The curtain rises and authors JoAnn Chartier and Chris Enss shine the spotlight on 14 entertaining women who sang, danced, acted in plays, performed equestrienne feats, and captured the hearts of the miners and homesteaders of the Frontier West. These "gilded girls" who performed in the mining...  more

The curtain rises and authors JoAnn Chartier and Chris Enss shine the spotlight on 14 entertaining women who sang, danced, acted in plays, performed equestrienne feats, and captured the hearts of the miners and homesteaders of the Frontier West. These "gilded girls" who performed in the mining boomtowns were literally showered with gold, but oftentimes their personal lives were marked by unhappiness. Still, their very presence on stage enchanted avid western audiences, and they were rewarded with flowery reviews and sensational editorials by local newspapers, as well as riches. Their every action was commented upon, but rarely did reporters know the whole story. Chartier and Enss now reveal what many people of the times never knew about these sometimes rowdy, sometimes refined female celebrities by providing a unique inside look at their lives via this collection of intriguing biographies.

The women who traveled west in covered wagons during the 1840s speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and...  more

The women who traveled west in covered wagons during the 1840s speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and Salt Lake City; Rachel Fisher, who buried both her husband and her little girl before reaching Oregon. Still others make themselves heard, starting out from different places and recording details along the way, from the mundane to the soul-shattering and spirit-lifting.

This book is an eclectic history of the women pioneers of the Sierra Nevada region in the western United States. The book includes an Acknowledgments page, a Foreward,  an Introduction, a Map, a Table of Contents, and numerous interesting photographs and illustrations. Each...  more

This book is an eclectic history of the women pioneers of the Sierra Nevada region in the western United States. The book includes an Acknowledgments page, a Foreward,  an Introduction, a Map, a Table of Contents, and numerous interesting photographs and illustrations. Each chapter deals with the story of a woman important to the region's history: 1) Eliza Book, Nevada' s First Woman Doctor 2) Juanita, First White Woman Lynched in California 3)Ethel Joslin Vernon, The Poetess of the Sierra 4) Sierra Nevada Phillips, A Woman called "Vade" 5)Eliza Mott, Nevada's First Schoolteacher 6) Lillie Langtry, America's First Superstar 7)Lola Montez, Notorious Countess of Landsfield 8) Lotta Crabtree, America's Lovable Comedienne 9) Amelia Celio, A Gentle Woman 10) Charlotte "Charley" Parkhurst, Stage-Driver 11) Maude Hulbert Horn, 19th century Publisher 12) Eilley Orrum, Lady of the Mansion 13) Sarah Fossati, 19th Centry Businesswoman 14) Eleanora Dumont, A Gambling Lady 15)Julia Bulette, Lady of the Red Light District with notes on the role of prostitution in the Wild West

The Frontier in American History By Frederick Jackson Turner

If Mark Twain had written about Texas, this might have been his book. A young boy, thrown into his mother's family when his father dies of Civil War wounds, early grows to be a young man herding cows on Texas' frontier ranges. But it is not Mark Twain's story; it is Malcolm Graham...  more

If Mark Twain had written about Texas, this might have been his book. A young boy, thrown into his mother's family when his father dies of Civil War wounds, early grows to be a young man herding cows on Texas' frontier ranges. But it is not Mark Twain's story; it is Malcolm Graham Vernon's, delightfully and poignantly retold by his granddaughter. When "Mac" Vernon's widowed mother returned with her brood to "the Family" in East Texas, her father assumed stern control. Ku Klux Klan meetings, a flight from the Reconstruction army, and building a life on a series of frontier farms provided ample occasion for a young boy's antics to prepare him far manhood. At fifteen, Mac thought he had graven up, thought of himself as an experienced cowhand. Bidding his gentle but proud mother good-bye, he struck out to the west, to be a "real" cowboy. Hired on at the Half Circle Six near San Angelo, Vernon worked for the next eight years as a ranch hand, branding cows, riding night guard around milling -sometimes stampeding-cattle, and working on the stillopen ranges. He brashly recovered stolen stock from a thieving army contractor, saw one man killed over a four-bit monte game and another over a bucket of buttermilk, and got to know the people and the ways of the West Texas range "as well as any man, I guess." "My grandfather," Anna Manns Dana writes in her preface "was a storyteller, and he must have been a spellbinder, for whenever any two members of his family or friends got together, at some point one would say, `Remember Papa's story about ... ?"' From his leather-bound diaries, letters, records, and family memories, Dana has culled his best stories, enabling him once more to weave his spell -of humor and sorrow, childhood and range work, the stories of a young boy growing into manhood under the Texas sun.

Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste--black people--and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish entradas. They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods, and shared kinship ties. Their only difference was the color of their skin. This book tells...  more

Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste--black people--and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish entradas. They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods, and shared kinship ties. Their only difference was the color of their skin. This book tells how people of African heritage came to blend their lives with those of their Indian neighbors and essentially became Creek themselves. Taking in the full historical sweep of African Americans among the Creeks, from the sixteenth century through Oklahoma statehood, Gary Zellar unfolds a narrative history of the many contributions these people made to Creek history.

Deceit, compromise, and betrayal were the painful costs of becoming American for many families. For people of Indian, African, and European descent living in the newly formed United States, the most personal and emotional choices--to honor a friendship or pursue an intimate relationship--were...  more

Deceit, compromise, and betrayal were the painful costs of becoming American for many families. For people of Indian, African, and European descent living in the newly formed United States, the most personal and emotional choices--to honor a friendship or pursue an intimate relationship--were often necessarily guided by the harsh economic realities imposed by the country's racial hierarchy. Few families in American history embody this struggle to survive the pervasive onslaught of racism more than the Graysons. Like many other residents of the eighteenth-century Native American South, where Black-Indian relations bore little social stigma, Katy Grayson and her brother William--both Creek Indians--had children with partners of African descent. As the plantation economy began to spread across their native land soon after the birth of the American republic, however, Katy abandoned her black partner and children to marry a Scottish-Creek man. She herself became a slaveholder, embracing slavery as a public display of her elevated place in America's racial hierarchy. William, by contrast, refused to leave his black wife and their several children and even legally emancipated them. Traveling separate paths, the Graysons survived the invasion of the Creek Nation by U.S. troops in 1813 and again in 1836 and endured the Trail of Tears, only to confront each other on the battlefield during the Civil War. Afterwards, they refused to recognize each other's existence. In 1907, when Creek Indians became U.S. citizens, Oklahoma gave force of law to the family schism by defining some Graysons as white, others as black. Tracking a full five generations of the Grayson family and basing his account in part on unprecedented access to the forty-four volume diary of G. W. Grayson, the one-time principal chief of the Creek Nation, Claudio Saunt tells not only of America's past, but of its present, shedding light on one of the most contentious issues in Indian politics, the role of "blood" in the construction of identity. Overwhelmed by the racial hierarchy in the United States and compelled to adopt the very ideology that oppressed them, the Graysons denied their kin, enslaved their relatives, married their masters, and went to war against each other. Claudio Saunt gives us not only a remarkable saga in its own right but one that illustrates the centrality of race in the American experience.

The exploits of the Confederacy's "gentlemen adventurers".

When people think of the Jewish immigrant experience, it's usually the Lower East Side of New York that comes to mind. But, in fact, thousands of Jews lived in western mining towns and on ranches and trading posts in the late nineteenth century. In this "colorful history of Jewish settlers in...  more

When people think of the Jewish immigrant experience, it's usually the Lower East Side of New York that comes to mind. But, in fact, thousands of Jews lived in western mining towns and on ranches and trading posts in the late nineteenth century. In this "colorful history of Jewish settlers in the West . . . that stereotype of the urban Jew is vigorously and even exuberantly rejected" (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES). PIONEER JEWS is a vivid and thorough chronicle of the lives, experiences, and contributions of the Jewish men and women who helped shape the American frontier.

"Lehmann's memoir is quite fantastic-sounding at times, but is regarded as one of the best of that rare breed of book, the first-person 'captivity story' . . . One of the values of Lehmann's book is its no-holds-barred, unapologetic tone." Rocky Mountain News As a young child, Herman Lehmann...  more

"Lehmann's memoir is quite fantastic-sounding at times, but is regarded as one of the best of that rare breed of book, the first-person 'captivity story' . . . One of the values of Lehmann's book is its no-holds-barred, unapologetic tone." Rocky Mountain News As a young child, Herman Lehmann was captured by a band of plundering Apache Indians and remained with them for nine years. This is his dramatic and unique story. His memoir, fast-paced and compelling, tells of his arduous initial years with the Apache as he underwent a sometimes torturous initiation into Indian life. Peppered with various escape attempts, Lehmann?s recollections are fresh and exciting in spite of the years past. Lehmann provides us with a fascinating look at Apache, and later, Comanche culture. He tells of their rituals, medicinal practices and gives an insight into Native American manufacture of arrow-heads, saddles and shields. After a few years, Lehmann became completely integrated into the warrior life, joining in on raids throughout the South-West and Mexico. Nine Years with the Indians tells of violent clashes with white rangers and other Native American tribes, scalpings and the violence of life in nineteenth century western America. "A fascinating account of [Lehmann's] subsequent life among both the Apache and Comanche people. . . . this is an engaging read." - German Life "Lehmann's true-life story features suspense and excitement that surpass even the skill of the most imaginative fiction writer." - Books of the Southwest Herman Lehmann (June 5, 1859 ? February 2, 1932) was captured as a child by Native Americans. He lived first among the Apache and then the Comanche but eventually returned to his family later on in his life. The phenomenon of a "white boy" raised by "Indians" made him a notable figure in the United States. He published his autobiography, Nine Years Among the Indians in 1927.

When as a young academic in 1933 Rupert Richardson wrote the definitive work on Comanche Indians in the Texas South Plains, his primary sources included Comanche Indians themselves, their champions (few) and victims (many).

Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America's first great political couple John C. Frémont, one of the United...  more

Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America's first great political couple John C. Frémont, one of the United States’s leading explorers of the nineteenth century, was relatively unknown in 1842, when he commanded the first of his expeditions to the uncharted West. But in only a few years, he was one of the most acclaimed people of the age – known as a wilderness explorer, bestselling writer, gallant army officer, and latter-day conquistador, who in 1846 began the United States’s takeover of California from Mexico. He was not even 40 years old when Americans began naming mountains and towns after him. He had perfect timing, exploring the West just as it captured the nation’s attention. But the most important factor in his fame may have been the person who made it all possible: his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont.   Jessie, the daughter of a United States senator who was deeply involved in the West, provided her husband with entrée to the highest levels of government and media, and his career reached new heights only a few months after their elopement. During a time when women were allowed to make few choices for themselves, Jessie – who herself aspired to roles in exploration and politics – threw her skill and passion into promoting her husband. She worked to carefully edit and publicize his accounts of his travels, attracted talented young men to his circle, and lashed out at his enemies. She became her husband’s political adviser, as well as a power player in her own right. In 1856, the famous couple strategized as John became the first-ever presidential nominee of the newly established Republican Party. With rare detail and in consummate style, Steve Inskeep tells the story of a couple whose joint ambitions and talents intertwined with those of the nascent United States itself. Taking advantage of expanding news media, aided by an increasingly literate public, the two linked their names to the three great national movements of the time—westward settlement, women’s rights, and opposition to slavery. Together, John and Jessie Frémont took parts in events that defined the country and gave rise to a new, more global America. Theirs is a surprisingly modern tale of ambition and fame; they lived in a time of social and technological disruption and divisive politics that foreshadowed our own. In Imperfect Union, as Inskeep navigates these deeply transformative years through Jessie and John’s own union, he reveals how the Frémonts’ adventures amount to nothing less than a tour of the early American soul.

The latest installment of the multimillion-selling Killing series is a gripping journey through the American West and the historic clashes between Native Americans and settlers. The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It's 1811 and President James Madison has ordered the...  more

The latest installment of the multimillion-selling Killing series is a gripping journey through the American West and the historic clashes between Native Americans and settlers. The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It's 1811 and President James Madison has ordered the destruction of Shawnee warrior chief Tecumseh's alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region. But while General William Henry Harrison would win this fight, the armed conflict between Native Americans and the newly formed United States would rage on for decades. Bestselling authors Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard venture through the fraught history of our country's founding on already occupied lands, from General Andrew Jackson's brutal battles with the Creek Nation to President James Monroe's epic "sea to shining sea" policy, to President Martin Van Buren's cruel enforcement of a "treaty" that forced the Cherokee Nation out of their homelands along what would be called the Trail of Tears. O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the legends to reveal never-before-told historical moments in the fascinating creation story of America. This fast-paced, wild ride through the American frontier will shock readers and impart unexpected lessons that reverberate to this day.

This collection of fifty outlaw tales includes well-knowns such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Frank and Jesse James, Belle Starr (and her dad), and Pancho Villa, along with a fair smattering of women, organized crime bosses, smugglers, and of course the usual suspects: highwaymen, bank...  more

This collection of fifty outlaw tales includes well-knowns such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Frank and Jesse James, Belle Starr (and her dad), and Pancho Villa, along with a fair smattering of women, organized crime bosses, smugglers, and of course the usual suspects: highwaymen, bank and train robbers, cattle rustlers, snake-oil salesmen, and horse thieves. Men like Henry Brown and Burt Alvord worked on both sides of the law either at different times of their lives or simultaneously. Clever shyster Soapy Smith and murderer Martin Couk survived by their wits, while the outlaw careers of the dimwitted DeAutremont brothers and bigmouthed Diamondfield Jack were severely limited by their intellect, or lack thereof. Nearly everyone in these pages was motivated by greed, revenge, or a lethal mixture of the two. The most bloodthirsty of the bunch, such as the heartless (and, some might argue, soulless) Annie Cook and trigger-happy Augustine Chacón, surely had evil written into their very DNA.

Discover the stories of twelve women who heard the call to settle the west and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journey. As a slave, Clara watched helpless as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter, as a free woman, six decades...  more

Discover the stories of twelve women who heard the call to settle the west and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journey. As a slave, Clara watched helpless as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter, as a free woman, six decades later. As a young girl, Charlotte hid her gender to escape a life of poverty and became the greatest stagecoach driver that ever lived. As a Native American, Gertrude fought to give her people a voice and to educate leaders about the ways and importance of America s native people. These are gripping miniature dramas of good-hearted women, selfless providers, courageous immigrants and migrants, and women with skills too innumerable to list. Many were crusaders for social justice and women s rights. All endured hardships, overcame obstacles, broke barriers, and changed the world. The author ties the stories of these pioneer women to the experiences of women today with the hope that they will be inspired to live boldly and bravely and to fill their own lives with vision, faith, and fortitude. To live with grit. "

Paperback,laminated pictoral cvr,1995 Cr Dawson Historicial Society,Revised ed,range cattle industry depected thru story of I. P. (Print)Olive,460 numbered pgs w/fold out map inside back cvr, Bibliography, Biography,Dawson County Historical Society Publishers,

Albert Jerome Dickson was fourteen years old in 1864 when he left LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in a small caravan of covered wagons headed for Montana Territory. Thousands of emigrants had preceded him on the Oregon Trail, but none ever described the journey in sharper detail. Covered Wagon Days...  more

Albert Jerome Dickson was fourteen years old in 1864 when he left LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in a small caravan of covered wagons headed for Montana Territory. Thousands of emigrants had preceded him on the Oregon Trail, but none ever described the journey in sharper detail. Covered Wagon Days recreates the daily progress of Dickson's party, which included his guardians, Joshua and Rebecca Ridgley. The logistics of such a trip, the sights along a trail marked by ruts and fresh graves, the rigors of camping, the encounters with Indians and returning pilgrims and vigilantes running after road agents—all figure in Dickson's memoir. The payoff for the Ridgleys is not the gold being discovered in the mountains near Virginia City but a fine farm in Gallatin Valley. As vivid as any novel about the Oregon Trail and pioneering in the Northwest, Covered Wagon Days, first published in 1929, is based on journals and materials that were edited by the author's son, Arthur Jerome Dickson.

