When it was first published in 1928, Luther Standing Bear's autobiographical account of his tribe and tribesmen was hailed by Van Wyck Brooks as "one of the most engaging and veracious we have ever had."  It remains a landmark in Indian literature, among the first books about Indians written from the Indian point of view by and Indian.

Born in the 1860's, the son of a Lakota chief, Standing Bear was in the first class at Carlisle, witnessed the Ghost Dance uprising from the Pine Ridge Reservation, toured Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and devoted his later years to the Indian rights movement of the 1920's and '30s.  His story offers a rare inside view by an Indian who successfully made the transition from traditional tribal life to the white man's world but never lost his pride in and identification with his Indian heritage.