and work off his steam, she would make him undress and sit in a barrel-half and would scrub his back with a brush, which calmed him down after about fifteen minutes.
Pa took us all to Independence, Missouri, where he bought a wagon and team of ox, and we set out on the California Trail. That was near as I can figure the spring of 1852, but we still run into a number of poor devils going out on the arse-end of the gold rush that started in ’48. Before long we had accumulated a train of seven wagon and two horse, and the others had elected Pa as leader, though he didn’t know no more about crossing the plains than I do about the lingo of the heathen Chinese who in later years was to work sixteen hours a day building the Central Pacific Railroad. But given to shouting the way he was, I think they figured since they couldn’t shut him up, might as well make him boss. Then too, every night stop he would preach around the fire, and they all required that, because like everybody who gives up everything for the sake of one big idea, they periodically lost all of their hopes. I ought to give a sample of my Pa’s preaching since if we don’t hear from him soon we’ll never get another chance, but it wouldn’t mean much a hundred year away and in a Morris chair or wherever the reader is sitting, when it was originally delivered by evening on the open prairie next a sweetish-smelling fire of dried buffalo dung. It might seem just crazy, without showing any of the real inspiration in it, which was a matter of sound rather than sense, I think, though that may be only because I was a kid at the time. The ironical thing is that my Pa was somewhat like an Indian.
Indians. Now and again, crossing the Nebraska Territory, following the muddy Platte, we would encounter small bands of Pawnee. Indians was Indians to me and of course as a kid I approved of them generally because they didn’t seem to have a purpose. The ones we saw would always appear coming over the next divide when the train was a quarter mile away, and would mope along on their ponies as if they were going right on past and then suddenly turn when they got alongside and come over to beg food. What they wanted was coffee and would try to get you to stop and brew them a pot, rather than hand out a piece of bacon rind or lump of sugar while rolling. I believe what they preferred even better than the coffee, though, was to bring our progress to a halt. Nothing drives an Indian crazy like regular, monotonous movement. That’s why they not only never invented the wheel, but never even took it up after the white man brought it, as long as they stayed wild, though they were quick enough to grab the horse and the gun and steel knife.
But they really did favor coffee, too, and would sit on their blankets, nodding and saying “How, how” after every sip, and then they chewed the biscuit my Ma would also hand, out, and said “How, how” after every swallow of that as well.
Pa, as you might expect, was much taken with Indians because they did what they pleased, and he always tried to involve them in a philosophical discussion, which was hopeless on account of they didn’t know any English and he didn’t even know sign language. And it is a pity, for as I found out in time to come, there is no one who loves to spout hot air like a redskin.
When the Pawnee were finished they would get up, pick their teeth with their fingers, say “How, how” a couple of times more, climb on their ponies and ride off, with never a word of thanks; but some of them might shake hands, a practice they were just learning from the white man, and as anything an Indian takes up becomes a mania with him, those that did would shake with every individual in the train, man, woman, and child and baby in the cradle; I was only surprised they didn’t grab an ox by the right forefoot.
They never said thanks because it wasn’t in their etiquette at that time, and they had already shown their courtesy with them incessant “how-how’s,” which is to say, “good, good.” You can look the world over without finding anyone more mannerly than an Indian. The point of these visits had somewhat to do with manners, because these fellows were not beggars in the white sense, the kind of degenerates I seen in big cities who had no other means of support. In the Indian code, if you see a stranger you either eat with him or fight him, but more often you eat with him, fighting being too important an enterprise to waste on somebody you hardly know. We all could have run into one of their camps, and they would have had to feed us.
Product details
- Publisher : Dial Press Trade Paperback; Anniversary edition (September 1, 1989)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 480 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385298293
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385298292
- Item Weight : 14.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 1.01 x 8.26 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #370,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,927 in Westerns (Books)
- #9,053 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #19,139 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Thomas Berger (1924–2014) was the bestselling author of novels, short stories, and plays, including the Old West classic Little Big Man (1964) and the Pulitzer Prize–nominated novel The Feud (1983). Berger was born in Cincinnati and served with a medical unit in World War II, an experience that provided the inspiration for his first novel, Crazy in Berlin (1958). Berger found widespread success with his third novel, Little Big Man, and has maintained a steady output of critically acclaimed work since then. Several of his novels have been adapted into film, including a celebrated version of Little Big Man. His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, and Playboy.
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Most of us are familiar with the story. As a boy Jack is taken captive by the Cheyennes and becomes the adopted son of Old Lodge Skins, the chief. He becomes immersed in the Cheyenne culture, and by killing a Crow warrior about to kill another Cheyenne boy, he becomes Little Big Man the Legend. As a teen he goes back to the white culture following his band of warriors getting into a skirmish with soldiers; during succeeding years Jack moves back and forth between the two cultures, never feeling a sense of belonging in either. He wears many hats during this period, from mule skinner to teamster to buffalo hunter to gambler; and during his journey he rubs elbows with some colorful characters, including Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and General George Armstrong Custer. And he survives two massacres: Washita and Little Bighorn, the former a rout by Custer's troops; the latter a massacre by thousands of Lakota and Cheyenne braves. He begins a family in both cultures, only to lose both. Yet still Jack is confounded by who he really is, and where he belongs. At the age of 111, he decides to reveal his claim to have survived Little Bighorn because he's too old to care if anyone believes him or not.
This is one grand tale that will have you steadily turning page after page. If you enjoyed the film, the book is must-read material. (The film has few deviations.) With the exception of McMurtry I haven't wandered very far into the Western genre; with a masterpiece the likes of LITTLE BIG MAN, I might have to sample this genre quite a bit more.
--D. Mikels, Esq.