Incredible stories from those who thrived in the Wild West. The “mountain men? were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild animals, to sell or barter for goods. The...  more

Incredible stories from those who thrived in the Wild West. The “mountain men? were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild animals, to sell or barter for goods. The lifestyle of the mountain men could be harsh, existing as they did among animals, and spending most of their days and nights living and camping out in the great unexplored wilds of the Rockies. Life outdoors presented many threats, not least among them Native Americans, who were hostile to the mountain men encroaching on the area for their own purposes. For a certain kind of pioneer, this risk and more were outweighed by the benefits of living free, without the restrictions and boundaries of “civilized? settlements. Included in this collection are tales from great writers, including: Washington Irving Stanley Vestal Osborne Russell Francis Parkman Jr. And many more! In The Adventures of the Mountain Men, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Brennan has compiled many of the best stories about the mountain men—the most daring exploits, the death-defying chances taken to hunt big game, the clashes with the arrows of Native Americans, and also the moments when the men were struck by the incomparable beauty of the unsullied, majestic Rocky Mountains.

"Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life" is the story of Martha Summerhayes, a Nantucket woman who married a cavalry officer and moved with him to various Army forts in the late 19th century. It is a very personal story of Army life in Indian country, raising children under trying...  more

"Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life" is the story of Martha Summerhayes, a Nantucket woman who married a cavalry officer and moved with him to various Army forts in the late 19th century. It is a very personal story of Army life in Indian country, raising children under trying conditions, a travelog and adventure all wrapped up into one. The tales of getting back and forth between Nantucket and Arizona are worth the reading alone. "Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life" is a collection of Martha's memories of life in various Army forts, and particularly in Arizona-which at that time was still considered a "dreaded and unknown land." Along the way, the reader meets a variety of characters such as a nearly-naked Indian cook and a "dentist" who accidentally extracts the wrong tooth. There is also the incident where Martha feels more in danger from her husband than the hostile Indians nearby. First printed in 1908, "Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life" was extremely well-received, becoming one of the essential primary records of the frontier-military West. Martha Summerhayes' narrative skill and her delight in life make her book a joy to read. Summerhayes offers not only a woman's perspective, but the views and memories of an army wife. The only comparable books are the trilogy of cavalry life by Libbie Custer, which were filtered by Libbie's desire to glorify her husband, General George Custer. Summerhayes' description of the Arizona landscape and conditions of Army life are memorable, adding much to the history of the Southwest. Justifiably considered a classic, "Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life" features guileless storytelling, unvarnished truth, and an honest appraisal of the rather brutal trials of an army wife in that era. Great reading for anyone interested in frontier America and the brave people who settled the land.

Long neglected as the first American novel, Mr. Penrose narrates the adventures of a British youth who flees an unhappy home life to seek his fortune on the high seas. Having learned the sailor?s trade, Penrose survives a series of nautical mishaps, only to be cast adrift on the Mosquito Coast....  more

Long neglected as the first American novel, Mr. Penrose narrates the adventures of a British youth who flees an unhappy home life to seek his fortune on the high seas. Having learned the sailor?s trade, Penrose survives a series of nautical mishaps, only to be cast adrift on the Mosquito Coast. When rescue finally comes, Penrose refuses to abandon the new home he has made among the Indians. Equal parts travel narrative, adventure tale, and natural history, the novel reflects on some of the most pressing moral and social issues of its time: imperialism, racial equality, religious freedom, and the nature of ethical, responsible government. Mr. Penrose contains the first unequivocal critique of slavery in a transatlantic novel and the most realistic portrayals of Native Americans in early American fiction. In the afterword to this paperback edition, Sarah Wadsworth imparts new research on the author and his career, shedding light on the novel?s subjects and timely themes, and situating Mr. Penrose at the forefront of the American literary canon.

"Quite impressive. I doubt if there has been or will be a more deeply researched and convincing account." —Evan Connell, author Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn "The book to end all Earp books—the most complete, and most meticulously researched." —Jack...  more

"Quite impressive. I doubt if there has been or will be a more deeply researched and convincing account." —Evan Connell, author Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn "The book to end all Earp books—the most complete, and most meticulously researched." —Jack Burrows, author John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was "The most thoughtful, well-researched, and comprehensive account that has been written about the development and career of an Old-West lawman." —The Tombstone Tumbleweed "A great adventure story, and solid history." —Kirkus Reviews "A major contribution to the history of the American West. It provides the first complete and accurate look at Wyatt Earp's colorful career, and places into context the important role that he and his brothers played in crime and politics in the Arizona territory. This important book rises above the realm of Western biography and shows the development of the Earp story in history and myth, and its effect on American culture." —John Boessenecker, author Gold Dust and Gunsmoke "The ultimate Wyatt Earp book." —Professor Richard Brown University of Oregon

In 1892, Joseph L. Cline, the brother of Dr. Isaac Monroe Cline, joined his sibling in the service of the Weather Bureau in Galveston. Eight years later, he became one of the town's heroes.Working in conjunction with his brother, Cline was responsible for sending out the last message to...  more

In 1892, Joseph L. Cline, the brother of Dr. Isaac Monroe Cline, joined his sibling in the service of the Weather Bureau in Galveston. Eight years later, he became one of the town's heroes.Working in conjunction with his brother, Cline was responsible for sending out the last message to Washington, D. C., that explained the gravity of the situation at Galveston. As a result, aid was swift in arriving, and many lives were undoubtedly saved. The chief of the Weather Bureau wrote that "probably no man will ever render such noble service for humanity" as Joseph L. Cline did at Galveston.

The imprisonment of outlaw John Wesley Hardin in Texas marked the end of his journal, which remains the only authentic autobiography of a Cowboy. After his first murder at age 15, Hardin proceeded to live a life on the run, the archetypal wanted man, pursued by lynch mobs, bounty hunters and...  more

The imprisonment of outlaw John Wesley Hardin in Texas marked the end of his journal, which remains the only authentic autobiography of a Cowboy. After his first murder at age 15, Hardin proceeded to live a life on the run, the archetypal wanted man, pursued by lynch mobs, bounty hunters and assassins. A unique, gripping first-person account and seminal document of this period of American history.

"Vivid, Comprehensible . . . cuts through decades of mythmaking." ?Texas Monthly Popular culture transformed his memory into ?Davy Crockett,? and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. In this surprising New York Times bestseller, historian Michael Wallis has cast a fresh look at...  more

"Vivid, Comprehensible . . . cuts through decades of mythmaking." ?Texas Monthly Popular culture transformed his memory into ?Davy Crockett,? and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. In this surprising New York Times bestseller, historian Michael Wallis has cast a fresh look at the flesh-and-blood man behind one of the most celebrated figures in American history. More than a riveting story, Wallis?s David Crockett is a revelatory, authoritative biography that separates fact from fiction and provides us with an extraordinary evocation of not only a true American hero but also the rough-and-tumble times in which he lived. 16 pages of illustrations

An extraordinary story of faith and violence in nineteenth-century America, based on previously confidential documents from the Mormon Church.Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious...  more

An extraordinary story of faith and violence in nineteenth-century America, based on previously confidential documents from the Mormon Church.Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious examination. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Using newly accessible sources, Park recreates the Mormons? 1839 flight from Missouri to Illinois. There, under the charismatic leadership of Joseph Smith, they founded Nauvoo, which shimmered briefly?but Smith?s challenge to democratic traditions, as well as his new doctrine of polygamy, would bring about its fall. His wife Emma, rarely written about, opposed him, but the greater threat came from without: in 1844, a mob murdered Joseph, precipitating the Mormon trek to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows that far from being outsiders, the Mormons were representative of their era in their distrust of democracy and their attempt to forge a sovereign society of their own. 35 black-and-white illustrations

Charles Fletcher Lummis began his spectacular career in 1884 by walking from Ohio to start a new job at the three-year old Los Angeles Times. By the time of his death in 1928, the 3,500 mile "tramp across the continent" was just a footnote in his astonishingly varied career: crusading...  more

Charles Fletcher Lummis began his spectacular career in 1884 by walking from Ohio to start a new job at the three-year old Los Angeles Times. By the time of his death in 1928, the 3,500 mile "tramp across the continent" was just a footnote in his astonishingly varied career: crusading journalist, author of nearly two dozen books, editor of the influential political and literary magazine Out West, Los Angeles city librarian, preserver of Spanish missions, and Indian rights gadfly. Lummis both embodied and defined our vision of the West, and of America itself.

This beautiful and devastating book--part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir--should be required reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of...  more

This beautiful and devastating book--part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir--should be required reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.

On a warm, clear day in the spring of 1836 seventeen-year-old Rachel Parker Plummer and her eighteen-month-old baby boy were abducted from their home in central Texas by a raiding party of Comanche and Kiowa Indians. She was, at that time, three months pregnant. Separated from her son and three...  more

On a warm, clear day in the spring of 1836 seventeen-year-old Rachel Parker Plummer and her eighteen-month-old baby boy were abducted from their home in central Texas by a raiding party of Comanche and Kiowa Indians. She was, at that time, three months pregnant. Separated from her son and three other prisoners, Rachel was taken to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and Wyoming where she was held in the bondage of slavery for thirteen months.

In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeleton in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of...  more

In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeleton in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing.Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition.Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast?one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn?nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

The Hidden History of High Country The Sierra Nevada has long been the domain of dreams, attracting the heroic and delusional, the best of humanity and the worst. Along with towering granite mountains, crystalline lakes, and spiky conifer forests, the Sierra is also home to tales so outlandish...  more

The Hidden History of High Country The Sierra Nevada has long been the domain of dreams, attracting the heroic and delusional, the best of humanity and the worst. Along with towering granite mountains, crystalline lakes, and spiky conifer forests, the Sierra is also home to tales so outlandish and outrageous that they have to be real. Could the human imagination have invented someone like Eliza Gilbert? Born in Limerick, Ireland, she transformed herself into Lolo Montez, the Sevillian aristocrat who brought the provocative Spider Dance to the Gold Country. Or the fifteen two-humped camels that where imported from Asia to transport goods to the mines. These stories, and scores more, spill out of the pages of this well-illustrated and lively tribute to the Sierra by a native son.

In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her...  more

In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohaves, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime.  Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman?s friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois, through the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society, to her later years as a wealthy banker?s wife in Texas. This Bison Books edition features a postscript by the author with a newly discovered letter from Oatman.   (20100501)

On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, eight men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle...  more

On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, eight men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cow-boys, began to kill each other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's last boom town.

True-life adventurer Hugh Glass, a 19th century explorer of the Old West, was deserted by his party after being mauled by a bear. Manfred tells of the ten missing years in Glass's life, his superhuman struggle to survive, and his all-too-human quest for revenge.

Praise for Blood and Thunder“Kit Carson’s role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of the conquest of the...  more

Praise for Blood and Thunder“Kit Carson’s role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of the conquest of the entire West, including his frequent and often lethal encounters with hostile Native Americans. Unusually, Sides gives full voice to Indian leaders themselves about their trials and tribulations in their dealings with the whites. Here is a national hero on the level of Daniel Boone, presented with all of his flaws and virtues, in the context of American people’s belief that it was their Manifest Destiny to occupy the entire West.”—Howard Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University and editor of The New Encyclopedia of the American West“The story of the American West has seldom been told with such intimacy and immediacy. Legendary figures like Kit Carson leap to life and history moves at a pulse-pounding pace—sweeping the reader along with it. Hampton Sides is a terrific storyteller.”—Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt“Hampton Sides doesn't just write a book, he transports the reader to another time and place. With his keen sense of drama and his crackling writing style, this master storyteller has bequeathed us a majestic history of the Old West.”—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys“Blood and Thunder is a big-hearted book whose subject is as expansive as they come. Hampton Sides tackles it with naked pleasure and narrative cunning: In his telling, the vast saga of America’s westward push has a logical center. The dusty town of Santa Fe becomes the nexus around which swirl the fortunes and strategies of a mixed set of serious overachievers, from Kit Carson, the original mountain man, to James K. Polk, the enigmatic president whose achievements, in the dreaded name of Manifest Destiny, were almost biblical in scope. Sides is alive to the exuberance and alert to the tragedy of the taking of the West.” —Russell Shorto, author of Island at the Center of the World“For a huge percentage of us immigrant Americans (those whose ancestors arrived after 1492), Hampton Sides fills a gaping hole in our knowledge of American history—a vivid account of how ‘The New Men’ swept away the thriving civilizations of the Native Americans in their conquest of the West.” —Tony HillermanA Magnificent History of How the West Was Really Won—a Sweeping Tale of Shame and GloryIn the fall of 1846 the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his people’s chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were true—if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished—but what did the arrival of these “New Men” portend for the Navajo?Narbona could not have known that “The Army of the West,” in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as “Manifest Destiny.” For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.Hampton Sides’s extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to ringing life. It is a tale with many heroes and villains, but as is found in the best history, the same person might be both. At the center of it all stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carson—the legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American experience in the West. Brave and clever, beloved by his contemporaries, Carson was an illiterate mountain man who twice married Indian women and understood and respected the tribes better than any other American alive. Yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Carson’s almost unimaginable exploits made him a household name when they were written up in pulp novels known as “blood-and-thunders,” but now that name is a bitter curse for contemporary Navajo, who cannot forget his role in the travails of their ancestors.

Wyatt Earp is regarded as the most famous lawman of the Old West, best known for his role in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. But the story of his two-year war with a band of outlaws known as the Cowboys has never been told in full. The Cowboys were the largest outlaw gang...  more

Wyatt Earp is regarded as the most famous lawman of the Old West, best known for his role in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. But the story of his two-year war with a band of outlaws known as the Cowboys has never been told in full. The Cowboys were the largest outlaw gang in the history of the American West. After battles with the law in Texas and New Mexico, they shifted their operations to Arizona. There, led by Curly Bill Brocius, they ruled the border, robbing, rustling, smuggling and killing with impunity until they made the fatal mistake of tangling with the Earp brothers. Drawing on groundbreaking research into territorial and federal government records, John Boessenecker?s Ride the Devil?s Herd reveals this long-forgotten chapter of Wild West history.

In the spring of 1841, a courageous young woman named Nancy Kelsey set out her husband, Ben, and infant daughter, Martha Ann, from their Missouri homestead on a harrowing track that would lead her into the pages of history. With a small band of pioneers, Nancy and Ben blazed a trail across a...  more

In the spring of 1841, a courageous young woman named Nancy Kelsey set out her husband, Ben, and infant daughter, Martha Ann, from their Missouri homestead on a harrowing track that would lead her into the pages of history. With a small band of pioneers, Nancy and Ben blazed a trail across a wild and unforgiving continent to find a new life in the golden lands of California.Historical novelist Cecelia Hollnd gives us an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman who played a crucial role in the settlement of the West. Nancy Kelsey was a courageous young pioneer, and the first American woman to set foot in California. drawing upon Nancy's own accounts of her harrowing journey, as well as the writings of those who traveled with her, Holland has crafted a stunning biography of this amazing woman that is filled with all of the action, passion, danger, and determination that have made her novels bestsellers around the world.

