Hundred in the Hand by Joseph Marshall, $16.95. | The first of two novels in his Lakota Western series, Joseph Marshall's "Hundred in the Hand" is an insightful telling of events leading up to the fateful and tragic battle of the same name, also known as the Fetterman Battle of 1866. Tragic because the battle was to preface the eventual end of a way of life; fateful because the event proved inevitable.
Initially, the Lakota only watch as the steady stream of gold seekers invade their land and the Long Knives build a fort. The wise men among the tribe believe that though they are the finer horse warriors, the white men have come only to kill. If the Lakota don't resist, they will have defeated themselves. Putting aside the differences among tribes, they decide to fight the common enemy.
As plans for a showdown begin, the story is seen through the eyes of Cloud, who fights with Crazy Horse. But standing behind them is the intrepid Rabbit, an eager young Lakota who overcomes the loss of a hand, and Sweetwater, Cloud's wife, a red-haired white woman, abandoned as a baby and now part of the tribe.
The turning point comes with the arrival at the fort of a new officer, Capt. William Fetterman. Ambitious and hungry for glory, he is eager to go on the offensive against "the savages." Then the winter cold and snow move in. And, with their plans now in place, the Lakota and their allies - the Cheyenne and Arapaho - watch and wait as they draw the Long Knives into their deadly trap.
Backed by a glossary of Lakota and Euro-American place names, the Lakota calendar as well as excellent maps, the author tells a suspenseful story that brings readers not only an inside look at the Lakota way of life but also an important perspective to a defining event in the history of the American West.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes a regular column on new regional fiction.

Marshall, Joseph M., III. Hundred in the Hand. Fulcrum. (Lakota Westerns). Sept. 2007. c.392p. ISBN 978-1-55591-653-4. pap. $16.95.
On December 21, 1866, Capt. William J. Fetterman of the Second U.S. Calvary, his entire command of 79 soldiers (both calvary and infantry), and two civilians followed decoys led by Crazy Horse into a planned ambush and were annihilated by Sioux and allied forces. After Gen. George C. Custer's defeat, this was the single largest loss suffered by the cavalry during the Indian Wars on the Great Plains. Launching a new historical series that offers a Native American perspective on Western history, Lakota native Marshall, a distinguished author of nine other books, tells the story of the ambush from the Lakota point of view. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and many others worked hard to spring this trap on the arrogant Captain Fetterman, and then tale of their struggles against the Long Knives is a grave and sympathetic portrayal of a vanishing lifestyle and people. Marshall, who has also been an actor and consultant on the television series Into the West, believes that people can understand one another better by knowing one another's stories. Billed as a Lakota Western, this is instead a fine historical novel in a class with Larry McMurtry's tales of life on the Western frontier. Highly recommended for all collections of Western Americana.--Ken St. Andre, Phoenix P.L.

