It Is a Good Day to Die: Indian Eyewitnesses Tell the Story of the Battle of Little Big Horn

By: Herman J. Viola

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Synopsis: I was not sorry at all. I was a happy boy. Those white men had come to kill our mothers and fathers and us, and it was our country (Black Elk, Oglala Sioux). Known to generations of white Americans as "Custer's Last Stand" or the Battle of Little Bighorn, it was, to the Plains Indians, the Battle of the Greasy Grass--a great, if short-lived victory against the whites who would soon overrun their country and destroy their way of life. Now, for the first time in a book for children, the story of the Greasy Grass battle is told from the Indian point of view, in a series of dramatic eyewitness vignettes. Assembled from the recollections of twelve Indian participants in the battle, the book is divided into thirty brief chapters that, together, create a compelling narrative of the battle and the events that preceded it: Sitting Bull's vision of white soldiers falling into his camp "like grasshoppers," Custer's impetuous advance and attack, and finally, his dramatic defeat. An introduction and epilogue provide the historical context and a chronology, bibliographic note, maps, and more than a dozen archival photographs make this an outstanding curriculum item. The voices assembled here create a dramatic memorial to a fabled event in the history of the American West.