On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611  men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the  banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana  Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle.  The lives of two great warriors would soon...  more

On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611  men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the  banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana  Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle.  The lives of two great warriors would soon be  forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader  of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong  Custer. Both were men of aggression and supreme  courage. Both became leaders in their societies at  very early ages; both were stripped of power, in  disgrace, and worked to earn back the respect of  their people. And to both of them, the unspoiled  grandeur of the Great Plains of North America was an  irresistible challenge. Their parallel lives would  pave the way, in a manner unknown to either, for  an inevitable clash between two nations fighting  for possession of the open  prairie.

Scott County is one of the oldest counties in Iowa. It is where the Blackhawk Treaty was signed and where the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River was built. But Scott County has also been witness to many shameful deeds. Travel down Utica Ridge Road, where young Grace Reed paid the...  more

Scott County is one of the oldest counties in Iowa. It is where the Blackhawk Treaty was signed and where the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River was built. But Scott County has also been witness to many shameful deeds. Travel down Utica Ridge Road, where young Grace Reed paid the ultimate price for spurning the affections of a local farmer. Enter the bedroom of Margaretha Nehlsen, who poisoned her children with chocolate candies. Hear the tale of Harry Hamilton, a former policeman turned career criminal who played a key part in perhaps the most infamous bank robbery in Scott County history. Come and explore these stories and more with author John Brassard Jr. as he guides you through the darker side of Scott County history.

"Countless books have been written about the infamous outlaw...this is surely one of the best."—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewIn this revisionist biography, award-winning historian Michael Wallis re-creates the rich anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859-1881), a young man who became a...  more

"Countless books have been written about the infamous outlaw...this is surely one of the best."—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewIn this revisionist biography, award-winning historian Michael Wallis re-creates the rich anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859-1881), a young man who became a legend in his time and remains an enigma to this day. In an extraordinary evocation of the legendary Old West, Wallis demonstrates why the Kid has remained one of our most popular folk heroes. Filled with dozens of rare images and period photographs, Billy the Kid separates myth from reality and presents an unforgettable portrait of this brief and violent life. 60 illustrations.

A fascinating memoir of a white man who gained access to the private lives of the Blackfeet Indians. First published in 1907, My Life as an Indian is the memoir of J. W. Schultz?s life as a young white man among the Piegan Blackfeet in the Montana Territory. Inspired by the journals of Lewis...  more

A fascinating memoir of a white man who gained access to the private lives of the Blackfeet Indians. First published in 1907, My Life as an Indian is the memoir of J. W. Schultz?s life as a young white man among the Piegan Blackfeet in the Montana Territory. Inspired by the journals of Lewis and Clark and George Catlin?s depictions of Indian life in his paintings, Schultz journeyed to the American West in search of adventure and became a trapper and trader. However he stumbled into a completely new and inspiring world when he met the Blackfoot tribe, and he soon settled into their lifestyle. During his time with the Blackfeet, Schultz married a Blackfoot woman named Natahki. In this firsthand account of a life and culture that many were not privy to at the time, Schultz paints a stunning portrait of a people he admired, revered, and came to live among. He exposes elements of everyday life in the tribe?s encampments such as child rearing, food preparation, war parties, and the tanning of buffalo hides. He illuminates religious and burial ceremonies, and takes readers on the thrill of buffalo hunts and into the heart of battle against neighboring tribes. Now prefaced with a new introduction, My Life as an Indian continues to hold unsurpassable insight that makes it still relevant today. It is a memorably honest and readable portrayal of one outsider?s view of Native Americans from a time when most still regarded these remarkable people as simple savages.

Joseph Marshall III, an Ogala/Sicangu Lakota Sioux, details the oral tradition of how his tribal ancestors fought the 7th Cavalry at the Battles of the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn. Two of Mr. Marshall's great-uncles were there on that fateful June day in 1876. Professor Frederick...  more

Joseph Marshall III, an Ogala/Sicangu Lakota Sioux, details the oral tradition of how his tribal ancestors fought the 7th Cavalry at the Battles of the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn. Two of Mr. Marshall's great-uncles were there on that fateful June day in 1876. Professor Frederick Voget Lefthand, a Crow Tribal Leader and historian, narrates the oral tradition of how the Crow scouts rode and fought and died alongside elements of the 7th Cavalry. Frederick Lefthand is related to Mitch Bouyer, Gen. George A. Custer's chief scout. Robert Kammen, a relative of one of the soldiers in the 7th Cavalry who perished, authored over forty books on the West as well as in associated genres. The Watcher, which was published by Random House, was nominated by Western Writers of America for Best Western Novel of the Year. Randy Galloway, renowned Arizona artist and Southwestern naturalist created the stunning covers, chapter heading artwork and book layout. This New and Enhanced Second Edition of Soldiers Falling Into Camp, the highly controversial book that shocked historians and rocked TV audiences from coast to coast. Out of print for years, this new and dramatically enhanced second edition features over fifty five pertinent photos from that era as well as prints of original art drawn by Chief Red Horse. The historical pictures and other drawings in the work are courtesy of The U.S. Army, the Denver Library, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, and by Native American artists. Nine Maps of the battle area and terrain expand the readers understanding of battle strategies and their short comings. The work is fully indexed and referenced.

Ben Thompson was a remarkable man, and few Texans can claim to have crowded more excitement, danger, drama, and tragedy into their lives than he did. He was an Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, Confederate cavalryman, mercenary for a foreign emperor, hired gun for a railroad, an elected lawman,...  more

Ben Thompson was a remarkable man, and few Texans can claim to have crowded more excitement, danger, drama, and tragedy into their lives than he did. He was an Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, Confederate cavalryman, mercenary for a foreign emperor, hired gun for a railroad, an elected lawman, professional gambler, and the victor of numerous gunfights. As a leading member of the Wild West?s sporting element, Ben Thompson spent most of his life moving in the unsavory underbelly of the West: saloons, dance-houses, billiard halls, bordellos, and gambling dens. During these travels many of the Wild West?s most famous icons?Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, John Wesley Hardin, John Ringo, and Buffalo Bill Cody?became acquainted with Ben Thompson. Some of these men called him a friend; others considered him a deadly enemy. In life and in death no one ever doubted Ben Thompson?s courage; one Texas newspaperman asserted he was ?perfectly fearless, a perfect lion in nature when aroused.? This willingness to trust his life to his expertise with a pistol placed Thompson prominently among the western frontier?s most flamboyant breed of men: gunfighters.

In this lavishly illustrated volume, Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry, the American West?s greatest chronicler, delivers a defining portrait of the life and legacy of the West?s most legendary figure, George Armstrong Custer. On June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry...  more

In this lavishly illustrated volume, Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry, the American West?s greatest chronicler, delivers a defining portrait of the life and legacy of the West?s most legendary figure, George Armstrong Custer. On June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry attacked a large Lakota Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. He lost not only the battle but also his life?and the lives of all his men. It was the U.S. Army?s worst defeat in the long and bloody Plains Indian War. Yet with no survivors and only unreliable Indian accounts, ?Custer?s Last Stand? reached mythic proportions and achieved Custer?s name immortality.     Larry McMurtry has long been fascinated by Custer and his rightful place in history, and in Custer, he examines how the ?Boy General,? who graduated last in his class at West Point, went on to earn distinction in the Civil War and rose through the ranks. In McMurtry?s hands, Custer is brought to life in all his complexity?as the perpetually restless man whose complicated marriage, hunger for glory, and unwavering confidence in his abilities led him to ignore the warnings of scouts and comrades at Little Big Horn. In this engaging, handsomely illustrated volume, McMurtry not only delivers an honest assessment of Custer?s legacy, demonstrating how through his power of personality, and as a product of his times, he achieved eternal fame, but also redefines our understanding of the American West.

Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark and the westward moving pioneers lies another journey, every bit as poignant, every bit as dramatic, and every bit as essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation––the 1800–mile journey of...  more

Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark and the westward moving pioneers lies another journey, every bit as poignant, every bit as dramatic, and every bit as essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation––the 1800–mile journey of Chief Joseph and eight hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children from their homelands in what is now eastern Oregon through the most difficult, mountainous country in western America to the high, wintry plains of Montana. There, only forty miles from the Canadian border and freedom, Chief Joseph, convinced that the wounded and elders could go no farther, walked across the snowy battlefield, handed his rifle to the U.S. military commander who had been pursuing them, and spoke his now–famous words, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." The story has been told many times, but it has never before been told in its entirety or with such narrative richness. Drawing on four years of research, interviews, and 20,000 miles of travel, Nerburn takes us beyond the surrender to the captives' unlikely welcome in Bismarck, North Dakota, their tragic eight–year exile in Indian Territory, and their ultimate return to the Northwest.

Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark lies another journey every bit as poignant, every bit as dramatic, and every bit as essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation -- the 1,800-mile journey made by Chief Joseph and eight hundred Nez Perce...  more

Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark lies another journey every bit as poignant, every bit as dramatic, and every bit as essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation -- the 1,800-mile journey made by Chief Joseph and eight hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children from their homelands in what is now eastern Oregon through the most difficult, mountainous country in western America to the high, wintry plains of Montana. There, only forty miles from the Canadian border and freedom, Chief Joseph, convinced that the wounded and elders could go no farther, walked across the snowy battlefield, handed his rifle to the U.S. military commander who had been pursuing them, and spoke his now-famous words, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." The story has been told many times, but never before in its entirety or with such narrative richness. Drawing on four years of research, interviews, and 20,000 miles of travel, Nerburn takes us beyond the surrender to the captives' unlikely welcome in Bismarck, North Dakota, their tragic eight-year exile in Indian Territory, and their ultimate return to the Northwest. Nerburn reveals the true, complex character of Joseph, showing how the man was transformed into a myth by a public hungry for an image of the noble Indian and how Joseph exploited the myth in order to achieve his single goal of returning his people to their homeland. Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce is far more than the story of a man and a people. It is a grand saga of a pivotal time in our nation's history. Its pages are alive with the presence of Lewis and Clark, General William Tecumseh Sherman, General George Armstrong Custer, and Sitting Bull. Its events brush against the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, the great western pioneer migration, and the building of the telegraph and the transcontinental railroad. Once you have read this groundbreaking work, you will never look at Chief Joseph, the American Indian, or our nation's westward journey in the same way again.

Driven by the promise of prosperity, thousands of men and women traveled west in the mid-1800s. Accompanying them were their children, wide-eyed and excited about the adventures that awaited as they headed toward the setting sun. Little did they know how treacherous and grueling the trip would...  more

Driven by the promise of prosperity, thousands of men and women traveled west in the mid-1800s. Accompanying them were their children, wide-eyed and excited about the adventures that awaited as they headed toward the setting sun. Little did they know how treacherous and grueling the trip would be. The perils of overland travel forced parents to depend on their children for survival. Girls were called upon to help cook, set up and break camp, supervise younger siblings, or drive the oxen. Even with the endless chores, many pioneer girls found time to record the details of their journeys. Tales of wild river crossings, laments for lost family and friends, and secrets of friendships made along the way complete their personal stories. These young women bring a unique perspective to the great American migration. Each girl's story is different. For some, such as Sallie Hester, the journey west led to new opportunities and a bright future. For others, such as Catherine Sager and her siblings, the trip brought disaster and grief that could never be forgotten. By focusing on the lives of pioneer girls, author Mary Barmeyer O'Brien provides a fascinating addition to the history of the West. Through diary excerpts and O'Brien's descriptive prose, you can join ten girls as they journey Toward the Setting Sun.

Eighteen-year-old Napoleon Augustus Jennings came to Texas in 1874 and joined a special force of Texas ranger charged with border patrol under the command of L.H. McNelly. At this time the South Texas region was home to hundreds of outlaws and riffraff, and some three thousand Mexican guerrillas...  more

Eighteen-year-old Napoleon Augustus Jennings came to Texas in 1874 and joined a special force of Texas ranger charged with border patrol under the command of L.H. McNelly. At this time the South Texas region was home to hundreds of outlaws and riffraff, and some three thousand Mexican guerrillas under Juan Cortina and others were raiding settlers on both sides of the Rio Grande. McNelly’s Rangers stormed into this lawless area for two reasons, according to Jennings: "Two have fun, and to carry out a set policy of terrorizing the Mexicans at every opportunity," which would gain them the reputation as "fire-eating, quarrelsome daredevils" and make their job of subduing the guerrillas an easier prospect. Within a short time the Rangers had arrested more than eleven hundred men and reputedly killed many more. Jennings records many a fight with the Mexican guerrillas, including the time when McNelly defied the United States government, crossed the Rio Grande, and fought Cortina and his raiders at Las Cuevas. Jennings also gives accounts of scrapes with King Fisher’s outlaw band, John Wesley Hardin, and the families involved in the Taylor-Sutton feud. Originally published in 1899, A Texas Ranger was reprinted in 1930 with a foreword by J. Frank Dobie, who defends the veracity of the account despite the fact that Jennings was not, as his story claims, a member of the company in its earliest years. In a new introduction of this edition, Stephen L. Hardin explores the authenticity of Jennings account and imparts the story of the feud that erupted between Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb over the publication of A Texas Ranger.

What was life really like for ordinary people in the Old West? What did they eat, wear, and think? How did they raise their children? How did they interact with government? What did they do for fun? This encyclopedia provides readers with an engaging and detailed portrayal of the Old West...  more

What was life really like for ordinary people in the Old West? What did they eat, wear, and think? How did they raise their children? How did they interact with government? What did they do for fun? This encyclopedia provides readers with an engaging and detailed portrayal of the Old West through the examination of social, cultural, and material history. Supported by the most current research, the multivolume set will explore various aspects of social history?family, politics, religion, economics, and recreation?to illuminate aspects of a society's emotional life, interactions, opinions, views, beliefs, intimate relationships, and connections between the individual and the greater world. Readers will be exposed to both objective reality and subjective views of a particular culture; as a result, they can create a cohesive, accurate impression of life in the Old West during the second half of the 1800s.

To know how the West was really won, start with the exploits of these unsung buckskin survivalists.

Early explorers to the Pacific Northwest expected to encounter a land of dense forests. Instead, their writings reveal that they were often surprised to discover spacious meadows, prairies, and open spaces. Far from a pristine wilderness, much of the Northwest landscape was actively managed and...  more

Early explorers to the Pacific Northwest expected to encounter a land of dense forests. Instead, their writings reveal that they were often surprised to discover spacious meadows, prairies, and open spaces. Far from a pristine wilderness, much of the Northwest landscape was actively managed and shaped by the hands of its Native American inhabitants. Their primary tool was fire. During more than 10,000 years of occupation, Native Americans in the Northwest learned the intricacies of their local envrionments and how to use fire to create desired effects, mostly in the quest for food. The essays collected in this important volume summarize virtually everything that is currently known about the use of fire in the environment. The fourteen contributors bring to the discussion expertise in such areas as anthropology, environmental history, ethnohistory, ethnobotany, forestry, cultural ecology and paleobotany. Drawing on historical journals, Native American informants, and botanical and forestry studies, the contributors describe local patterns of fire use in eight ecoregions, representing all parts of the Native Northwest, from southwest Oregon to British Columbia and from Puget Sound to the Northern Rockies. The essays provide glimpses into a unique understanding of the environment--a traditional ecological knowledge now for the most part lost.