Snell serves as a somewhat cracked conduit for the swear-it's-true life story of frontiersman Jack Crabb. Snell encounters Jack in an old folks home, for which Jack certainly qualifies: He claims to be 111 years old and recounts several of those years to Snell before reaching "the end of his trail."
Jack's recollections begin in the 1850s when he is separated from his family of would-be Mormons at the age of 10. A meeting for friendly drinks on the prairie with a band of Cheyenne goes horribly wrong. Neither whites nor Indians prove capable of holding their spirits. In fact, by the end of the party, the white men's spirits have taken flight from the corporeal world altogether, leaving physical bodies skewered and cleft.
The women decide to turn back to the protection of Fort Laramie, but Jack's mannish, whip-wielding sister, Caroline, announces that she and Jack will take up with the Cheyenne, surprising the Indians as much as her little brother. "It's useless to speculate about what she thought she knew or what she imagined, because they was always all mixed together."
When Caroline realizes a life of exotic romance is not in store (in fact, the Indians are shocked to discover she's female), she steals a pony and sneaks off, leaving Jack with the tribe. "My own position turned out to be orphan attached to the chief's lodge, which gave me the right to benevolent consideration from the whole family just as if I was related to them by blood. ... The women were obliged to give me clothes and food, and the men to see I grew up into a man." The Cheyenne, led by Old Lodge Skins, teach Jack "the way of the Human Beings."
Jack, though still a boy and small in stature, comes off pretty manly during a horse-thieving skirmish against a rival band of Crow, so Old Lodge Skins renames Jack "Little Big Man."
Despite frequent fatalities, war among the tribes is a relatively good-natured activity, but it's becoming clear that something's going to have to be done about those pesky white people. "The Army didn't fight by the rules and no doubt would not have if they knew them." A grand war council is convened, and plans are made to "rub them out." Jack has little problem with the concept in theory, but when confronted by a saber-waving cavalry charge barreling straight for him, "one big mowing machine with many hundred bright blades that chopped into dust all life before it and spewed it out behind," he can't scrub the warpaint off his face fast enough.
So begins Jack's reversion to white man status. He's adopted by the Rev. Silas Pendrake and subjected to the civilizing influence of church, school, female duplicity, sexual hangups and pneumonia. "I believed my blood was getting watery from the lack of raw buffalo liver. The only thing I learned so far that seemed to take real root was lustful yearnings, and the Reverend told me they was wrong."
Jack finds that his years living among Human Beings have made him ill-equipped for city life. He runs away to the grubby gold-prospecting encampment that's growing into what will become Denver. He's more comfortable among the mule skinners trading there, but when they're set upon by his former brethren of the Cheyenne, he's quick to assert his affinity for the Indians. Although Old Lodge Skins welcomes him back, Jack has become too familiar with white man's progress to believe the Cheyenne way will last. The whites have dug in, and they're not going anyplace. "I never heard of a natural force that would tear cellar walls from the earth." He advises his foster family to head north and stay away from the whites.
Jack won't be going with them. "I had been doing right well in Denver. I had got onto the idea of ambition. You can't make anything of yourself in the white world unless you grasp that concept. But there isn't even a way to express the idea in Cheyenne."
After the Civil War, the U.S. government is able to devote its undivided attention to eradicating the Indians. In turn, the Cheyenne hook up with the Sioux and Arapaho to terrorize white settlements. In the tit-for-tat hostilities, Jack loses a white wife and child and gains an Indian replacement set.
Ralph Fielding Snell observes that "Jack Crabb seemed to specialize in the art or craft of coincidence." Jack is always perfectly positioned in front-row seats for the major events in Western history, personally interacting with the major players. He works the Colorado gold rush, witnesses the cross-country extension of the Union Pacific, takes part in the extinction of the buffalo. He meets Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp and the luciferian-nicknamed Son of the Morning Star, George Armstrong Custer. The arrogant cavalry general provides a white counterpoint to Old Lodge Skins as the father figure who has the biggest impact on Jack.
Jack is a man perpetually straddling a spiritual border: Among whites, he feels Indian; among Indians, he sees himself as "white to the core." And generally, he has the bad timing to be on whichever side is losing at the moment.
All this vacillation between societies might make Jack appear unsympathetic as a character, a man without strong loyalties. As soon as his life is threatened, he switches persona, abandoning friends, family and lovers. It's a device by which author Thomas Berger can show both sides of the conflict. Jack encounters very few clear-cut good guys or bad guys in the white population centers. The Indians are neither the nobles of James Fenimore Cooper's novels nor the savages of George Armstrong Custer's prejudices. All of them are part of the same cast of fools myopically clawing for meatier parts in the epic tragicomedy of Western expansion. The Cheyenne refer to themselves as Human Beings to assert their superiority over others, but their actions throughout the book are just as likely to live down as live up to that term. Even Custer, the closest thing the book has to a villain, is portrayed as more of a preening fool and an egotistical loon.
Lest the historians complain, Berger makes it clear that Jack Crabb is quite likely full of beans (and keep in mind the additional filter of Ralph Fielding Snell). Jack is spinning a yarn in which the facts don't stand a chance against the truth. "Little Big Man" is what would generally be referred to as a "revisionist" western, though that can be a term by which critics reveal their ignorance of the genre, and it tends to belittle and downplay the mature groundwork laid by practitioners of that genre before the serious literary types came along to play. Revisionist westerns seldom revise as much as they think they do, but the best of them reside comfortably alongside the classics. OF the genre, not outside it or above it or, worst of all, transcending it.
"Little Big Man" is a damn fine western. It's also a damn fine piece of literature if you're one of those insecure Yankee types.
Top reviews from other countries
Ce roman, duquel le film est tiré, est encore meilleur.
Un vrai plaisir









