Originally published in 1941, The Last Frontier is the story of the Cheyenne Indians in the 1870s, and their bitter struggle to flee from the Indian Territory in Oklahoma back to their home in Wyoming and Montana. Some 300 Indians, led by Little Wolf, fought against General Crook and 10,000 troops, with only 60 finally making it through to freedom. Fast extensively researched this book in the late 1930s, visiting and speaking with Cheyenne experts in Norman, Oklahoma. This was the first of Fast's many books to gain a wide popular audience; it was eventually made by John Ford into the classic film Cheyenne Autumn (1964).
Biography
Howard Fast
"Mr. Fast's novel will stand or fall upon its value as a dramatic, finely presented story. It is all of that: a model, which may easily become a classic example, of what to put in and what to leave out in the writing of a historical novel. ... I do not believe it is saying too much to suggest that in the person of Mr. Fast we may have the next really important American historical novelist."
Joseph Henry Jackson, New York Herald Tribune Books
"Fast's writing, austerely polished and austerely poetic, is admirably suited to this epic tale of a desperate effort for dignified survival. ... Fast has gotten to the core of this incident and made it into a rich American novel."
New York Times Book Review
"An amazing restoration and reconstruction. The characters breathe, the landscape is solid ground and sky, and the story runs flexibly along the zigzag trail of a people driven by a deep instinct to their ancient home. I do not know any other episode in Western history that has been so truly and subtly perpetuated as this one. A great story lost has been found again, and as here told promises to live for generations."
Carl Van Doren