Why Mexico Went To War With The United States The war that was fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was a major event in the history of both countries: it cost Mexico half of its national territory, opened western North America to U.S. expansion, and brought to the...  more

Why Mexico Went To War With The United States The war that was fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was a major event in the history of both countries: it cost Mexico half of its national territory, opened western North America to U.S. expansion, and brought to the surface a host of tensions that led to devastating civil wars in both countries. Among generations of Latin Americans, it helped to cement the image of the United States as an arrogant, aggressive, and imperialist nation, poisoning relations between a young America and its southern neighbors. In contrast with many current books that treat the war as a fundamentally American experience, Timothy J. Henderson offers a fresh perspective on the Mexican side of the equation. Examining the manner in which Mexico gained independence, Henderson brings to light a greater understanding of that country’s intense factionalism and political paralysis leading up to and through the war. Also touching on a range of topics from culture, ethnicity, religion, and geography, this comprehensive yet concise narrative humanizes the conflict and serves as the perfect introduction for new readers of Mexican history.

When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful...  more

When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of Texas -- what would become California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado -- belonged to Mexico. When Polk relinquished office four years later, the country had grown by more than a third as all these lands were added. The continental United States, as we know it today, was established -- facing two oceans and positioned to dominate both. In a one-term presidency, Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny -- extending its territory across the continent, from sea to sea, by threatening England and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico that Abraham Lincoln, in Congress at the time, opposed as preemptive. Robert Merry tells this story through powerful debates and towering figures -- the outgoing President John Tyler and Polk's great mentor, Andrew Jackson; his defeated Whig opponent, Henry Clay; two famous generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; Secretary of State James Buchanan (who would precede Lincoln as president); Senate giants Thomas Hart Benton and Lewis Cass; Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun; and ex-president Martin Van Buren, like Polk a Jackson protege but now a Polk rival. This was a time of tremendous clashing forces. A surging antislavery sentiment was at the center of the territorial fight. The struggle between a slave-owning South and an opposing North was leading inexorably to Civil War. In a gripping narrative, Robert Merry illuminates a crucial epoch in U.S. history.

"There are few sensations I prefer to that of galloping over these rolling limitless prairies, with rifle in hand, or winding my way among the barren, fantastic and grimly picturesque deserts of the so-called Bad Lands." ?Theodore Roosevelt He was born a city boy in Manhattan; but it wasn't...  more

"There are few sensations I prefer to that of galloping over these rolling limitless prairies, with rifle in hand, or winding my way among the barren, fantastic and grimly picturesque deserts of the so-called Bad Lands." ?Theodore Roosevelt He was born a city boy in Manhattan; but it wasn't until he lived as a cattle rancher and deputy sheriff in the wild country of the Dakota Territory that Theodore Roosevelt became the man who would be president. "I have always said I would not have been president had it not been for my experience in North Dakota," Roosevelt later wrote. It was in the "grim fairyland" of the Bad Lands that Roosevelt became acquainted with the ways of cowboys, Native Americans, trappers, thieves, and wild creatures--and it was there that his spirit was forged and tested. In Forging a President, author William Hazelgrove uses Roosevelt's own reflections to immerse readers in the formative seasons that America's twenty-sixth president spent in "the broken country" of the Wild West.

This riveting volume dispels the sanitized history surrounding Native American practices toward their enemies that preceded the European exploration and colonization of North America. We abandon truth when we gloss over the clashes between Native Americans and Europeans, encounters of parties...  more

This riveting volume dispels the sanitized history surrounding Native American practices toward their enemies that preceded the European exploration and colonization of North America. We abandon truth when we gloss over the clashes between Native Americans and Europeans, encounters of parties equally matched in barbarity, says George Franklin Feldman, We neglect true history when we hide the uniqueness of the varied cultures that evolved during the thousands of years before Europeans invaded North America. The research is impeccable, the writing sparkling, and the evidence incontrovertible: headhunting and cannibalism were practiced by many of the native peoples of North America.

The Handgun Story traces the fascinating history of the 'one hand gun' from its crude fourteenth-century origins to the sophisticated products of today. As technology has progressed, handguns have got smaller and deadlier, to be carried in holsters, pockets and even lady's mufflers. Today they...  more

The Handgun Story traces the fascinating history of the 'one hand gun' from its crude fourteenth-century origins to the sophisticated products of today. As technology has progressed, handguns have got smaller and deadlier, to be carried in holsters, pockets and even lady's mufflers. Today they are the weapons of choice for undercover agents and would - be assassins; ideally suited for both attack and self-defense. The earliest pistols had a tendency to misfire, but this was cured by the cap-lock. Cap-lock revolvers proved a massive success in the American Civil War with hundreds of thousands used on each side. Self-contained metal-case cartridges were to bring a fundamental change to handgun design: not only by allowing the introduction of revolvers that ejected automatically or were easily reloaded, but also by paving the way for the automatic pistol. World War I provided the handgun with a proving ground. At the end of the hostilities, with so much surplus weaponry, work on the handgun could have ceased; instead, a new developmental phase was begun by the nations that had emerged from the crumbling Imperial empires. During World War II the efficiency of well-established designs was confirmed and new designs, such as the Walther P. 38, showed their potential. The emergence of the submachine-gun in 1945 reduced the status of the handgun - but only temporarily. The need for efficient self-defense shows no signs of lessening; and the rise in shooting for sport, particularly with the revolver, has sharpened the quest for efficiency. The never ending search for advanced production techniques shows that the handgun has as much a future in the twenty-first century as it had in the heyday of the Wild West, or in the trenches of Passchendaele. REVIEWS "...packed with diagrams, history and black and white photos; a key guide for anyone interested in handguns."The Midwest Book Review, 03/2009 "...takes readers on a tour of the history of the development, adaptation, and uses of handguns...provides numerous renderings of the mechanisms of a variety of guns... will interests both gun and history enthusiasts". Book News, 04/2009

From a New York Times-bestselling author, a sweeping history of the American West In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the...  more

From a New York Times-bestselling author, a sweeping history of the American West In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame-and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East. Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

Brave Hearts: Indian Women of the Plains tells the story of Plains Indian women through a series of fascinating vignettes. They are a remarkable group of women ? some famous, some obscure. Some were hunters, some were warriors and, in a rare case, one was a chief; some lived extraordinary lives,...  more

Brave Hearts: Indian Women of the Plains tells the story of Plains Indian women through a series of fascinating vignettes. They are a remarkable group of women ? some famous, some obscure. Some were hunters, some were warriors and, in a rare case, one was a chief; some lived extraordinary lives, while others lived more quietly in their lodges. Some were born into traditional families and knew their place in society while others were bi-racial who struggled to find their place in a world conflicted between Indian and white. Some never knew anything but the old, nomadic way of life, while others lived on to suffer through the reservation years. Others were born on the reservation but did their best in difficult times to keep to the old ways. Some never left the reservation while others ventured out into the larger world. All, in their own way, were Plains Indian women.

Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp by Ann Kirschner is the definitive biography of a Jewish girl from New York who won the heart of Wyatt Earp. For nearly fifty years, she was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp: hero of the O.K. Corral and the most famous lawman...  more

Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp by Ann Kirschner is the definitive biography of a Jewish girl from New York who won the heart of Wyatt Earp. For nearly fifty years, she was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp: hero of the O.K. Corral and the most famous lawman of the Old West. Yet Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp has nearly been erased from Western lore. In this fascinating biography, Ann Kirschner, author of the acclaimed Sala's Gift, brings Josephine out of the shadows of history to tell her tale: a spirited and colorful tale of ambition, adventure, self-invention, and devotion. Reflective of America itself, her story brings us from the post-Civil War years to World War II, and from New York to the Arizona Territory to old Hollywood. In Lady at the O.K. Corral, you’ll learn how this aspiring actress and dancer -- a flamboyant, curvaceous Jewish girl with a persistent New York accent -- landed in Tombstone, Arizona, and sustained a lifelong partnership with Wyatt Earp, a man of uncommon charisma and complex heroism.

For the American Indians the 19th century was a disaster. It started promisingly enough; there seemed to be land for everyone. But the trickle of immigrants flowing westward increased to a flood, and the two cultures glowered at each other with hatred. Crazy Horse was one of the last Indian...  more

For the American Indians the 19th century was a disaster. It started promisingly enough; there seemed to be land for everyone. But the trickle of immigrants flowing westward increased to a flood, and the two cultures glowered at each other with hatred. Crazy Horse was one of the last Indian chiefs to wage war against the settlers. He was charismatic, known for his valor and bravery, openly admired by his opponents. In 1876 he led the Sioux nation out of its reservation and into the wilderness. He held off pursuing armies for months. In the end, dressed in finest regalia, he surrendered, later to be treacherously stabbed and killed.  

The story of the Oatman girls, Olive and Mary Ann, is one of the most famous accounts of the abduction of white women by indigenous Indians in the annals of the history of the American western frontier. The Oatman's, led by their patriarch Royce, were a family of nine. Members of the Mormon...  more

The story of the Oatman girls, Olive and Mary Ann, is one of the most famous accounts of the abduction of white women by indigenous Indians in the annals of the history of the American western frontier. The Oatman's, led by their patriarch Royce, were a family of nine. Members of the Mormon faith, they had become dissenters of Brigham Young's leadership and allying themselves with James Brewster and his 'Brewsterites' resolved to move to California in 1850. The original substantial wagon-train they had formed for security split as a result of disagreements within the party and the group to which the Oatman's belonged further fragmented until the family were left travelling alone, against all advice, in hostile Indian territory. On the banks of the Gila River (in present day Arizona) the family were attacked by Indians and all were slaughtered with the exception of two girls, aged 13 and 7 years, who were abducted and a brother. Their brother Lorenzo was felled by a club blow, presumed dead by the assailants, and left among the corpses of his mother, father and siblings, but he regained consciousness and eventually found his way to safety. The girl's captors, Tolkepayas or Yavapais, kept the girls in slavery for a period then sold them to Mohave Apaches. The story of the ordeals of the Oatman girls has inspired fiction and works of history alike. Olive Oatman's face, with its distinctive tattoo has all but become a western icon. Written during the 1850s this book became a bestseller of its day.

INDIAN HEROES AND GREAT CHIEFTAINS presents intriguing biographical sketches of 15 great Native American leaders, mostly Sioux, including portraits of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Spotted Tail. Charles Eastman traces their historical importance to both the white man and Native people. ...  more

INDIAN HEROES AND GREAT CHIEFTAINS presents intriguing biographical sketches of 15 great Native American leaders, mostly Sioux, including portraits of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Spotted Tail. Charles Eastman traces their historical importance to both the white man and Native people. Charles Eastman was born on the Santee Reservation in Minnesota in 1858. His grandparents raised him after his mother?s death and his father?s capture during the ?Minnesota Sioux Uprising?. At the age of 15 he was reunited with his father and embarked on a life in white man?s society. He became a doctor and spent the rest of his career helping Indian people come to terms with their changing world.

"I want to talk about my tragic story, because if I don't, it will get into my mind and get into my dream and make me crazy." When the Navajos were taken from their land by the federal government in the 1860s, thousands lost their lives on the infamous Long Walk, while those who...  more

"I want to talk about my tragic story, because if I don't, it will get into my mind and get into my dream and make me crazy." When the Navajos were taken from their land by the federal government in the 1860s, thousands lost their lives on the infamous Long Walk, while those who eluded capture lived in constant fear. These men and women are now dead, but their story lives on in the collective memory of their tribe. Gus Bighorse lived through that period of his people's history, and his account of it -- recalled by his daughter Tiana and retold in her father's voice -- provides authentic glimpses into Navajo life and values of a century ago. Born around 1846, Gus was orphaned at sixteen when his parents were killed by soldiers, and he went into hiding with other Navajos banded together under chiefs like Manuelito. Over the coming years, he was to see members of his tribe take refuge in Canyon de Chelly, endure the Long Walk from Fort Defiance to Bosque Redondo in 1864, and go into hiding at Navajo Mountain. Gus himself was the leader of one of Manuelito's bands who fought against Kit Carson's troops. After the Navajos were allowed to return to their land, Gus took up the life of a horseman, only to see his beloved animals decimated in a government stock reduction program. "I know some people died of their tragic story," says Gus. "They think about it and think about how many relatives they lost. Their parents got shot. They get into shock. That is what kills them. That is why we warriors have to talk to each other. We wake ourselves up, get out of the shock. And that is why I tell my kids what happened, so it won't be forgot." Throughout his narrative, he makes clear those human qualities that for the Navajos define what it is to be a warrior: vision, compassion, courage, and endurance. Befitting the oral tradition of her people, Tiana Bighorse draws on her memory to tell her father's story. In doing so, she ensures that a new generation of Navajos will know how the courage of their ancestors enabled their people to have their reservation today: "They paid for our land with their lives." Following the text is a chronology of Navajo history, with highlights of Gus Bighorse's life placed in the context of historical events.

In the saga of early western exploration a young Shoshoni Indian girl named Sacajawea is famed as a guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Far Northwest between 1804 and 1806. Her fame rests upon her contributions to the expedition. In guiding them through the...  more

In the saga of early western exploration a young Shoshoni Indian girl named Sacajawea is famed as a guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Far Northwest between 1804 and 1806. Her fame rests upon her contributions to the expedition. In guiding them through the wilderness, in gathering wild foods, and, above all, in serving as an ambassadress to Indian tribes along the way she helped to assure the success of the expedition. This book retraces Sacajawea’s path across the Northwest, from the Mandan Indian villages in present-day South Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, and back. On the journey Sacajawea was accompanied by her ne’er-do-well French-Canadian husband, Toussaint Charboneau, and her infant son, Baptiste, who became a favorite of the members of the expedition, especially Captain William Clark. The author presents a colorful account of Sacajawea’s journeys with Lewis and Clark and an objective evaluation of the controversial accounts of her later years.

Rapid population growth in the Great Plains and the American West after the Civil War was the result not only of railroad expansion but of a collaboration among competing railroads to adopt a uniform width for track. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 shows how the consolidation of smaller...  more

Rapid population growth in the Great Plains and the American West after the Civil War was the result not only of railroad expansion but of a collaboration among competing railroads to adopt a uniform width for track. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 shows how the consolidation of smaller railroads and the growth of capitalism worked to unify the fragmented railroad industry through standardization. George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu cover the emergence of railroads before and during the Civil War, their expansions westward, the gradual adoption of a national rail gauge, and the development of standardized equipment and car interchange rules that set examples for American industry in general. A pioneering work first published in 1956, The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 provides a framework for understanding how advancements in technology are both impeded and fostered by political processes and commercial pressures. This paperback edition features three full-color fold-out maps and a new introduction by Railroad History editor Mark Reutter.

