I’ve always thought Peter Matthiessen was a terrible writer. I’ll be up front about that right from the start. The fact that he was a CIA agent doesn’t do much to lend him credibility either. But the story of Leonard Peltier and the American Indian Movement (AIM) is important enough for me to overlook the shortcomings of the author and take In the Spirit of Crazy Horse into serious consideration.
This copiously researched and overwrought work on recent Native American Indian history begins with an account of Crazy Horse, Geronimo, General Custer, and the massacre at Wounded Knee in South Darkota. After some commentary on stolen land and treaties that were never upheld by the U.S. government, the story is brought into more recent times by briefly telling the story of AIM and how leaders like Russel Means, Dennis Banks, John Trudell and other lesser known men formed the militant activist group at the end of the 1960s. The group was loosely organized and made up of urban Indians, mostly from the West coast. They came into prominence in the early ‘70s when they occupied the Oglala reservation of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. This led to a brief standoff with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the FBI that brought AIM into the spotlight of national politics and won them support among Native peoples all across the country. Matthiessen follows this section up with an account of the trials that came after.
Up to this point, the story is straight forward and easy to follow since it goes along an ordinary linear path. Matthiessen’s style is not known for being direct, precise, or clear, but in these opening chapters he manages to keep a tight rein on his language so the audience doesn’t get lost so soon. The opening chapter on Wounded Knee feels arbitrary and unnecessary, especially for anybody who knows about American history. It could have been left out or shortened, but it doesn’t do any real damage to the book. The problems come later. At least these sections do a good job of setting the tone and context for what comes next.
What does come next is the whole heart of the story. In June of 1975, two FBI agents drove onto the Pine Ridge reservation with a huge entourage of FBI and BIA agents, SWAT teams, a gang of thugs, and a right wing militia group, while a spotter airplane flew overhead. A group of AIM members were camping on the reservation with a cache of weapons. Nobody knows how it started, but a firefight began. The two FBI agents were shot point blank and one AIM activist named Leonard Peltier was later charges and convicted of murder.
This whole chapter is confusing. I have to say, that is not Peter Matthiessen’s fault. He tells the story several times from the points of view provided by several different witnesses. Since most of them were either firing guns or hiding to avoid being shot, you can’t expect any of them to provide a clear explanation of what happened. As muddled and difficult as this part of the book can be, Matthiessen still holds your attention enough to keep you reading and guessing what will happen.
The inevitable next section of the story is the arrest of Peltier and some others and their two trials for murder. The prosecution does a terrible job in both trials, resulting in a finding of not guilty in the first and guilty in the second, the one in which Leonard Peltier got sentenced to life imprisonment. Matthiessen demonstrates how insufficient the prosecution’s case was in both and how they broke the law in their conduct by intimidating witnesses, tampering with evidence, and withholding necessary documents from the defense. If Matthiessen’s account of these trials is accurate, then there is more than sufficient reason for Peltier to be allowed a retrial. If Matthiessen’s account isn’t accurate, then it is because he is guilty of massively cherry picking his information. Given what I know about Leonard Peltier, I think the former is more believable than the latter and I would prefer to just go along with the author. But what comes later in the book, or more accurately what doesn’t come later, gives me reason to pause and question how trustworthy the author is.
From a simple standpoint of excitement, the beginning of the last section is the most interesting. The imprisoned Leonard Peltier learns of a supposed plot to assassinate him, so he escapes from the penitentiary, only to be caught soon after. If you want any more action to keep the narrative going, you will find it here. This incident leads the author to assert that there is some sort of conspiracy by the FBI to bring down the American Indian Movement. Matthiessen’s theory is that they are working with some corporations to access uranium mines in the Black Hills on the Pine Ride Reservation. Is it a real conspiracy or just a conspiracy theory? We know that the FBI tried to take out other Civil Rights organizations along with other activist groups of the New Left in the 1960s, so it isn’t a far fetched idea. As to why they chose to go after Peltier even though they probably knew he wasn’t guilty, is a bit more complex. It appears they needed to pin the murders on someone, even if it wasn’t the actual murderer and they found it easier to build a case against Peltier than anyone else. As for the assassination plot, I just don’t know. The FBI had Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers assassinated so it can’t be ruled out even if there is testimony from only one man regarding this.
The rest of this last section involves Matthiessen rambling around, talking to various people about various elements related to the case. Except for the two people who claim to have murdered the FBI agents, there isn’t anything here that actually strengthens the author’s argument. It is a disorganized mess of random stuff that is barely, if ever, interesting. It seems that Matthiessen felt he had to include all the information he had gathered even if it didn’t contribute anything of value to the book overall.
The biggest problem with this last section is not its bad writing, but the way in which it makes its one-sidedness so obvious. I have to say that I mostly agree with the author’s stance on the issues addressed, but the absence of opposing points of view make it look suspicious. There is one passage where the author has a phone conversation with FBI agent David Price, but Price does little more than talk in circles without ever saying much of anything. He obfuscates the FBI’s case rather than clarifies it. It doesn’t stand firmly as an attempt at providing a counter-argument. Matthiessen should have cut down on all the testimony from AIM members and sympathizers, who sound like nothing more than yes-men and yes-women, and included more from the government’s point of view. It would have made the story more complete and I don’t think it would have hurt his thesis. It probably would have strengthened it.
Is In the Spirit of Crazy Horse worth reading? For now, I have to say yes. The history is interesting enough on its own to survive the bad writing. And as far as I know, this is the most well-researched and comprehensive account of the Leonard Peltier affair that is available. Still the question remains, did Leonard Peltier kill those two FBI agents? I really don’t think so, but I also don’t think Peter Matthiessen did a good job of proving his innocence. What he does succeed in is showing how the trial was a sham, a persecution motivated by extreme prejudice and not by a desire for justice.
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