“When a drunken major ordered Lieutenant John J Dunbar to an abandoned army post, the war-weary soldier suddenly found himself alone, beyond the edge of civilization, with only a wolf and some roving Comanches for company. Thievery and survival soon forced Dunbar into the Indian Camp, where he began a dangerous adventure that changed his life forever. Each day in the wilderness, Dunbar became more Indian, learning the ways of a proud and glorious people.But when his past came back to haunt him and he was facedwith the greatest decisionof his life, Dunbar discovered who the real savages were and where his loyalties lay” - Back cover summary.
I can now understand why my husband both loves and hates this book, as well as the movie it is based on. The characters are wonderful, and you become attached to each one as their lives are played out before us in the text. However, it’s hard to ignore the very real fact of what the white people did to the Indians - we drove them from their homelands, murdered their livelihood by slaughtering buffallo for no reason…we called them savages, yet that is what we are, and what we will continue to be if we force ourselves on other cultures and peoples as we have the Indians. A+ book - it shed a much better light on Indians than what was given in school.