The book is a compendium of country and western songs from the turn of the century to the present. You will find the parlor songs of the 1900's, the first commercial favorites of the 1920's, the railroading and prison songs so popular in the '30s, the lost love and cheating songs of...  more

The book is a compendium of country and western songs from the turn of the century to the present. You will find the parlor songs of the 1900's, the first commercial favorites of the 1920's, the railroading and prison songs so popular in the '30s, the lost love and cheating songs of the '40s, the ballads and rockabilly hits of the '50s, the saga songs and novelties of the '60s and, finally, the more mature and even philosophical products of the '70s. An entire section, section 1, is devoted to songs either written or made popular by Hank Williams. Another section draws on the Western classics that via films and recordings made Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and the "The Sons of the Pioneers latter-day American heroes. Each of the 95 songs in this book has an interesting lyric, and many were inspired by equally interesting incidents or circumstances. The editors have tried to provide additional insight into each song in the annotations that accompany the words and music. This terrific collection is spiral bound so that it stays flat when opened. The last page includes photos of the nine immortal stars included in the book: Hank Snow, Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, Gene Autry, Jim Reeves, Jimmie Rodgers, and Hank Williams. Contents: INDEX TO SECTIONS *Hank Williams hits *New country classics *Country hits of the '60s *Country hits of the '50s *Golden memories of the '40s *Western classics *All time old time favorites *The touch for God's hand

?one of the most engaging and veracious accounts we have ever had.? - Van Wyck Brooks Born in the 1860s, the son of a Lakota chief, Standing Bear was in the first class at Carlisle Indian School, witnessed the Ghost Dance uprising from the Pine Ridge Reservation, toured Europe with Buffalo...  more

?one of the most engaging and veracious accounts we have ever had.? - Van Wyck Brooks Born in the 1860s, the son of a Lakota chief, Standing Bear was in the first class at Carlisle Indian School, 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 1920s and 1930s. My People The Sioux remains a landmark in Native American literature, among the first books about Native Americans written from the Native American point of view. Luther Standing Bear (December 1868 ? February 20, 1939) (Óta Kté or "Plenty Kill" also known as Mat?ó Ná?i? or "Standing Bear") was an Oglala Lakota chief notable in American history as a Native American author, educator, philosopher, and actor of the twentieth century. Standing Bear fought to preserve Lakota heritage and sovereignty and was at the forefront of a Progressive movement to change government policy toward Native Americans. Standing Bear was one of a small group of Lakota leaders of his generation, such as Gertrude Bonnin, and Charles Eastman, who were born and raised in the oral traditions of their culture, educated in white culture, and wrote significant historical accounts of their people and history in English. Luther?s experiences in early life, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Wild Westing with Buffalo Bill, and life on government reservations present a unique view of a Native American during the Progressive Era in American history. Standing Bear?s commentaries on Native American culture and wisdom educated the American public, deepened public awareness, and created popular support to change government policies toward Native American peoples. Luther Standing Bear helped create the popular twentieth-century image that Native American culture is holistic and respectful of nature; his classic commentaries appear in college-level reading lists in anthropology, literature, history, and philosophy, and constitute a legacy and treasury of Native American wisdom. My People The Sioux was first published in 1928.

This books is about American Indian Food and lore. It contains 150 authentic recipes. The book shows how daily meals are still being prepared according to traditional methods. Included are more than fifty plants most frequently used by the Indians.

Stories about Calamity Jane have fascinated readers for generations. This book, one of the first authoritative factual sources, separates the mythical, romanticized Calamity depicted in dime novels and Hollywood films from the real, flesh-and-blood woman. After thirty-five years, it is...  more

Stories about Calamity Jane have fascinated readers for generations. This book, one of the first authoritative factual sources, separates the mythical, romanticized Calamity depicted in dime novels and Hollywood films from the real, flesh-and-blood woman. After thirty-five years, it is back in print with new scholarship to place it in historical perspective and re-examine the legend.

Often hailed as the godfather of today?s elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on ?impossible? missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers? legend. The child of marginalized...  more

Often hailed as the godfather of today?s elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on ?impossible? missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers? legend. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Rogers learned to survive in New England?s dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. John F. Ross not only re-creates Rogers?s life and his spectacular battles with breathtaking immediacy and meticulous accuracy, but brings a new and provocative perspective on Rogers?s unique vision of a unified continent, one that would influence Thomas Jefferson and inspire the Lewis and Clark expedition. Rogers?s principles of unconventional war-making would lay the groundwork for the colonial strategy later used in the War of Independence?and prove so compelling that army rangers still study them today. Robert Rogers, a backwoods founding father, was heroic, admirable, brutal, canny, ambitious, duplicitous, visionary, and much more?like America itself.

In the tradition of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals comes Gustav Niebuhr's compelling history of Abraham Lincoln's decision in 1862 to spare the lives of 265 condemned Sioux men, and the Episcopal bishop who was his moral compass, helping guide the president's conscience.More than a...  more

In the tradition of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals comes Gustav Niebuhr's compelling history of Abraham Lincoln's decision in 1862 to spare the lives of 265 condemned Sioux men, and the Episcopal bishop who was his moral compass, helping guide the president's conscience.More than a century ago, during the formative years of the American nation, Protestant churches carried powerful moral authority, giving voice to values such as mercy and compassion, while boldly standing against injustice and immorality. Gustav Niebuhr travels back to this defining period, to explore Abraham Lincoln's decision to spare the lives of 265 Sioux men sentenced to die by a military tribunal in Minnesota for warfare against white settlers?while allowing the hanging of 38 others, the largest single execution on American soil. Popular opinion favored death or expulsion. Only one state leader championed the cause of the Native Americans, Episcopal bishop, Henry Benjamin Whipple.Though he'd never met an Indian until he was 37 years old, Whipple befriended them before the massacre and understood their plight at the hands of corrupt government officials and businessmen. After their trial, he pleaded with Lincoln to extend mercy and implement true justice. Bringing to life this little known event and this extraordinary man, Niebuhr pays tribute to the once amazing moral force of mainline Protestant churches and the practitioners who guarded America's conscience.Lincoln's Bishop is illustrated with 16 pages of black-and-white photos.

In April of 1846, Sarah Graves was twenty-one and in love with a young man who played the violin. But she was torn. Her mother, father, and eight siblings were about to disappear over the western horizon forever, bound for California. Sarah could not bear to see them go out of her life, and so...  more

In April of 1846, Sarah Graves was twenty-one and in love with a young man who played the violin. But she was torn. Her mother, father, and eight siblings were about to disappear over the western horizon forever, bound for California. Sarah could not bear to see them go out of her life, and so days before the planned departure she married the young man with the violin, and the two of them threw their lot in with the rest of Sarah's family. On April 12, they rolled out of the yard of their homestead in three ox-drawn wagons. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, Sarah and her family arrived at Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. After a series of desperate attempts to cross the mountains, the party improvised cabins and slaughtered what remained of their emaciated livestock. By early December they were beginning to starve. Sarah's father, a Vermonter, was the only member of the party familiar with snowshoes. Under his instruction, fifteen sets of snowshoes were hastily constructed from oxbows and rawhide, and on December 15, Sarah and fourteen other relatively young, healthy people set out for California on foot, hoping to get relief for the others. Over the next thirty-two days they endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors. In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown takes the reader along on every painful footstep of Sarah's journey. Along the way, he weaves into the story revealing insights garnered from a variety of modern scientific perspectives-psychology, physiology, forensics, and archaeology-producing a tale that is not only spell-binding but richly informative.

Starting with her nostalgically remembered childhood on a Quaker farm on the Hudson River, Mary Hallock Foote tells the story of her training as an artist in the 1860s and of her marriage to a mining engineer whose jobs took the young couple west in the closing days of the frontier. She left...  more

Starting with her nostalgically remembered childhood on a Quaker farm on the Hudson River, Mary Hallock Foote tells the story of her training as an artist in the 1860s and of her marriage to a mining engineer whose jobs took the young couple west in the closing days of the frontier. She left the east, but not her career in book illustration. While moving from place to place with her husband, she also became a popular and widely published author, describing in her novels what it meant to be a woman in the American West during the late nineteenth century. Her story inspired the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Angle of Repose" by Wallace Stegner.

Wagons West The Epic Story of America's Overland Trails by McLynn, F.J. ( Author ) ON Mar-06-2003, Paperback - McLynn, F.J. - Vintage

In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by midwestern farmers to Oregon and California in the years 1840-49. Seeking the promised land, these travelers trekked two thousand miles by covered wagon from Missouri to their destinations on the Pacific coast. Although...  more

In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by midwestern farmers to Oregon and California in the years 1840-49. Seeking the promised land, these travelers trekked two thousand miles by covered wagon from Missouri to their destinations on the Pacific coast. Although they used mountain men as guides, they went almost literally into the unknown, braving dangers from hunger, thirst, disease, drowning, and Native Americans. The early migrants got through only after herculean efforts, but later in the decade complacency set in, and the result was disastrous, especially in the case of the Donner party, marooned in the snow and reduced to cannibalism. Using original diaries and memoirs, Frank McLynn underscores the incredible heroism and dangerous folly on the overland trails. His well-informed and authoritative year-by-year narrative includes many thematic investigations: the events leading up to the opening of the trails, the wagons and animals used by the pioneers, the role of women, relations with Native Americans, and much else. The narrative builds to a climax with the dreadful tale of the Donner party but achieves closure with the triumphant story of Brigham Young and the Mormons. Sandwiched between the era of the fur trappers and the post-1849 gold fever, this account of the pioneering years in the overland trails abounds with high drama, tragedy, and triumph in the face of overwhelming odds. It also brilliantly chronicles one of the principal chapters in the conquest of the North American continent, and the creation of the United States as we know it today.

Frank McLynn has penned a year-by-year account of the pioneering efforts to conquer and settle the American West. Wagons West is a stirring history of the years from 1840 to 1849 - between the era of the fur trappers and the beginning of the gold rush. In all the sagas of human migration, few...  more

Frank McLynn has penned a year-by-year account of the pioneering efforts to conquer and settle the American West. Wagons West is a stirring history of the years from 1840 to 1849 - between the era of the fur trappers and the beginning of the gold rush. In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by Midwestern farmers to Oregon and California. Although they used mountain men as guides, they went almost literally into the unknown, braving dangers from hunger, thirst, disease, and drowning. Using illustrations, along with original diaries and memoirs, McLynn underscores the incredible heroism and dangerous folly on the overland trails. His well-informed and authoritative narrative investigates the events leading up to the opening of the trails, the wagons and animals used by the pioneers, the role of women, relations with Native Americans, and much else. The climax arrives in McLynn's expertly re-created tale of the dreadful Donner party, and he closes with Brigham Young and the Mormons beginning communites of their own. Full of high drama, tragedy, and triumph, it brilliantly chronicles one of the principal chapters in the creation of the United States as we know it today.

With her stunningly realistic and exhaustively researched novels, Cecelia Holland has earned unanimous acclaim as one of the finest historical novelists of our time. Her subjects range from the dawn of prehistory and the turbulent middle ages to the rough-and-tumble pioneer days of her own...  more

With her stunningly realistic and exhaustively researched novels, Cecelia Holland has earned unanimous acclaim as one of the finest historical novelists of our time. Her subjects range from the dawn of prehistory and the turbulent middle ages to the rough-and-tumble pioneer days of her own native California, chronicled in such sweeping epics as The Bear Flag, Pacific Street, and her most recent novel, Railroad Schemes. Now, in An Ordinary Woman, Holland gives us an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman who played a crucial role in the settlement of the West--Nancy Kelsey, the courageous young pioneer who was the first American woman to set foot in California. Drawing upon Nancy's own accounts of her harrowing journey, as well as the writings of those who traveled with her, Cecelia Holland has crafted a stunning biography of this amazing woman that is filled with all of the action, passion, danger, and determination that have made her historical novels bestsellers around the world. Married at the age of fifteen to Ben Kelsey, a restless young Scotch-Irish pioneer who eked out a meager living on the Missouri frontier, Nancy Roberts Kelsey was a strong and capable woman who could milk a cow, skin a deer, make hew own clothes, plant a field, drive a team of oxen, and shoot a rifle. The child pioneers, bred to courage and risk, she had grown up in the wilderness only a few miles from the great Missouri River that was, in 1838, the border of the settled United States. But when the lure of a new life on the farthest edge of the frontier beckoned to Ben Kelsey, Nancy was determined to be at his side. Together they embarked on an arduous odyssey across thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness, crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the High Sierra to reach their promised land. Braving hunger, disaster, illness, betrayal, and death, Nancy Kelsey and her family would play a crucial role in American history, becoming the first wave of a great tide that would transform a nation.

Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent?s most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio...  more

Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent?s most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the edge of the northern tundra. Wherever there was wood and water, there were beavers — 60 million (or more) — and wherever there were beavers, there were intricate natural communities that depended on their activities. Then the European fur traders arrived. In Once They Were Hats, Frances Backhouse examines humanity?s 15,000-year relationship with Castor canadensis, and the beaver?s even older relationship with North American landscapes and ecosystems. From the waterlogged environs of the Beaver Capital of Canada to the wilderness cabin that controversial conservationist Grey Owl shared with pet beavers; from a bustling workshop where craftsmen make beaver-felt cowboy hats using century-old tools to a tidal marsh where an almost-lost link between beavers and salmon was recently found, Backhouse goes on a journey of discovery to find out what happened after we nearly wiped this essential animal off the map, and how we can learn to live with beavers now.

In the tradition of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all, "Empire of the Summer Moon" spans two...  more

In the tradition of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all, "Empire of the Summer Moon" spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second is the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped by Comanches in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the 'White Squaw' who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend. S.C. Gwynne's account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told.

Historical insight is the alchemy that transforms the familiar story of the Gold Rush into something sparkling and new. The world of the Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film--of unshaven men named Stumpy and Kentuck raising hell and panning for gold--is one of half-truths. In...  more

Historical insight is the alchemy that transforms the familiar story of the Gold Rush into something sparkling and new. The world of the Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film--of unshaven men named Stumpy and Kentuck raising hell and panning for gold--is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode. She finds a dynamic social world in which the conventions of identity--ethnic, national, and sexual--were reshaped in surprising ways. She gives us the all-male households of the diggings, the mines where the men worked, and the fandango houses where they played. With a keen eye for character and story, Johnson restores the particular social world that issued in the Gold Rush myths we still cherish. Maps, illustrations.

From Custer and Geronimo to John Wayne and the Marlboro Man, American notions of masculinity have been deeply interwoven with our ideas about the West. But there's more to the relationship between manhood and the frontier than a simple tale of cowboys and Indians, ruggedness and civilization....  more

From Custer and Geronimo to John Wayne and the Marlboro Man, American notions of masculinity have been deeply interwoven with our ideas about the West. But there's more to the relationship between manhood and the frontier than a simple tale of cowboys and Indians, ruggedness and civilization. In Across the Great Divide, some of our leading historians look to both the history of masculinity in the West and to the ways that this experience has been represented in movies, popular music, dimestore novels, and folklore. Ramon Gutierrez (When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away) describes the culture of machismo in early New Mexico; Susan Lee Johnson (Roaring Camp) takes on social life in Gold Rush boom towns; and other contributors introduce us to cross-dressing cowboys, cuckolded husbands hell-bent on revenge, and convicted outlaws walking to the gallows, among other characters. Intriguing, provocative, and important, Across the Great Divide makes us rethink easy assumptions about the nature of American masculinity.

