This was quite a surprise to me. I expected it to be overly sentimental and wordy, as so many novels from the early 1900s can be, but instead, it is a gripping story with much information and value. To be sure, it has its share of sentiment, but the author doesn't dwell there, and the action was enough that I didn't want to put it down at several points. It is a somewhat romanticized version of an Indian reservation, yet it is intentionally so. It puts forth the idealized (at least from the author's viewpoint) way which Native Americans could be brought into the civilization of the white man. However, the ideas within are very modern in the sense that Garland gives full respect to the natives and does not trot out the typical agenda of making them "just like us." He is quite harsh on cowboys and settlers, but someone had to be. I got quite a laugh out of the dialogues of the cowboys, having been raised around them, I found it to ring true. He is also very frank about the shabby way the natives were treated and the many misconceptions about them. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the settlement of the western states in America. ( )