Joseph M. Marshall, IIIReviews

3.5/5

I want to give this a higher rating, because I learned a lot about Native Americans, and the journey with Grandfather and Jimmy was an excellent way to narrate, but the writing was so stiff. Every time Jimmy answered his grandfather with “For reals?”, I cringed. There was a lack of complex reflection on Jimmy’s part and it seems that it is in part due to the writing. Frustrating, but still valuable to read.

The footsteps of Crazy Hourse, is a book that contains different Native American stories. This book could be used in the classroom to talk about the Native American culture.

This book is good for an intermediate or secondary age group. It's about a young Sioux boy's experience growing up and being taught by his grandfather about Crazy Horse. I would have this in my classroom to inform students about an important historical figure through the lens of a relatable main character.

This book would be good for upper elementary or middle school grades. It is about a young Lakota boy learning about crazy horse and his heritage from oral stories from his grandfather. I would use this as a book for a book project.

Homespun stories which illustrate the resourcefulness of the Lakota in making do in whatever situation they find themselves, whether it be a blizzard or governmental restrictions. Gus' innate friendliness brings him needed transportation in another story. "When the Grasses Talk" and "the Birthday Turtle" are studies in observation of the natural world, memory of former observations, and using them to interpret what has happened.
About half the chapters are essays instructive of Lakota history. These were more dry and not my preferred listening. Yet I'll put this title on my Wishlist for a print copy for the enjoyment of the fiction.

Mjög fræðandi frásögn um samfélag Lakota indjána í N.-Ameríku bæði áður en hvíti maðurinn kom til Ameríku og til dagsins í dag. Stór hluti bókarinnar, sérstaklega fyrri hlutinn fjallar um sigur Lakota ættbálksins á 7. riddaraliðsdeildinni við Little Bighorn eftir að hún réðst á tjaldbúðir indjánanna.
Gallinn við þessa bók er hve einhliða hún er og endurtekur sig að miklu leyti í umfjöllunni um átökin við Little Bighorn.

This is a nice book, exploring Lakota heritage and oral history and standing up for oneself against bullying. Also about listening to your elders and the many different points of view in a story. Not actually nonfiction, but a great history read for reluctant readers.

Boy learns more about himself by exploring his Lakota heritage and the life of Crazy Horse.

Alternating between the nineteenth century and the present, a teenager comes to appreciate the legacy of his ancestors and how he can honor his Lakota heritage. Map, Author’s Note, Glossary, Bibliography

traditional virtues illustrated by tales

Wonderful

I love the way this biography of Crazy Horse is told, by a Lakota grandfather sharing the stories with his grandson as they travel the lands where the events happened. Through the stories he imparts lessons about courage, context, family, and responsibility, as well as a people's connection to a land and a way if life that is in many ways outside of their reach because of the policies and practices of the United States.½

Learned a lot - a little dry.

Recommended Ages: Gr. 3-6

Plot Summary: Jimmy is being made fun of on his reservation because of his lighter hair and blue eyes. His grandfather wants to instill pride in his and takes him on a road trip adventure following the footsteps of Crazy Horse. They stop at important landmarks for his grandfather to tell the stories.

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Personal Thoughts: This book had too much action/history and not enough character development for me. However the story told from the Native perspective is VERY important and accessible to kids.

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One of the great outgrowths of doing the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge is that I have found some genres and subject matter I would not have read before, and have made them central to my reading choices. Books by indigenous writers are one of those subsets. The BR challenge coincided with my spending a couple of years living in North Dakota, and for the first time in my life bearing witness to rez life, and having the opportunity to count among my friends, colleagues and acquaintances a number of Native American people, most from one or another of the Sioux tribes. So over the last couple years I have read about a dozen books from indigenous authors, mostly from Native American writers, but a couple from Down Under as well. This year I am looking to expand to Canada and Central America, and then expand again beyond indigenous people to all colonized people. It has been incredibly illuminating so far and I expect this will continue to teach me about the world.