I Am the Grand Canyon is the story of the Havasupai people. From their origins among the first group of Indians to arrive in North America some 20,000 years ago to their epic struggle to regain traditional lands taken from them in the nineteenth century, the Havasupai have a long and colorful...  more

I Am the Grand Canyon is the story of the Havasupai people. From their origins among the first group of Indians to arrive in North America some 20,000 years ago to their epic struggle to regain traditional lands taken from them in the nineteenth century, the Havasupai have a long and colorful history. The story of this tiny tribe once confined to a toosmall reservation depicts a people with deep cultural ties to the land, both on their former reservation below the rim of the Grand Canyon and on the surrounding plateaus.

Texas Women on the Cattle Trails tells the stories of sixteen women who drove cattle up the trail from Texas during the last half of the nineteenth century. Some were young; some were old (over thirty). Some took to the trails by choice; others, out of necessity. Some went along to look at the...  more

Texas Women on the Cattle Trails tells the stories of sixteen women who drove cattle up the trail from Texas during the last half of the nineteenth century. Some were young; some were old (over thirty). Some took to the trails by choice; others, out of necessity. Some went along to look at the stars; others, to work the cattle. Some made money and built ranching empires, but others went broke and lived hard, even desperate lives. The courage of Margaret Borland and the spunk of Willie Matthews, the pure delight of Cornelia Adair viewing the buffalo, and the joy of Mary Bunton gazing at night constellations on the open range offer new insights into women's experiences of the West. For the most part, these were ordinary women doing the best they could in difficult frontier conditions. They did not see themselves as living in unusual times or participating in "romantic" lifestyles, although the women who actually took to the trail were few in number. Like the cowboys on cattle drives, they faced dust and heat, thirst and exhaustion, rustlers and Indians, stampedes and prairie fires. Drawing heavily on the accounts of the women themselves, the authors of these chapters vividly illustrate the complexity and diversity of women's experiences on the cattle trails. Their stories of cattle drives and moving cattle to distant pastures add an important chapter to the story of life in the real Old West.

This book chronicles the life and frontier career of Don Juan de Oñate, the first colonizer of the old Spanish Borderlands. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, in the mid-sixteenth century, Don Juan was the prominent son of an aristocratic silver-mining family. In 1598, in his late forties,...  more

This book chronicles the life and frontier career of Don Juan de Oñate, the first colonizer of the old Spanish Borderlands. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, in the mid-sixteenth century, Don Juan was the prominent son of an aristocratic silver-mining family. In 1598, in his late forties, Oñate led a formidable expedition of settlers, with wagons and livestock, on an epic march northward to the upper Rio Grade Valley of New Mexico. There he established the first European settlement west of the Mississippi, launching a significant chapter in early American history. In his activities he displayed qualities typical of Spain’s sixteenth-century men of action; in his career we find a summation of the motives, aspirations, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses of the Hispanic pioneers who settled the Borderlands.

We witness Nat s days in slavery, his attachment to his mother and family which yields to the temptation of the West. We are carried through his introduction to the range where he becomes an expert cowboy and marksman. After winning a shooting contest in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1876, his...  more

We witness Nat s days in slavery, his attachment to his mother and family which yields to the temptation of the West. We are carried through his introduction to the range where he becomes an expert cowboy and marksman. After winning a shooting contest in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1876, his skills as a marksman earned him the nickname Deadwood Dick . In all, Nat Love spent twenty years living the life of a cowboy. In his latter life, Nat Love and several of his former saddle mates worked for the railroad. He became a devoted father and family man.

About the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the years of its climax 1833 through 1838 with special focus on the expedition headed by a Scottish sportsman, William Drummond Stewart, accompanied by a talented artist, Alfred Jacob Miller--includes his pictorial history of the early west.

Linking the personal and the historical, Schloff integrates oral accounts, diaries, letters, and autobiographies with original research and interpretation to shed vital new light on the Jewish experience in America's heartland. The book uses the voices of four generations of Jewish women who...  more

Linking the personal and the historical, Schloff integrates oral accounts, diaries, letters, and autobiographies with original research and interpretation to shed vital new light on the Jewish experience in America's heartland. The book uses the voices of four generations of Jewish women who settled in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, and Wisconsin to show how they transported and transformed their cultural and religious life in a region inhabited by few Jews. As the wives of fur traders and homesteaders, storekeepers and professionals, they were the key link in creating Jewish homes and helping their families fit in--often under harsh conditions. But in the process of becoming Jewish Americans, they also carved out new roles for themselves as jobholders, synagogue-builders, and social activists.

Updated and expanded for its twentieth anniversary?the beloved book that tells the stories of the women who traveled West. In Heart of the Trail Mary Barmeyer O'Brien beautifully captures the triumphs and tribulations of women who crossed the American frontier by wagon during the great Western...  more

Updated and expanded for its twentieth anniversary?the beloved book that tells the stories of the women who traveled West. In Heart of the Trail Mary Barmeyer O'Brien beautifully captures the triumphs and tribulations of women who crossed the American frontier by wagon during the great Western migration of the mid nineteenth century. While their stories are widely different, each of these remarkable women was inspiring, courageous, and resourceful. From the successes of mountaineer Julia Anna Archibald to the grueling trials of Mary Powers, these stories reflect the adventure and hardship experienced by the thousands of women who took to the trails. The legacy of their letters and diaries, most written on the trail, is a fascinating addition to understanding the history of the West. Mary Barmeyer O'Brien?s books on the pioneer experience include The Promise of the West; Jeannette Rankin: Bright Star in the Big Sky; Outlasting the Trail: The Story of a Woman's Journey West; May: The Hard-Rock Life of Pioneer May Arkwright Hutton; and Across Death Valley. She lives in Polson, Montana.

In December 1890 the U.S. Seventh Cavalry massacred a band of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Miraculously, after a four-day blizzard, an infant was found alive under the frozen body of her dead mother. The dashing brigadier general (and future Assistant Attorney...  more

In December 1890 the U.S. Seventh Cavalry massacred a band of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Miraculously, after a four-day blizzard, an infant was found alive under the frozen body of her dead mother. The dashing brigadier general (and future Assistant Attorney General of the United States) Leonard W. Colby kidnapped and then adopted the baby girl named Lost Bird (1890?1920) as a "living curio," and exploited her in order to attract prominent tribes as clients of his law practice.After the general's wife, the nationally known suffragist and newspaper editor Clara B. Colby, divorced her husband, she raised the Lakota child as a white girl in a well-meaning but disastrous attempt to provide a stable home. Lost Bird ran away to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and appeared in silent films and vaudeville. During her brief but unforgettable life she endured sexual abuse, violence, prostitution, and the rejection of her own tribe before dying at age twenty-nine on Valentine's Day. This remarkable biography examines the life of the woman who became a symbol of the warring cultures that entrapped her, and a heartbreaking microcosm of all those Native American children who lost their heritage through adoption, social injustice, and war.

The mere mention of Calamity Jane conjures up images of buckskins, bull whips and dance halls, but there?s more to the woman than the storied legend she became. Born Martha Canary, she was orphaned as a child and assumed the responsibility of caring for her siblings. Much too young and ambitious...  more

The mere mention of Calamity Jane conjures up images of buckskins, bull whips and dance halls, but there?s more to the woman than the storied legend she became. Born Martha Canary, she was orphaned as a child and assumed the responsibility of caring for her siblings. Much too young and ambitious to rear a family, she found homes for all. After setting off on her own, Martha tried to reconnect with her fractured family in her typical haphazard fashion, all the while transforming into Calamity Jane. Soon, her own foibles and her siblings? choices rendered the attempt futile. From brother Elijah?s horse thieving to sister Lena?s denial of Martha?s tales, author Jan Cerney uncovers the tumultuous Canary family often overlooked in the Calamity canon.

Not one, not two, but three Custer brothers died at the Little Bighorn?and so did their only sister's husband. Most do not realize that not one, not two, but three Custer brothers died with the 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn in 1876. So too did their...  more

Not one, not two, but three Custer brothers died at the Little Bighorn?and so did their only sister's husband. Most do not realize that not one, not two, but three Custer brothers died with the 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn in 1876. So too did their nephew and the husband of their only sister. Less than half the immediate Custer family would survive the massacre. This is their story. This book is a must for all those interested in the enduring Custer legend. Where other Custer literature focuses solely on George Armstrong, The Other Custers is the only volume to explore the lives of the Custer siblings in depth. War hero Tom Custer earned two Medals of Honor during the Civil War before riding into the West with his brother. There was the bashful and enigmatic Nevin Custer, and the young Boston Custer, whose one desire in life was to share the adventures of his idolized older brothers. Margaret Custer married into the 7th Cavalry and was widowed at twenty-four when her husband, James Calhoun, was among the dead at the Little Bighorn. The Other Custers traces the upbringing of the family and follows Nevin and Margaret as they carried the Custer name beyond Little Bighorn. The book also uncovers much more detail about the ancestors and descendants of the Custer siblings than is to be found in other Custer biographies.

Explore the lives of the pistol-packing, hell-raising, high-spirited gals who hung out with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch outlaw gang.

The Lakota warrior's life & legacy : the Edward Clown family The Edward Clown (Crazy Horse) family, nearest living relatives to the Oglala Lakota war leader, presents the family tales and memories told to them about their famous grandfather. In many ways the oral history differs from...  more

The Lakota warrior's life & legacy : the Edward Clown family The Edward Clown (Crazy Horse) family, nearest living relatives to the Oglala Lakota war leader, presents the family tales and memories told to them about their famous grandfather. In many ways the oral history differs from what has become the standard and widely accepted biography of Crazy Horse. The family clarifies the inaccuracies and shares their story about the past, including what it means to them to be Lakota, the family genealogy, the life of Crazy Horse and his motivations, his death, and why they chose to keep quiet with their knowledge for so long before finally deciding to tell the truth as they know it. This book is a compelling addition to the body of works about Crazy Horse and the complicated and often conflicting events of that time period in American History.

The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. Instead, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners gradually hammered out a national identity that united three regions into a country that...  more

The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. Instead, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners gradually hammered out a national identity that united three regions into a country that could become a world power. Ultimately, the story of Reconstruction is about how a middle class formed in America and how its members defined what the nation would stand for, both at home and abroad, for the next century and beyond.A sweeping history of the United States from the era of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this engaging book stretches the boundaries of our understanding of Reconstruction. Historian Heather Cox Richardson ties the North and West into the post–Civil War story that usually focuses narrowly on the South, encompassing the significant people and events of this profoundly important era.By weaving together the experiences of real individuals—from a plantation mistress, a Native American warrior, and a labor organizer to Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, and Sitting Bull—who lived during the decades following the Civil War and who left records in their own words, Richardson tells a story about the creation of modern America.

He was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies; the degenerate gambler and alcoholic whose fierce loyalty to his friends compelled him, more than once, to risk his own...  more

He was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies; the degenerate gambler and alcoholic whose fierce loyalty to his friends compelled him, more than once, to risk his own life; the sidekick whose near-mythic status has come to rival that of the West's greatest heroes. More than 100 years after he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six, Doc Holliday remains an enigma, a legend in the shadows, a brooding metaphor for the moral contradictions of life on the late-nineteenth-century frontier. In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West. Drawing on more than twenty years of research on his enigmatic subject, Roberts discovered numerous new primary sources in his quest to understand both what John Henry Holliday did and didn't do, and what these exploits meant to the elusive man behind the now-legendary deeds. Roberts explores Holliday's idyllic, antebellum childhood in Georgia, where he was schooled in the manly virtues of independence, loyalty, proficiency with weapons of every kind, and above all, honor. He considers numerous explanations behind John Henry's sudden and drastic decision to abandon his large extended family and a promising career to move to Texas, where, in the parlance of the day, he "slipped from the path of rectitude" even as he clung to his profession and the ideals he had learned as a child. Roberts tracks Holliday's western ramblings from Dallas to Denver to Cheyenne to Dodge City to Tombstone, always in pursuit of the next game of chance and another shot of whiskey, his health on a deep, downward spiral, his gunfighter skills on the rise. Along the way he befriended (or made enemies of) such Western icons as Bat Masterson, Kate Elder, Curly Bill Brocius, and Wyatt Earp. As you'll discover, there were as many conflicting opinions about Doc Holliday as there were people who knew him, or knew of him: To Earp, he was a "mad, merry scamp with a heart of gold and nerves of steel." According to Masterson, he "had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and under the influence of liquor was a dangerous man." Newspapers called him everything from "a very mild-mannered man...genial and companionable" to a "shiftless bagged-legged character- a killer and a professional cut-throat." In this fascinating probe into the real life near-mythic figure, you'll meet the man who lived up to every one of these statements and more.

The two pre-eminent warriors of the Apache Wars between 1878 and 1886, Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood of the Sixth United States Cavalry and Chiricahua leader Geronimo, respected one another in peace and feared one another in war. Within two years of his posting to Arizona in 1878, Gatewood...  more

The two pre-eminent warriors of the Apache Wars between 1878 and 1886, Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood of the Sixth United States Cavalry and Chiricahua leader Geronimo, respected one another in peace and feared one another in war. Within two years of his posting to Arizona in 1878, Gatewood became the army's premier "Apache man" as both a commander of Apache scouts and a reservation administrator, but his equitable treatment of Indians aroused the enmity of civilian and military detractors, and the army shunned him. In the late 1870s Geronimo, a medicine man, emerged as a brilliant Chiricahua leader and fiercely resisted his people's incarceration on inhospitable federal reservations. His fight for freedom, often bloody, in New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico triggered the deployment of hundreds of United States and Mexican troops and Apache Scouts to hunt him and his people. In the end, the United States Army recalled Gatewood to Apache service, ordering him into the Sierra Madre of northern Mexico to locate Geronimo and negotiate his band's surrender. Showing the depravity and desperation of the Apache wars, Louis Kraft dramatically recreates Gatewood's final mission and poignantly recalls the United States government's betrayal of the Chiricahuas, Geronimo, and Gatewood at the campaign's end.

Introduction by Brian C. Pohanka, 65 b/w photos 22 drawings 10 maps 7 x 10 "The Custer Myth is truly a source book. Students of the Indian Wars will be forever indebted to Colonel Graham for his compilation and to Fred Dustin for his comprehensive bibliography." -The New York Times...  more

Introduction by Brian C. Pohanka, 65 b/w photos 22 drawings 10 maps 7 x 10 "The Custer Myth is truly a source book. Students of the Indian Wars will be forever indebted to Colonel Graham for his compilation and to Fred Dustin for his comprehensive bibliography." -The New York Times Immediately after news of the disaster at Little Bighorn spread across the nation in June of 1876, editors, artists, and writers made George A. Custer into the battle's tragic hero. The laudatory biographies that followed and his widow's desperate attempts to preserve her late husband's heroic memory soon elevated his reputation to mythic proportions. But historian and lawyer W. A. Graham (1875-1954) was not interested in the propaganda surrounding the Custer myth. In 1953 Stackpole first published William A. Graham's The Custer Myth, a much-needed reference work that presents original source material without the bias of interpretations and misconstructions. Now available in paperback, this classic study will continue to serve as an indispensable tool for every Custer researcher, student, and enthusiast.

The first of John McPhee’s works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to...  more

The first of John McPhee’s works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale.

Ethnographic study of Indian culture from the prehistoric to present day times, covering an area that today includes California and Nevada. A fascinating history of Indian-white relations with a section on the multicultural approach to Indian education.