Red Cloud's War
A new series of Westerns told from the Native American point of view.
Reviewed by David Treuer
Sunday, November 25, 2007; Page BW06
HUNDRED IN THE HAND
By Joseph M. Marshall III
Fulcrum. 375 pp. Paperback, $16.95
I've always suspected that cowboys are really Indians in disguise. Joseph Marshall's astonishing new Western is proof. "Hundred in the Hand" is the Lakota name for what historians have referred to as the Fetterman Massacre, a battle that took place on Dec. 21, 1866, and wiped out all 80 of the U.S. soldiers involved. The battle was part of Red Cloud's War, which concluded in victory for the Lakota and their allies at the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868.
Marshall's novel follows the lives and luck of a handful of Lakota warriors and their families leading up to the battle. Principal among them are Red Cloud and his wife, Sweetwater; his cousin Rabbit, who nurses a hatred for white people as much as he nurses his missing hand, shot off during a conflict with prospectors; and young Crazy Horse, just coming into his powers. We see them in their villages going about their daily lives, on hunting trips, scouting the enemy, making decisions about whether to attack, and, ultimately, planning and carrying out a phenomenal victory over the soldiers garrisoned in Fort Phil Kearny in present-day Wyoming.
Hundred in the Hand is the first in a series of novels published by Fulcrum about the American West written from the Native American perspective. The publisher claims that this book is reminiscent of the oral tradition of Indian storytelling. But for something to jog the memory, we have to know it in the first place, and this novel doesn't evoke Indian storytelling (whatever that is) as much as the tradition of old Westerns. It sounds and reads like a Western, only facing the wrong direction.
Beginning with the Leatherstocking in James Fenimore Cooper's Pioneers, moving through Owen Wister's Virginian and showing no signs of stopping with either Clint Eastwood or Brad Pitt's Jesse James, the cowboy has always been a man living on the margins of society or completely cast out of it, trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world in which his way of life is either threatened or already vanished. The hero-cowboy is ultimately caught up in events that signify both the age that is passing and the one that is to come. In the end he rides off into the sunset -- or dies illuminated by it.
Marshall's Indian heroes are no different. They, too, try to make sense of a world that is being imposed on them. They fight to keep the values they hold dear as alive as the elk that walk down off the mountains only to be brought down with two (zip! zip!) well-placed arrows. This idea of the disappearing Indian is not new, and Marshall wisely borrows the types (stern, stoic, far-seeing, worried) that the genre has to offer in order to tell the story of the West anew. What is interesting is that Cooper, Wister and Zane Grey first created the cowboy persona by imbuing him with the attributes usually ascribed to Indians and Indian cultures, namely, a combination of ability, fearlessness and manliness tinged with a bloom of romantic obsolescence: The days allotted to cowboys and Indians alike are numbered. Cowboys have always been "Indian."
Marshall also gives us a completely realized world. Readers who love to hear a harness creak or the whistle of an arrow or love to see snow snake across a drifted valley floor will revel in Marshall's West. The flora and fauna and the people who use them are magnificently drawn, not overly fancy, nothing that draws too much attention to itself, as in this description of the Big Horn Mountains: "Farther west, beyond the trail, hazy foothills sloped upward until a line of jagged ridges rose like shadowy giants -- the Shining Mountains. Overhead, the glaring orb of the sun was just past the midway point in the cloudless sky, beating down on a hot day in the Moon When Things Ripen. The land was silent. . . . Even the breeze floated cautiously over the sagebrush and sparse grass along the Powder River Road."
Strangely, though, Hundred in the Hand falters in exactly the opposite manner from most Westerns: The Indian characters are fully realized and speak in refreshingly unstilted prose, whereas the white characters sound weird, as though animated by old watch parts and rubber bands. Take this exchange between the white trader Hornsby and the ill-fated Colonel Fetterman:
" 'Captain, as soon as the weather breaks, I am heading south to Fort Laramie to then find the fastest way home. So if you are bound to have this talk, let us make it soon.'
"Fetterman smiled and extended his hand. 'Then let us make it tomorrow evening. We can meet in the officers' quarters. I have a bottle of cherished Irish whisky for the occasion.' "
Anyone who uses the phrase "cherished Irish whisky" deserves what's coming to him. But then again, Westerns have always traded in the ideal, rather than the real. In Marshall's story, the white soldiers are really awful and deserve to die. The brave warriors are very brave and deserve to live. Feelings -- Red Cloud's concern for his wife, Hornsby's jealousy upon seeing a white woman married to an Indian -- are fully realized only to the extent that characters in Westerns can afford them. Marshall has tapped into an old form and infused it with a slightly different brand of knowledge to produce a swift, compelling read. Simply put, if you like Westerns, you'll love this one.