This book, The Lakota Way, was a particular joy. Marshall has distilled the most prized values of Lakota ethics/religion/life to its most bedrock tenets. For each tenet he has included a couple of folkloric stories, and personal reminiscences. Marshall concludes the book with a brief history of European efforts to destroy the Lakota, and really all the Sioux and Ojibwe people. I recently finished The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, so the historical portions covered things mostly quite fresh in my mind, but still, the way he boiled it down to essential events was effective and illuminating. Also illuminating, the wonderful stories in this book. I find myself looking at my own life and choices differently, and I am generally not as given to self-reflection as, perhaps, I ought to be. I hate the trope of the the wise old Indian, I have no doubt there are as many foolish Native Americans as there are foolish European, or Latin, or Asian, or African Americans. Marshall though is in fact a wise old (or at least middle-aged) Indian. So wise. And a wonderful storyteller. I listened to this book, read by the author, and his storytelling made this very special for me.

I recommend this to all readers. It is a simply remarkable book. My son will be 21 in a couple weeks, but when he was younger we often read books simultaneously and then discussed them, and this would be an exceptional choice for for readers middle school and above. (Nothing inappropriate for younger readers, but there are grand concepts most kids under the age of 11 or 12 would not fully grasp.)

The various Sioux tribes of the Great Plains in the 19th century had a reputation as being some of the toughest and wildest Indians. They were the Indians who in popular imagination swooped onto settlers crossing the plains in covered wagons. They were sometimes seen as animals to be exterminated. Atrocities were committed by both sides. Cultural cliches show the Sioux as tough warriors and not multi-dimensional humans who laughed, loved, had families and responsibilities. Into this gap steps actor/historian Marshall (born 1946) who was raised in a traditional Lakota household. He gives a human biography to one of the fiercest warriors, and does so from a Lakota perspective. Much time is spent on Crazy Horse's early life and upbringing, and of course his role at Little Bighorn. We gain a deeper understanding of how the Lakota saw the conflict, what motivated them, how they organized and saw their place in the world. The book feels accurate and transportive, the vocabulary and cultural information is rich due to Marshall's Lakota background.

Although published in 2004 you wouldn't know because it feels timeless. One aspect that disturbed me is Crazy Horse's one-man crusade to kill gold prospectors in the Black Hills, sneaking up on them and blowing them away, day after day. This is a significant atrocity regardless of justification and I think it shouldn't be forgotten along with his heroic deeds, he was also a cold blooded mass killer. The Nez Perce for example did not commit deeds like this, not systematically, it was more than merely par for the times. He was probably about to be tried and hanged by Federal authorities but events intervened.

A series of essays on the history of the Lakota tribe of Native Americans. Sad, tragic, frustrating. A history of how the Lakota has been mistreated. And of how they are struggling to maintain their culture. It's awful that "Americans" involve themselves in so many people's struggles, all across the globe, yet we turn away from the situation facing people in "our" own country.

JJoseph M. Marshall III is a member of the Lakota nation and he has written other books about Crazy Horse, his childhood hero. This is his biography written for younger readers. Eleven year-old Jimmy McClean is 3/4 Lakota, but his 1/4 Scottish gave him his looks. He is teased about not being a real Lakota by older boys at school. When school gets out for the summer, Jimmy's grandfather, Nyles High Eagle, invites him to go on a road trip. Jimmy loves spending time with his grandfather, so jumps at the chance. This is not just any ordinary trip, this trip will take them on a journey to follow in the footsteps of Crazy Horse, the Lakota hero and leader who lived in the 1800s. One of the first things Jimmy learns is that Crazy Horse was also teased as a boy because he had light coloring and brown hair. In fact, Crazy Horse's name as a boy was Light Hair. The journey takes them through South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. At each stop, Grandpa Nyles tells Jimmy how that area played an important part in the life of Crazy Horse and the Lakota. He explains what happened and why it happened. Jimmy learns that standing up for what you believe in is important and that strength comes from within.