Winner of the 2014 John Carroll Award, presented annually by The Little Big Horn Associates, as their Literary Award for the best book/monograph during the preceding year. Winner 2014 G. Joseph Sills Jr. Book Award This remarkable book synthesizes a lifetime of in-depth research into one of...  more

Winner of the 2014 John Carroll Award, presented annually by The Little Big Horn Associates, as their Literary Award for the best book/monograph during the preceding year. Winner 2014 G. Joseph Sills Jr. Book Award This remarkable book synthesizes a lifetime of in-depth research into one of America?s most storied disasters, the defeat of Custer?s 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, as well as the complete annihilation of that part of the cavalry led by Custer himself. The author, Gordon Harper, spent countless hours on the battlefield itself as well as researching every iota of evidence of the fight from both sides, white and Indian. He was thus able to recreate every step of the battle as authoritatively as anyone could, dispelling myths and falsehoods along the way. Harper himself passed away in 2009, leaving behind nearly two million words of original research and writing. In this book his work has been condensed for the general public to observe his key findings and the crux of his narrative on the exact course of the battle. One of his first observations is that the fight took place along the Little Horn River?its junction with the Big Horn was several miles away so that the term for the battle, ?Little Big Horn? has always been a misnomer. He precisely traces the mysterious activities of Benteen?s battalion on that fateful day, and why it could never come to Custer?s reinforcement. He describes Reno?s desperate fight in unprecedented depth, as well as how that unnerved officer benefited from the unexpected heroism of many of his men. Indian accounts, ever-present throughout this book, come to the fore especially during Custer?s part of the fight, because no white soldier survived it. However, analysis of the forensic evidence?tracking cartridges, bullets, etc., discovered on the battlefield?plus the locations of bodies assist in drawing an accurate scenario of how the final scene unfolded. It may indeed be clearer now than it was to the doomed 7th Cavalrymen at the time, who through the dust and smoke and Indians seeming to rise by hundreds from the ground, only gradually realized the extent of the disaster. Of additional interest is the narrative of the battlefield after the fight, when successive burial teams had to be dispatched for the gruesome task, because prior ones invariably did a poor job. Though author Gordon Harper is no longer with us, his daughter Tori Harper, along with author/historians Gordon Richard and Monte Akers, have done yeoman?s work in preserving his valuable research for the public. Table of Contents Foreword by Tori Harper Prologue 1 The Approach to the Little Horn: Benteen?s March 2 The Approach to the Little Horn: Reno?s and Custer?s March 3 The Approach to the Little Horn: Custer?s March to Medicine Tail Coulee 4 The Approach to the Little Horn: The Pack Train and Messengers 5 The Opening Shots: Reno?s Fight in the Valley 6 Across the Little Horn and Up a Hill: Reno?s Retreat from the Timber 7 Strange Interlude: Chaos on Reno Hill and the Weir Advance 8 Under Siege on Reno Hill 9 Introduction to Custer?s Fight 10 Death of the Valiant by Gordon Richard ANALYSES 1 A Question of Disobedience 2 How the Indian Bands Came Together at the Little Horn 3 The Number of Warriors Facing the 7th Cavalry 4 Two Controversies: Recruits at the Little Horn and the Indian-Fighting Record of the 7th Cavalry 5 The Location of Bodies and the Initial Burials of the 7th Cavalry?s Dead 6 Burials, Markers and Survivors 7 Reconstructing the Death Sites on Custer?s Field using Marker Locations 8 The Enlisted Men?s Petition Epilogue by Gordon Richard Maps Bibliography Index

A personal narrative of the most famous cavalry leader America ever produced. A vivid picture of the American West, the rigors of life for the settlers, and the horrors of Indian warfare.

In the 140-plus years since the American Civil War, the American language has changed dramatically. As the meanings of many words have become obscure or lost, links with the vibrant language of the Civil War era have dissolved, and much of that which had meaning to our forefathers no longer...  more

In the 140-plus years since the American Civil War, the American language has changed dramatically. As the meanings of many words have become obscure or lost, links with the vibrant language of the Civil War era have dissolved, and much of that which had meaning to our forefathers no longer retains the same meaning to us. What did it mean "to cross the bar"? What was a soldier's "big ticket"? What did it mean "to see the elephant" or "to go South"? Why did the armies have so-called ninety-day men and hundred-day men? What were soldiers supposed to do when they heard the commander shout, "Let her go, Gallagher"? How did one "pay tribute to Neptune"? What was a "picket pin"? Could you make a passable meal out of "possum beer" and "secession bread"? How did one "vibrate the lines," and why would anyone want to attempt such a maneuver? From Webb Garrison's more than thirty years of research and study from original sources, he has produced a dictionary of words and phrases (including nicknames and slang) commonly used during the war. Where appropriate, examples and anecdotes are included to illustrate meanings. Often overlooked naval terms and esoteric formal and informal military expressions are addressed, as well as short descriptions of oceangoing vessels and river craft. More than 2,500 entries and 250 illustrations explain the terms, equipment, and organization of the three million soldiers who fought in the war.

The Gold Rush West was dotted with mining boomtowns and bustling new cities that sprang up overnight around strikes. Fortunes were made and lost daily, lawlessness was commonplace, and gambling dens, saloons, brothels, and dance halls thrived, but after a while the miners and merchants began to...  more

The Gold Rush West was dotted with mining boomtowns and bustling new cities that sprang up overnight around strikes. Fortunes were made and lost daily, lawlessness was commonplace, and gambling dens, saloons, brothels, and dance halls thrived, but after a while the miners and merchants began to long for more polished amusements. Soon, theatres popped up in tents and then auditoriums and playhouses were built where operas, arias, and Shakespeare were performed by brave actors, dancers, singers, and daredevils who were lured by the call of the West. Many of the most popular women entertainers of the mid-and late-1800s performed in the boomtowns that dotted the West, drawn by the same desire for riches that took miners and merchants there, and bringing a variety of talents and programs. Though they were sometimes literally showered with gold, their personal lives were often marked by tragedy and unhappiness. These stories reveal the entertaining side, but also some of the hardship of the American West.

German Pioneers on the American Frontier is a case study of two brothers, Julius and Wilhelm Wagner, who immigrated to the United States from Baden, Germany. Julius immigrated as part of an early communist group, the "Darmstadters" or "Forty", who established the utopian settlement of Bettina in...  more

German Pioneers on the American Frontier is a case study of two brothers, Julius and Wilhelm Wagner, who immigrated to the United States from Baden, Germany. Julius immigrated as part of an early communist group, the "Darmstadters" or "Forty", who established the utopian settlement of Bettina in 1847. His anti-slavery beliefs forced Julius to Mexico during the Civil War, but he returned to Texas after the war. His older brother Wilhelm fled Germany in 1851 as a result of his liberal political beliefs and settled in Texas. He founded a German-language newspaper when he moved to Freeport, Illinois. Using a newly discovered cache of Wagner family letters, Reichstein examines the lives of the brothers as they sought to make better futures for themselves on the new frontier. More than a narrow family history, however, German Pioneers on the American Frontier uses the individual cases of Julius and Wilhelm Wagner to examine the broader historiographical debate about assimilation and acculturation. Reichstein's conclusion is that immigrants identify themselves as American through a variety of processes that are a combination of assimilation and acculturation.

In 1849, a young German bride and her husband stepped off a ship in Corpus Christi Bay to establish their home in the new frontier settlement. For the next three decades Maria von Blücher wrote letters home describing the hardships of droughts and Indian and bandit raids, the chaos of the...  more

In 1849, a young German bride and her husband stepped off a ship in Corpus Christi Bay to establish their home in the new frontier settlement. For the next three decades Maria von Blücher wrote letters home describing the hardships of droughts and Indian and bandit raids, the chaos of the American Civil War, the discomforts of pioneer living, the joys and heartbreaks of family life, and the development of a town that her descendants would help to build into a thriving city. Her letters record above all the woman's side of pioneer life. Although they offer insight into political events and economic developments in Germany, the United States, and South Texas, their greater value lies in the picture they paint of the deprivations, cruel hardships, sacrifice, and dangers faced in everyday life. Maria's letters stand as a personal account of the pioneer experience and an elegant testimony to the role played by Germans in the settlement of South Texas. They provide an intimate look inside the homes and ranches, the schools and farmyards, the stores and churches of early Corpus Christi. They examine families and friendships, communities, congregations, and social unions. In Maria von Blücher's Corpus Christi Bruce S. Cheeseman has edited and annotated more than two hundred of the nine hundred letters that are held in the von Blücher family's papers on deposit at the Special Collections and Archives of the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. In her life and in her letters, Maria von Blücher joined all of the courageous pioneer women who helped to lay the foundations of Texas communities. These letters unerringly draw a Texas landscape that is gone forever. BRUCE S. CHEESEMAN is former director of the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur. What Readers Are Saying: "Maria is made of stern stuff. There are enough twists, turns and reversals of fortune to make an epic. It isn't too often that nonfiction stories are made into films, but this one ought to be."--The Dallas Morning News "A touching, personal narrative that takes the reader deep into the joys, frustrations, tribulations, and triumphs of pioneer life, Maria von Blucher's Corpus Christi is a superbly presented and highly recommended contribution to Pioneer Studies and Texas History supplemental reading lists and reference collections." --The Midwest Book Review "With this book, Canales said, Cheeseman has given readers' a timely, rare glimpse of Corpus Christi's rough-and-tumble beginnings."--Corpus Christi Caller Times "This is a fascinating book. Maria von Blucher's letters are highly informative reading for anyone who is interested in learning about the daily life of a woman and her family in nineteenth-century Texas, particularly from a German perspective. Maria von Blucher's correspondence can also be viewed as one of the earliest examples of writing produced by a women who wrote in the German language in Texas. Maria von Blucher's edited correspondence is a book well worth reading and rereading, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the story of the German experience in Texas."--German-Texan Heritage Society "Maria's letters add a new voice to story of German Texas immigrants. In addition to being valuable sources of social history, the letters also document the process of language loss and acculturation on the frontier. Letters. . .is a well-organized, beautifully illustrated resource. Bruce Cheeseman selected passages that create a compelling psychological drama in a rich historical setting in an eventful era."--East Texas State Historical Association

Wanderers Between Two Worlds: German Rebels in the American West, 1830-1860 by Douglas Hale In the 1830s a small band of visionary university students launched an audacious, but abortive, rebellion against the German Confederation in an effort to achieve unity and freedom for their country....  more

Wanderers Between Two Worlds: German Rebels in the American West, 1830-1860 by Douglas Hale In the 1830s a small band of visionary university students launched an audacious, but abortive, rebellion against the German Confederation in an effort to achieve unity and freedom for their country. Their bungled revolt was quickly crushed, and the idealistic youth found themselves branded as traitors and pursued as outlaws. "Wanderers Between Two Worlds" traces the extraordinary intertwined lives of seven of the German student revolutionaries who escaped imprisonment only by flight to the American West. Leaving behind a legacy in Germany's quest for freedom that would not be fulfilled for another 150 years, these urbane and educated exiles arrived in the United States in time to share in the most dramatic episodes of the age: wilderness adventures on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails; the Texas Revolution against Mexico; the Mexican War; the California Gold Rush; the mounting conflict over slavery; and the inexorable thrust of American power to the Pacific. The United States offered these young men a broad and uncrowded stage upon which to display their talents. Gustav Koerner became a leading Illinois politician while Georg Engelmann emerged as the premier botanist of the American West. Ferdinand Lindheimer was an influential spokesman among the German settlers in Texas. Adolph Wislizenus explored the Rockies and northern Mexico and led in the establishment of the St. Louis scientific community. Gustav Bunsen perished in the Texas Revolution, while his brother Georg achieved considerable influence as a pioneer educator. Theodor Engelmann published the first German newspaper in Illinois. Historian Douglas Hale captures the drama and adventure of their lives in both the Old Country and the New. "Wanders Between Two Worlds" is an engaging and accessible saga that acquaints readers with a long-neglected chapter in the history of German democracy and the impact of German-Americans in the development of Illinois, Missouri, and Texas. Hale combines scrupulous attention to accuracy with a lucid and readable style that ventures beyond historical narrative to engage the reader in the personalities and experiences of the individuals involved.

?Die Kettner Briefe? consists of 39 letters exchanged between Franz Kettner and his family in Germany from 1850 to 1875. The letters, printed in German with their English translations, read like a good adventure novel with each letter providing a much anticipated new chapter. The story is...  more

?Die Kettner Briefe? consists of 39 letters exchanged between Franz Kettner and his family in Germany from 1850 to 1875. The letters, printed in German with their English translations, read like a good adventure novel with each letter providing a much anticipated new chapter. The story is enhanced by photographs, both old and new, and other supporting documents. Read the ?Die Kettner Briefe? to learn of hardships and dangers of frontier life faced by Franz in the Texas Hill Country. Franz was an early farmer and stockman in Comal, Gillespie, and Mason Counties. He participated in several campaigns with the Texas Rangers and later, during the Civil War, was a member of the Minute Men (local militia). He ran a store and post office in Castell. He hauled freight from the Texas coast to Fort Mason. He was a sheriff in both Gillespie and Mason Counties and was the Tax Accessor. Franz held the prestigious position of Cattle and Hide Inspector during the era of large cattle drives from Mason County.

Discusses the German emigration from the homeland to the settlement in the Texas Hill country.

"The European Texans highlights the contributions of those who immigrated to Texas from Europe. Allan O. Kownslar introduces readers to the life and culture of French, English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German, Wend, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Italian,...  more

"The European Texans highlights the contributions of those who immigrated to Texas from Europe. Allan O. Kownslar introduces readers to the life and culture of French, English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German, Wend, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Greek, and Slavic Texans Features:

After Carl Hilmar Guenther, 22, sailed from Germany in 1848 to seek his fortune, he began an odyssey of more than two years through the new United States. He tried construction and factory work in New York, did farming and milling in Wisconsin and Ohio, was a carpenter on a plantation in...  more

After Carl Hilmar Guenther, 22, sailed from Germany in 1848 to seek his fortune, he began an odyssey of more than two years through the new United States. He tried construction and factory work in New York, did farming and milling in Wisconsin and Ohio, was a carpenter on a plantation in Louisiana. Then he learned of opportunities in Texas. In 1851 Guenther built the only grist mill in the German community of Fredericksburg, Texas. Eight years later he built a new mill in nearby San Antonio and put down roots. His legacy continues through C. H. Guenther & Son, Inc., a San Antonio-based food products company making Pioneer, White Wings and White Lily flours and a host of other products. It is the oldest business in Texas and the oldest continuously-operating family-owned milling company in the United States. The first letters to and from Guenther's family in Germany were written at the time of his departure from Germany in 1848. They continue through the travails of getting established on the Texas frontier, then on through the Civil War to his only return visit to Germany, in 1891. They were translated from German by Regina Beckmann Hurst and by Walter D. Kamphoefner, Texas A&M University professor of history, who also contributed the foreword.

