The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 488

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

with Company H of the Sixth Cavalry caught up with Little Bull's band of about
sixty at middle Sappa Creek at a bend later named Cheyenne Hole. At dawn,
Henely moved in with the cavalry, demanded that the Cheyenne surrender, and
when the troops received fire, attacked the camp. After suffering significant loss-
es, Little Bull and Dirty Water attempted negotiations but, according to
Cheyenne sources, a Cheyenne warrior killed a Sergeant Papier when he came
out to talk. At the end of three hours the cavalry had lost two soldiers and
Henely reported that twenty-seven Cheyennes had been killed, including eight
women and children. Monnett estimates that half of the Cheyennes made it to
their pony herd and escaped.
Monnett's probing analysis of the sources on Sappa Creek and the ensuing
memoir accounts, Cheyenne oral history, and secondary assessments offer an
excellent model of how to deal with a controversial incident, conflicting perspec-
tives, and the shifting values being applied. Monnett effectively addresses a num-
ber of charges against Henely and warns against presentism and the application
of current values to the past. Yet he recognizes the similarities of Lieutenant
Henely and Medicine Water's attitudes and expresses considerable sympathy for
the Cheyenne perspective on Sappa Creek and the large conquest they faced, a
conquest of their space, of resources like the buffalo, of their society and culture,
and of warriors like Medicine Water by ambitious military officers like Henely.
California State University, Northridge THOMAS R. MADDUX
Slavery, Secession, and Southern Hzstory. Edited by Robert Louis Paquette and Louis
A. Ferleger. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2oo0. Pp. xvi+229.
Preface, abbreviations, contributors, index. ISBN o-8139-1951-7. $49.50,
cloth.)
Rarely do books suffer from titles that are too brief, but this one should have
been subtitled "Essays in Response to the Writings of Eugene D. Genovese." Few
historians, the editors point out, have done more than Genovese to shape schol-
arship on the South during the past half century. So, in response, they have pub-
lished a collection of essays that "refine, extend, and even challenge Genovese's
work while making their own distinctive contribution to the study of slavery,
secession, and southern history" (p. xv).
An introduction by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman points out that
Genovese's work on slavery changed interpretations of the institution, especially
by its emphasis on the slaves' culture. Section I presents essays by David Brion
Davis, Robert L. Paqette, and Peter A Colcanis. Davis focuses on how the human-
ity of the slave, a point constantly emphasized by Genovese, made it impossible
to continue holding people as property. Paquette emphasizes the role of slave
drivers as leaders rather than lackeys. Colcanis explains the task system of labor
in terms of a complex interplay between the ultimate control of planters and the
agency of slaves in determining how the system actually worked.
Section II presents essays by Clyde N. Wilson, Douglas Ambrose, Drew Faust,
and Thavolia Glymph on various aspects of secession. Faust, for example, uses

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