For most readers, you have heard these stories from the perspective of the "Long Knives" or soldiers, but this story is from the perspective of the native people. I enjoyed learning about Crazy Horse and his struggles to defend the Lakota people from the encroachment of white settlers, gold miners and the US Army. One of the interesting things noted was the monument at the Battle of Little Big Horn. It states that General Custer and his battalion were defeated and there were no survivors, but Grandfather Nyles reminds Jimmy, there were survivors, the Lakota. We also learn about the strategy of the warriors that was successful at this battle. One thing I really liked was that Grandfather Nyles repeatedly stated that war should not be glorified and that all soldiers that died need to be remembered for their bravery and honour. The final stop on their trip is where Crazy Horse surrenders. The story explains why the Native People surrendered to the soldiers.

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse is a well written story. The author explains that most of his information came from oral stories told by the Lakota as well as some other published works. The story is almost like a storyteller sharing this life of Crazy Horse with the reader. Jimmy and Grandpa Nyles are not fully part of the story except that they are the storyteller and receiver. It is an easy story to understand and follow and would make a great addition to a school or public library. A great middle grade story.

Excellent

Memories and oral teachings from the Lakota People. (I highly recommend the audio version).

A combination of essays and short stories based on events that occurred on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

I bought this book on vacation in South Dakota and read it all through while I was there. We didn't ever visit the historic battle site like I thought that I would (I was not the planner of the itinerary,) but there was still something to reading this book while in (near) the landscape it was talking about.

This book sometimes felt more like a series of essays, as there were thoughts and stories repeated over in successive chapters, without necessarily feeling like it acknowledge that you'd read it before.

This is not just the story of the battle, but how it got to that point, and then the far-reaching consequences. A needed perspective, especially now in the time of NoDAPL and other modern activism. In fact, maybe the storytelling of this book was sometimes repetitive in view of the fact that history itself is repetitive and cyclical -- these same patterns happening over and over again. If we want to push on this cycle, bend it with a view to justice, it helps to have an understanding of the past.

I was excited for the potential this novel offered, but should have paid more attention to the blurbs on the back before I began. Instead, I dove right in and was pleased to find a character my students could relate to: eleven-year-old Jimmy, 3/4 Lakota, 1/4 Scottish. According to his mother, "the problem is...your three Lakota parts are all hidden inside. Your one white part is on the outside." Questioning identity and being teased for not fitting in is a problem many middle school students face. Jimmy's grandfather decides to remedy the problem by taking him on a road trip in the footsteps of Crazy Horse, the famous Lakota warrior who was also teased for his light hair and skin. I was so hoping that this road trip would develop into a character study of both Jimmy and Crazy Horse, but it focused instead on the geography of the Lakota lands, the biography of Crazy Horse, and the strategies of war. Jimmy does learn about courage in the end, but the transformation didn't feel satisfying. According to Debbie Reese, this book "provides insights and stories that you don't get from academic historians." That is true, and if I had approached this novel with the intent of learning history and geography, I would have enjoyed it much more.

I discovered this little book in our collection the other day as I was poking through our basement books as I often do, just to remind myself of what is there. I didn't remember buying it, or even seeing it there before, but as my family is going through some difficulties right now it seemed that it may have appeared in front of me for a reason. I chose to honor the sign, if that's what it was, and give it a read.

This is a gentle, down to earth book of encouragement. It does not sugar coat reality but instead emphasizes the duality of all aspects of life and the importance of taking another step, no matter how weary you are, or how small that step is. Life is difficult, and those steps will be hard, but you must keep going, and in facing down those storms, you will gain strength.

I found it really interesting to read this book, to get to experience the American history, happenings and the West through the Lakota Native American's perspective.

We get to follow Cloud, a Young Lakota warrior and his and his comrades experiences with the White Americans, or the Long Knives. We get to meet Young warriors, shamans and the well known Lakota warrior leader Crazy Horse.

I listened to this book and greatly appreciated that it was the authour himself Reading Cloud's parts of the book. Having it read by the author makes the story come to alive even more, as Marshall III knows how to read his own work, with pace, breaks, tones etcetera. His dialect made the story even more alive. I also liked that when we got to follow the American Soldier that it was read differently (by someone else than the author, I didn't pick up on that) and with heavy accent as well.

Maybe the book deserves more closer to a 4, but it took me a while to get through it.