Hundred in the Hand
By Joseph Marshall III
Book Review by Bob Reece, January 2008
Webmaster’s Note: Joseph Marshall, descended from warriors who fought Custer along the Little Bighorn River, is one of the original co-founders of the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Mr. Marshall dedicated Hundred in the Hand to two Lakota warriors who were both killed in Iraq: Brent L. Lundstrom in 2006 and Sheldon R. Hawk Eagle in 2003. Lakota warriors continue to die fighting for their country.
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Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry, Elmore Leonard, William W. Johnstone, Elmer Kelton, and Thomas Berger were great writers of the western novel; and all are white men. Finding a good western to relax with as written by an American Indian has been almost impossible until now. Joseph Marshall, a Sicangu Lakota, helps fill that void with his historical novel, Hundred in the Hand, the story of a Lakota band and their determination to close the Bozeman Trail to white men.
Mr. Marshall’s main character is the warrior Cloud, who is to Hundred in the Hand as Jack Crabb was to Berger’s Little Big Man. Mr. Marshall begins his story in the summer of 1920 when the elder Cloud visits the Fetterman Battlefield along with his two daughters and grandson. Naturally, the children convince their father to tell his story, and especially what happened to him while fighting against Fetterman and the Long Knifes on that cold December day in 1866.
Mr. Marshall weaves his story and its many characters together in a clear and precise voice. The people we meet are well developed; some are historical like Crazy Horse and Big Nose, but most are fictional. Mr. Marshall accurately explains the many historic events that take place throughout the novel.
Most importantly, Mr. Marshall has succeeded where other great western novelists have failed. Their failure was not intentional; it was due to a lack of understanding of a different culture. In Cloud’s world, we are not exposed to the usual Indian stereotypes, or erroneous revelations of spiritual ceremonies so often described by white anthropologists. Also, Mr. Marshall makes clear how the coming of the white man impacted the Lakota people. Even with that dark horizon looming, Cloud has families to come home to: a cup of tea and conversations with friends around a warm fire; good food and laughter; love; and ambitions. It turns out the Lakota world really doesn’t seem so different from yours or mine, even in 1866. Maybe that’s the moral of the story?
Hundred in the Hand is most daring during those moments when Cloud, Crazy Horse, and fellow warriors spy on and harass the Long Knifes as they venture out of the Log Town (Ft. Phil Kearny) to gather the much needed firewood. The warriors must leave their women and children behind, and there is constant fear for their families’ future if their plans do not succeed, so the warrior’s frustrations grow when attempts to ambush the Long Knifes fail. There is also a sense of desperation throughout the novel which is not always due to the conflicts along the Bozeman Trail. The Lakota debate among themselves over what it means with more and more whites traveling along the road. Should they let events run their course and hope the whites will go away, or should the warriors destroy the intruders and if so, how.
Mr. Marshall’s account of the Fetterman Battle is dramatic and accurate. Some readers might find that it may not be as detailed as they wish. For me, the battle provides satisfying closure for the characters with which I fell in love and that is a strength of the story.
I am excited about Hundred in the Hand and what it precludes. It is the first in a series of novels written from the American Indian perspective that Fulcrum Publishing of Golden, Colorado plans to publish. Hundred in the Hand concludes with Cloud telling his children, “The Greasy Grass is north of here […] Maybe we can go. I have not been there since that time.” Mr. Marshall continues Cloud’s dramatic story in the sequel, The Long Knives Are Crying due fall of 2008.

MARSHALL, Joseph M. III. Hundred in the Hand, a novel. (Lakota Westerns.) Fulcrum. 371p. maps. c2007. 978-1-55591-653-4. $16.95 JSA
Joseph Marshall is a Lakota Sioux who grew up on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Often published as a historian of his people, Marshall here presents his first novel in a proposed series of Lakota Westerns. Cloud, the central character, is a young Sioux warrior who sees the "Long Knives," the American army, especially those stationed at Fort Kearny, as a threat to the Lakota nation and its way of life. He and the leaders of the Sioux and Cheyenne who live along the Bozeman Trail plot carefully and successfully carry out the battle of "Hundred in the Hand," killing 80 soldiers in what is known to American history as the Fetterman massacre of 1866.
Marshall claims to write his story in the traditional oral style of the Lakota. Traditional or not, the novel is written in an excellent storytelling style. Cloud and his young redheaded wife (the Lakota found her as a two-year-old wandering lost on the Plains) search to find and maintain their identity as Lakota in the midst of an ever-invading line of blue-clad soldiers and covered wagons full of settlers. Fast-moving battle scenes are interwoven with an account of the birth of Cloud's first child in a symbolic ending to this well-told tale. Patricia Moore, Chestnut Hill, MA

