Louis Kraft

There is now a 2nd Louis Kraft Collection at the University of New Mexico's Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections (Zimmerman Library). ... SAND CREEK AND THE TRAGIC END OF A LIFEWAY, which was published in 2020, has won the prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler award for best nonfiction book of 2020 (the 2nd time Kraft has won this award), and the Colorado Authors League award for best nonfiction book for 2020. As with his biographies, he shows what happened through the words and actions of the principal and supporting players during the 1860s (the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, the whites that craved their land in Colorado Territory, the Indians and whites who intermarried, their offspring, and the handful of whites who dared to speak out against the brutal massacre of innocent people at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864).

There is a wanna-be writer/historian who hates Kraft's guts. When Kraft refused to review a racist tome of his, and totally refused to acknowledge that he existed, he went ballistic, and in print and in presentations attacked Kraft. After the Sand Creek book was published he wrote a totally fantastical and error-riddled review on Amazon, which Kraft refused to read. Two established and respected Cheyenne wars historians (John Monnett and Gregory Michno) read his review and contacted Kraft, sharing their thoughts that the review was little more than character assassination. Enough said about a wanna-be, who has no clue of what a "word count" means when publishing with the top publishers in the field. Respected publishers won't touch his poorly written, totally biased, and racist histories.

He is currently working on his next book, ERROL & OLIVIA, which deals with the life and times of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland during their working time together during the Golden Age of Cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. This is not a big jump for Kraft, for as he has done with his study of white-Indian relations during the 1860s and 1880s, he has been studying Flynn and de Havilland just as long, and his primary resource information on both of them is huge. It even includes two trips to Paris, France, upon Olivia de Havilland's invitation to visit her at her home. ERROL & OLIVIA will be written in the same way as SAND CREEK AND THE TRAGIC END OF A LIFEWAY, in that it will have a massive amount of detailed notes that will support the text. It will also be different from the multitude of Hollywood biographies that all too often have a total disregard for truth and are loaded with sensational prose that has little or no basis in fact.

For more information on Kraft, his writing projects, and pieces of his personal life visit his website https://www.louiskraftwriter.com/. It also includes lively blogs that explore the craziness of being a writer who walks a lonely road while he searches for the truth. The blogs are illustrated with photos and artwork.

You can also link up with him on his Facebook page (http://facebook.com/louis.kraft (or, if preferred, you can follow him on Facebook).

Louis Kraft became interested in the West in the 1970s; in particular he became interested in people who didn't speak the same language but who were able to work out their differences without killing each other. To understand these people and the land they inhabited, he immersed himself in their struggle for survival. In the mid-1980s he began writing and speaking about them.

- THE FINAL SHOWDOWN explores Cheyenne-white racial relations in 1867 Kansas.

- CUSTER AND THE CHEYENNE: GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER'S WINTER CAMPAIGN ON THE SOUTHERN PLAINS follows Custer's 1868-1869 winter campaign on the Southern Plains wherein he negotiated with warring Indians and got them to end a war without further bloodshed (it won the Jay D. Smith award for its contribution to the study of Custeriana over the years in June 2011).

- GATEWOOD & GERONIMO examines the relationship between the two pre-eminent warriors of the last Apache war. It was a History Book Club selection.

- LT. CHARLES GATEWOOD & HIS APACHE WARS MEMOIR came about as Kraft was not finished with Gatewood. He pieced together and edited the lieutenant's aborted attempt to write about his years walking among the Apaches, while writing an additional 80,000 words--text and notes--to fill in the gaps in Gatewood's incomplete manuscript.

- NED WYNKOOP AND THE LONELY ROAD FROM SAND CREEK (2011) examines the life of a man who dared to speak out against to murder of innocent people in 1864, and then for Indian rights during the 1860s, a time of expansionism and extreme racial prejudice on the expanding western frontier. True West Magazine hailed the biography of Wynkoop as the best Indian wars book in 2011 (it also was the runner up for the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Wrangler and the Western Writers of America Spur awards in 2012.

- THE DISCOVERY is a medical-legal thriller that Kraft wrote from an incomplete premise by a physician who was illiterate. It deals with a physician accused of malpractice 20 years after a birth that left the newborn blind.

