Little Big Man details the accounts of a 121 year old survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn. Like the character of Forrest Gump, Jack Crabb details the various periods of his life which included: being born a white man but being adopted as a Cheyenne, being civilized by the white man, a salesman of snake oil, the town drunk, a gunslinger, a businessman, another stint as a Cheyenne, and an Indian scout for General George Custer. Crabb goes on record to set a reporter straight about the differences between the Indians and the white man. Like Gump, Crabb has the fortune or misfortune to witness many historic events in American history: the shooting of Wild Bill Hickock, the shooting of Wyatt Earp, and the fall of Custer at Little Big Horn. The novel portrays the Indian in a sympathetic light, and, for the most part, the white man is portrayed as a duplicitous agent of genocide. While Crabb views the white man as less honest and more murderous than the Indians, his cross-cultural development makes him able to appreciate the similarities between the two cultures also “You know how it is: you have your friend and enemies, and then there is that host of others you can take or leave; same way among Indians” (Berger 107).
Crabb was raised as an Indian after being orphaned by the Pawnee, and during his time with the Cheyenne he learned what it meant to be an Indian. He was “civilized” by the white man though, before rejoining the Cheyenne at a later age. This cross-cultural development seems to invest in him a dual persona, one which is Indian at times and white at others. Crabb admits as much when he says “I was on the way to becoming a white man again, although I never suspected it at the time” (Berger 105). However, Crabb is also pure Indian in many aspects of character and action. We see this when he discusses his crush on a young Indian and his reaction as far as developing the r
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