First in a series of novels about the American West from the Lakota perspective, Marshall tells the events leading up to the 1866 battle known as the Hundred in the Hand by the Lakota, and the Fetterman Battle or Massacre by the U.S. Army. It's both a victory for the Lakota and a turning point for both sides in the Indian Wards of the 19th century.
The warrior Cloud, confederate of a young Crazy Horse, is the story's main protagonist, but the story abounds with good characterizations and viewpoints throughout: from Rabbit, a loner who becomes a cold killer, to Hornsby, a misplaced New Englander, obsessed and manipulated once he views Sweetwater, Cloud's wife, whose red hair betrays her as Lakota in all ways except blood heritage.
Marshall's spare, lyrical style lends itself well to the story. The talk Cloud has with Black Shield about the journey toward manhood is both profound and moving. With its inevitable sadness and misunderstandings, this is a history that belongs to all of us. And with its latest foray into fiction, the highly respected Fulcrum Publishing has taken a sure step indeed. This Western transcends its genre. Highly recommended.

This is a superbly written Western, but from the unique point of view of a Native American. Cloud, a Lakota warrior, is married to a red headed Anglo woman raised by Cloud’s tribe since they discovered her as a toddler left behind by a wagon train. We meet the young but immensely competent Crazy Horse. Cloud’s wife prompts some US soldiers to believe she is a captive. The story culminates in what is known as, in White Man’s history, as the Fetterman Massacre, which is called the Battle of Hundred in the Hand in Lakota oral history. This book smacks of ‘Dances with Wolves,” but is far more native oriented. We ranked this a high five hearts.

Ghosts rise from history's mist to again take field of battle
This book, written by a Lakota Sioux, is a fictionalized account of what the Sioux remember as the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand in 1866 near Fort Phil Keamy in What is now Wyoming.
Non-Indian accounts of the battle have generally called it the Fetterman Massacre, so named after Capt. William Fetterman of the U.S. Army who, on a frigid winter's day, led his force of 79 soldiers into a carefully planned Sioux ambush."
Fetterman and all of his men were killed, as were four civilians accompanying them.
Joseph M. Marshall III, a New Mexico resident who remembers hearing stories of the battle from his parents and grandparents when he was a child, begins his tale in 1920 when an 81-year-old man revisits the site of the bloodshed.
The old man, John Richard Cloud, gazing at the memorial plaque, tells his own children: "It was a hard fight. The toughest battle I can remember."
He'd been a 27-year-old Sioux warrior, known simply as Cloud, when he'd fought here under the leadership of the Lakota war chief Red Cloud. The story Cloud tells his own children puts them, and the reader, into the thick of the battle but also includes details from the point-of-view of other characters. Characters who are nonfictional include the young Crazy Horse and the foolish Fetterman.
Fort Kearny referred to by the Sioux as "the town of log walls" had been built for the protection of whites moving along the Bozeman Trail, including miners chasing after dreams of gold.
"There seems to be an endless supply of them, like mosquitoes, and only a few of us human beings," complains the father of one of the Sioux warriors as more white people than ever follow the trail through traditional Lakota hunting grounds, sometimes escorted by detachments of "Long Knives," or soldiers.
"The difference is mosquitoes only want our blood; the whites want everything. I am afraid it is past the time to swat them away." The fort itself, Marshall writes, "was like a thorn embedded firmly into a palm, and as hard to pull out." Or, as Cloud describes it, the fort was "like a bothersome boil on a beautiful face."
Marshall uses several point-of-view characters on both sides of the combat, but most of the narrative is related as lived by Cloud and his family and fellow warriors.
The title comes from a scene in which an Indian, "who had the power to see into the future," went off alone for a while and then came back "saying he had a few soldiers in his hands."
But the Sioux wanted to kill more than a few, and sent the man out twice more, until he returned saying he had a hundred soldiers in his hand. "So," Cloud recalls, "we knew there would be a victory."
The story proceeds at a rather stately (and occasionally plodding) pace in sections that don't include the several episodes of killing. But the battle scenes swirl with action.

Hundred in the Hand is a beautifully written story about the Lakota Peoples, their way of life and their struggle to survive during a time of radical change for the Native American tribes... Marshall has woven historical facts with a touching story of a young white woman who was raised by the Sioux and married a young warrior... a story of young love and fierce battles and is a very moving novel.