When I was growing up in small-town Texas, in the 1950s', in a country surrounded by sky, mesquite and irrigated wheat fields, I spent my Saturday afternoons at the movies.
Life was good. We kids walked three blocks, to the town's lone main street, and the lady tending the box office let us in free because we were the preacher's kids; it was pop corn, hot dog heaven.
Best of all, we lived and breathed cowboy and Indian drama with movie stars like James Stewart, Glen Ford, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and John Wayne.
Those movies were about brave men fighting it out with natives, outlaws and each other. Gun smoke filled the streets, bugles carried Charge on the wind, while the good guys (all white) galloped in a determined line toward the enemy (most of whom were white actors painted with some kind of brown gook).
But in the 70s', the movies changed. Now the Indians were the good guys and the whites were the bad guys, imperialist, stone-hearted bastards gobbling up Indian land and culture while the Indians sat alone on hill tops, palms to the sky, worshiping the Great Spirit.
The same thing happened with books, both fiction and non-fiction.
At some point, I doubted both versions of history and began reading books which chronicle the American frontier.
On the Border With Crook, by Capt. John Bourke, third cavalry, On the Border With Mackenzie, by Capt. Robert Carter, fourth cavalry, Conquering the Southern Plains, edited by Pete Cozzens, Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynne, and dozens more, were a revelation.
Here's the truth:
Everyone was right
Everyone was wrong
And everyone got hurt.
Scalp Mountain, an ebook on sale at Amazon.com, is my attempt to describe this uniquely American tragedy, through the lives of fictional characters.
