Unadulterated Western

A VERY SMALL REMNANT (232 pp.)--Michael Straight--Knopf ($4).

Michael Straight. 46, has always had more cash, conscience and energy than he knew quite what to do with. Scion of one of America's wealthiest families (his mother was Harry Payne Whitney's sister), he has for years managed the family fortune with one hand and with the other espoused an assortment of causes, mostly forlorn. For 13 years he was editor, publisher and underwriter of the New Republic Magazine. In 1956 he resigned and turned to fiction.

In A Very Small Remnant, as in his first novel, Carrington, Straight mines and mourns U.S. behavior to the Indians during the often bloody westward expansion at the close of the Civil War, Carrington was a small masterpiece; Remnant is not so successful, but its heroes are the same: those few white men who had the courage to risk unpopularity to deal honestly with the red man.

The story is based on actual fact and told by a real historical figure, Major Edward Wynkoop, a cavalryman who in 1864 negotiated peace with the Cheyennes. A militia troop headed by a bloodthirsty colonel marched into Wynkoop's area. They came upon an unsuspecting, unarmed and officially surrendered Cheyenne village at Sand Creek, Colo. In a hideous five-hour orgy, they massacred nearly everybody. Feeling that he must make amends for his unintentional betrayal. Wynkoop resigned his commission and became an Indian agent. But the Indians. of course, were doomed to further betrayal by other white men.

Straight's story has the ring of truth. both artistic and actual. But by now, every ten-year-old TV viewer already knows that there are no bad Cheyennes. only misunderstood Cheyennes. that any friendship between honest white man and loyal Indian chief is doomed. Michael Straight's hope of telling so straight a story successfully has withered under the glare of the glittering electronic eye.

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