- SAND CREEK AND THE TRAGIC END OF A LIFEWAY deals with the people who would eventually become the Cheyennes and Arapahos, their migration onto the Central Plains, and their domination of the horse and buffalo culture, white trappers that married into the tribes, their offspring, whites that craved Indian land at all costs, and finally a few whites who dared to speak out against the sexual mutilation of men, women, and children at a place called Sand Creek in Colorado Territory in November 1864 from the point of view of the leading and supporting players. It has won to nonfiction best book awards.

Kraft's article on Ned Wynkoop, "When Wynkoop Was Sheriff" (April 2011 Wild West magazine) won the 2012 National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Wrangler Award and Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway (OU Press, 2020) won his second Wrangler Award in 2021.

Kraft lives in North Hollywood, California, with his wife (Pailin Subanna Kraft). Contact him at writerkraft@gmail.com.

PHOTO CREDITS

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- Photo1: Louis & Pailin Subanna Kraft at the first Wrangler Awards banquet on 17sept2021 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. After stepping off the stage after accepting his award for best nonfiction book of 2020 Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway Kraft refused to give the bronze to the lady who wanted it for shipping. He told her he would return it to her after the ceremony, but at the moment he wanted photos with his wife and it in the banquet hall. After this image, and others were taken, and after the banquet ended he returned the bronze statue of a cowboy on a horse to the lady by the stage. Photo © Pailin Subanna Kraft & Louis Kraft 2021.

- Photo2: Louis & Pailin Subanna Kraft on the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum's red carpet before entering the second Wrangler Awards banquet on 18sept2021. The day before Kraft had received his second 20-pound bronze Wrangler Award for Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway, which former University of Oklahoma Press editor-in-chief Chuck Rankin stated was Kraft's masterpiece. Photo © Pailin Subanna Kraft & Louis Kraft 2021.

- Photo3: Louis Kraft enjoying a good moment in his living room on 5jan2017 © Louis Kraft 2017.

- Photo4: Kraft relaxing at home in April 2015. Photo © Pailin Subanna-Kraft & Louis Kraft 2015.

- Photo5: Currently the Louis Kraft Collection at the Chavez History Library, New Mexico Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, has 18 boxes that are available for researchers to view. In this October 6, 2014 photo Kraft is touching the 18th box (earlier in the day he made another delivery to the archive; which once catalogued should grow the archive to 22+ boxes). Tomas Jaehn (foreground) has done a lot for Kraft's writing career over the years, including creating this archive. Photo by Pailin Subanna-Kraft; © Pailin Subanna-Kraft, Louis Kraft, and Tomas Jaehn 2014. ... The second Louis Kraft Collection at the University of New Mexico's Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections was created in 2021, and three deliveries have been made or picked up as of April 2022.

- Photo6: Kraft accepting the Wrangler at the Western Heritage Awards ceremony in Oklahoma City for "When Wynkoop Was Sheriff (April 2011 issue of Wild West magazine). (April 21, 2012). Photo © Ownbey Photography 2012.

- Photo7: One of the photos of Kraft as he spent the afternoon and evening of June 3, 2009, with Olivia de Havilland in her Paris, France, garden. This was the second time that Kraft visited Olivia at her home in Paris, and the third time that he has spent time with her. Photo © Louis Kraft 2009.

- Photo8: Kraft with Southern Cheyenne Ivan Hankla (at left in his tipi at the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site, Oklahoma) while his nephew, Jake, is at the right, in December 2008. Photo 2008 © Leroy Livesay & Louis Kraft.

- Photo9: Cover of the October 2015 issue of Wild West magazine. Kraft's feature, "Geronimo's Gunfighter Attitude," is the cover story.

- Photo10: On September 22, 2012, Kraft spoke about Ned Wynkoop's efforts to prevent Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock from destroying the Cheyenne-Dog Man-Lakota village on the Pawnee Fork, about 35 miles (40 by auto) west of the Fort Larned NHS (Kansas). Leo Oliva, who spoke on the village site with Kraft on that day, had asked him to represent Ned Wynkoop when he was inducted into the Santa Fe Trail Association Hall of Fame. The induction of Wynkoop and others took place during a huge dinner on the 21st. George Elmore, chief ranger at Fort Larned, loaned Kraft the buckskin coat for the three-day rendezvous jointly hosted by the Santa Fe Trail Association, Fort Larned NHS, and the Santa Fe Trail Center. Elmore also took this image of Kraft leaning against Wynkoop's home and Indian agency at Fort Larned on the 22nd. Photo © Louis Kraft 2012 & 2014.