Founded in 1846, Fredericksburg, Texas, was established by German noblemen who enticed thousands of their compatriots to flee their overcrowded homeland with the prospect of free land in a place that was portrayed as a new Garden of Eden. Few of the settlers, however, were prepared for the harsh...  more

Founded in 1846, Fredericksburg, Texas, was established by German noblemen who enticed thousands of their compatriots to flee their overcrowded homeland with the prospect of free land in a place that was portrayed as a new Garden of Eden. Few of the settlers, however, were prepared for the harsh realities of the Texas frontier or for confrontation with the Comanche Indians. In his 1867 novel Friedrichsburg, Friedrich Armand Strubberg, a.k.a. Dr. Schubbert, interwove his personal story with a fictional romance to capture the flavor of Fredericksburg, Texas, during its founding years when he served as the first colonial director.Now available in a contemporary translation, Friedrichsburg brings to life the little-known aspects of life among these determined but often ill-equipped settlers who sought to make the transition to a new home and community on the Texas frontier. Opening just as a peace treaty is being negotiated between the German newcomers and the Comanches, the novel describes the unlikely survival of these fledgling homesteads and provides evidence that support from the Delaware Indians, as well as the nearby Mormon community of Zodiac, was key to the Germans' success. Along the way, Strubberg also depicts the laying of the cornerstone to the Vereinskirche, the blazing of an important new road to Austin, exciting hunting scenes, and an admirable spirit of cultural cohesion and determined resilience. In so doing, he resurrects a fascinating lost world.

Terry Jordan explores how German immigrants in the nineteenth century influenced and were influenced by the agricultural life in the areas of Texas where they settled. His findings both support the notion of ethnic distinctiveness and reveal the extent to which German Texans adopted the farming...  more

Terry Jordan explores how German immigrants in the nineteenth century influenced and were influenced by the agricultural life in the areas of Texas where they settled. His findings both support the notion of ethnic distinctiveness and reveal the extent to which German Texans adopted the farming techniques of their Southern Anglo neighbors.

New World View: Letters from a German Immigrant Family in Texas, 1854-1885 is a bilingual and annotated edition of a collection of letters written by a 19th century German immigrant family in Texas. Christian Friedrich Bergmann and his family belonged to the large wave of German immigrants that...  more

New World View: Letters from a German Immigrant Family in Texas, 1854-1885 is a bilingual and annotated edition of a collection of letters written by a 19th century German immigrant family in Texas. Christian Friedrich Bergmann and his family belonged to the large wave of German immigrants that came to Texas in the 1850s. Born in April of 1817 in Ebersbach, a small village then located in the Kingdom of Saxony, Bergmann - together with his wife Johanna Christiane Luise Bergmann and his three sons, Friedrich, Karl, and Christoph - embarked on an overseas journey to America in August of 1854; in November of 1854, they arrived in Texas. The family first resided in San Antonio before later settling on the Guadalupe River near Boerne, where Bergmann bought 320 acres of land and he and his family became farmers and ranchers, as well as active members of their community. The Bergmann letter collection begins with a detailed description of the sea journey and the many exciting and disheartening moments experienced while at sea. Bergmann then gives deep insight into many facets of immigrant life on the Texas frontier while narrating how he and his family built a life for themselves in Texas. This letter collection spans a period of three decades, presenting the reader with important insight into the process of German immigrant acculturation in Texas in the second half of the 19th century. At the same time, it details the numerous challenges many immigrants faced in their attempts to adapt to American culture and succeed in the New World. The book, which includes a historical and biographical introduction, is a valuable source for scholars and students in various disciplines, but also addresses readers with a general interest in the social history of German immigration to the United States and, specifically, to Texas.

Written during an expedition to the German settlements of the Republic of Texas in the 1840s, this travelogue of bygone Texas was penned by the Father of Texas Geology. Roemer wrote about the geology and the land, as well as the habits and customs of the people of Texas...and he wrote it well....  more

Written during an expedition to the German settlements of the Republic of Texas in the 1840s, this travelogue of bygone Texas was penned by the Father of Texas Geology. Roemer wrote about the geology and the land, as well as the habits and customs of the people of Texas...and he wrote it well. In addition to the settlements in the Hill Country, he journeyed to Houston and Galveston and every place in between.

Known as the mistress of the Mormon Trail, Helen J. Stewart not only paved the way for women in the west, but also was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the future of Las Vegas.Born in the Midwest in the mid-1800s, uprooted and transplanted as a young girl into the frenzied gold rush...  more

Known as the mistress of the Mormon Trail, Helen J. Stewart not only paved the way for women in the west, but also was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the future of Las Vegas.Born in the Midwest in the mid-1800s, uprooted and transplanted as a young girl into the frenzied gold rush days in California, Helen J. Stewart experienced the rigors of pioneer life early. Married at nineteen, mother at twenty, widow at thirty with four children and pregnant with her fifth, she had no time to ponder her fate. Instead, she became a force to reckon with.Sally Zanjani and Carrie Townley Porter chronicle the extraordinary life of a woman dedicated to providing for her family and improving the lives of those around her, a woman ahead of her time who befriended Indians as well as congressmen, a woman who truly was the "First Lady of Las Vegas".

In 1870, Truman Everts visited what would two years later become Yellowstone National Park, traveling with an exploration party intent on mapping and investigating that mysterious region. Scattered reports of a mostly unexplored wilderness filled with natural wonders had caught the public?s...  more

In 1870, Truman Everts visited what would two years later become Yellowstone National Park, traveling with an exploration party intent on mapping and investigating that mysterious region. Scattered reports of a mostly unexplored wilderness filled with natural wonders had caught the public?s attention and the fifty-four-year-old Everts, near-sighted and an inexperienced woodsman, had determined to join the expedition. He was soon separated from the rest of the party and from his horse, setting him on a grueling quest for survival. For over a month he wandered Yellowstone alone and injured, with little food, clothing, or other equipment. In ?Thirty-seven Days of Peril? he recounted his experiences for the readers of Scribner?s Monthly.In June 1996, Everts?s granddaughter arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park to meet with park archivist Lee Whittlesey. She brought two documents that her father had kept hidden and both were handwritten by Everts. One was a brief autobiography that gave new insight into his early life. The other was a never-published alternative account of his confused 1870 journey through Yellowstone. Both have been added to this volume, further enhancing Everts?s unlikely tale of survival. 

The incredible true adventure of the only person known to have survived so long while lost in Yellowstone wilderness. When Truman Evert visited the Yellowstone area in 1870, the Yellowstone belonged to myth. Scattered reports of a mostly unexplored wilderness filled with natural wonders...  more

The incredible true adventure of the only person known to have survived so long while lost in Yellowstone wilderness. When Truman Evert visited the Yellowstone area in 1870, the Yellowstone belonged to myth. Scattered reports of a mostly unexplored wilderness filled with natural wonders caught the public’s -- and Evert’s -- attention. Although fifty-four, nearsighted, and an inexperienced woodsman, he joined the expedition determined to map and investigate the mysterious Yellowstone. Separated from his party, and then abandoned by his horse, Evert embarked on one of the most grueling survival adventures recorded on the American frontier. For thirty-seven days he wandered Yellowstone alone, injured, and without food save that which he could scrape from an unfriendly land. Truman Evert’s story manifests the qualities we associate with the great explorers: endurance, determination, inventiveness, and courage in the face of unendurable hardship. Lost in the Yellowstone is an inspiration, and a testament to one man’s will to survive.

Most of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who—with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership—fought...  more

Most of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who—with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership—fought for his people’s land, livelihood, and honor. In this fascinating biography, Joseph Marshall, himself a Lakota Indian, creates a vibrant portrait of the man, his times, and his legacy. Drawing on firsthand research and his culture’s rich oral tradition (rarely shared outside the Native American community), Marshall reveals many aspects of Crazy Horse’s life, including details of the powerful vision that convinced him of his duty to help preserve the Lakota homeland—a vision that changed the course of Crazy Horse’s life and spurred him confidently into battle time and time again. The Journey of Crazy Horse is the true story of how one man’s fight for his people’s survival roused his true genius as a strategist, commander, and trusted leader. And it is an unforgettable portrayal of a revered human being and a profound celebration of a culture, a community, and an enduring way of life.

In this book, Barton Barbour presents the first comprehensive history of Fort Union, the nineteenth century's most important and longest-lived Upper Missouri River fur trading post. Barbour explores the economic, social, legal, cultural, and political significance of the fort that was the...  more

In this book, Barton Barbour presents the first comprehensive history of Fort Union, the nineteenth century's most important and longest-lived Upper Missouri River fur trading post. Barbour explores the economic, social, legal, cultural, and political significance of the fort that was the brainchild of Kenneth McKenzie and Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and a part of John Jacob Astor's fur trade empire. From 1830 to 1867, Fort Union symbolized the power of New York and St. Louis, and later, St. Paul merchants' capital in the West. The most lucrative post on the northern plains, Fort Union affected national relations with a number of native tribes, such as the Assiniboine, Cree, Crow, Sioux, and Blackfeet. It also influenced American interactions with Great Britain, whose powerful Hudson's Bay Company competed for Upper Missouri furs. Barbour shows how Indians, mixed-bloods, Hispanic-, African-, Anglo-, and other Euro-Americans living at Fort Union created a system of community law that helped maintain their unique frontier society. Many visiting artists and scientists produced a magnificent graphic and verbal record of events and people at the post, but the old-time world of fur traders and Indians collapsed during the Civil War when political winds shifted in favor of Lincoln's Republican Party. In 1865 Chouteau lost his trade license and sold Fort Union to new operators, who had little interest in maintaining the post's former culture.

A runaway bestseller in hardcover and paperback, Son of the Morning Star will now bring the adventurous tale of General George Armstrong Custer to a new, even wider audience. Ties in to a two-part CBS television miniseries airing this summer. "A new American classic."--Time.

Bestselling author McPhee takes us on another exciting geological excursion with this engaging account of life--past and present--in the high plains of Wyoming.

*Includes pictures of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, depictions of Crazy Horse, and important people and places in their lives. *Explains several Lakota oral legends, including the origins of the names Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. *Explains the Battle of the Little Bighorn and their roles in it....  more

*Includes pictures of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, depictions of Crazy Horse, and important people and places in their lives. *Explains several Lakota oral legends, including the origins of the names Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. *Explains the Battle of the Little Bighorn and their roles in it. "When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?? ? Sitting Bull "Upon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.? ? Crazy Horse Like Geronimo in the Southwest during the same era, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were warriors and leaders of different groups of Lakota (Sioux) who fought in several skirmishes against settlers and U.S. forces across the Plains during the 1860s and 1870s. Admired by their own people for their kindness and strong leadership, reviled by their enemies for their defiance, when The Great Sioux War of 1876 began, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were two of the most important leaders among all Native American tribes on the Plains, and they were the ones to turn to for those who intended to keep fighting whites. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were hardly the only Native Americans fighting the U.S. Army at the time, but they became legends at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, during which an estimated 2,000 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse and inspired by one of Sitting Bull's visions routed and then annihilated the 7th U.S. Cavalry led by George Custer. That disaster led the American government to double down on its efforts to ?pacify? the Sioux, and by the end of the decade many of them had surrendered and been moved onto a reservation. Crazy Horse kept fighting for a year before surrendering, and Sitting Bull defiantly refused to surrender, instead heading with a smaller band into Canada and remaining exiled. When they finally did surrender, and the threat they posed eliminated, Americans viewed the two Native Americans as celebrities. Sitting Bull even went on to appear in Buffalo Bill Cody?s Wild West Show during the 1880s. However, the two Lakota leaders would be connected in one more way: death. The deaths of both Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse took place on reservations and remain controversial to this day. Though he has not been remembered as vividly as another member of the Oglala Lakota, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud led the group for 40 years, in war, in peace, and on a reservation, becoming so esteemed and influential that Americans began to mistakenly take him for the leader of the entire Sioux tribe. In the 1860s, Red Cloud was at the forefront of skirmishing among whites and Native Americans along the frontier in Wyoming and Montana, which came to be known as Red Cloud?s War. After that, however, Red Cloud continued to lead his people to reservations first near the Black Hills and later westward after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Leaders of the Sioux looks at the most famous leaders of the Lakota and the victors at Little Bighorn, but it also humanizes the men who became some of the most famous symbols of defiance in American history. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud like you never have before.

In this "dramatic narrative in both prose and poetry," Chief Crazy Horse and his tribe battle Colonel Custer for control of the Black Hills. Pomerance adds modern touches and shifts between Washington and Little Bighorn in what PW called a "stunning evocation of Indian-white...  more

In this "dramatic narrative in both prose and poetry," Chief Crazy Horse and his tribe battle Colonel Custer for control of the Black Hills. Pomerance adds modern touches and shifts between Washington and Little Bighorn in what PW called a "stunning evocation of Indian-white conflict."

Elizabeth Custer, nèe Bacon (1842-1933) was the wife of General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876). After his death, she became an outspoken advocate for her husband?s legacy. In 1876, Lieutenant Colonel Custer campaigned against the Sioux. From Fort Abraham Lincoln in what is now North Dakota,...  more

Elizabeth Custer, nèe Bacon (1842-1933) was the wife of General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876). After his death, she became an outspoken advocate for her husband?s legacy. In 1876, Lieutenant Colonel Custer campaigned against the Sioux. From Fort Abraham Lincoln in what is now North Dakota, he led the Seventh Cavalry in pursuit of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne who refused to be confined to the reservation system. After his column was wiped out at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, many in the press, Army, and government criticized Custer for blundering into a massacre. President Ulysses S. Grant publicly blamed him for the disaster. Fearing that her husband was to be made a scapegoat by history, Elizabeth Custer launched a one woman campaign to rehabilitate her husband?s image. She began writing articles and making speaking engagements praising the glory of her martyred husband. Her three books, ?Boots and Saddles?; or, Life in Dakota With General Custer (1885), Following the Guidon (1890) and Tenting on the Plains (1893) were brilliant pieces of propaganda aimed at glorifying her dead husband?s memory.

Soiled Doves tells of the grey world of prostitution and the women who participated in the oldest profession. Colorful, if not socially acceptable, these ladies of easy virtue were a definite part of the early West. Wearing ruffled petticoats with fancy bows, they were glamorous and plain, good...  more

Soiled Doves tells of the grey world of prostitution and the women who participated in the oldest profession. Colorful, if not socially acceptable, these ladies of easy virtue were a definite part of the early West. Wearing ruffled petticoats with fancy bows, they were glamorous and plain, good and bad and many were as wild as the land they came to tame. Women like "Molly b' Dam", Mattie Silks, and "Chicago Joe" blended into the fabric of the American Frontier with an easy familiarity. Others, such as "Sorrel Mike", escaped through suicide, Lottie Johl chose marriage and the Chinese slave girls lived a life without hope. Illustrated with rare photos, this strong book provides a touching insight into the lives of the ladies of the night.

A Selection of the History Book Club, Military Book Club, and Reader's Subscription Book ClubOne of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2003This magnificent, sweeping work traces the histories of the Native peoples of the American West from their arrival thousands of years ago to the early years...  more

A Selection of the History Book Club, Military Book Club, and Reader's Subscription Book ClubOne of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2003This magnificent, sweeping work traces the histories of the Native peoples of the American West from their arrival thousands of years ago to the early years of the nineteenth century. Emphasizing conflict and change, One Vast Winter Count offers a new look at the early history of the region by blending ethnohistory, colonial history, and frontier history. Drawing on a wide range of oral and archival sources from across the West, Colin G. Calloway offers an unparalleled glimpse at the lives of generations of Native peoples in a western land soon to be overrun.

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West?s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women by award-winning Western history author Chris Enss offers a glimpse into Western Women?s experience that's less sunbonnets and more...  more

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West?s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women by award-winning Western history author Chris Enss offers a glimpse into Western Women?s experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late nineteenth century, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boom towns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory. Prostitutes and female gamblers hoped to capitalize on the vices of the intrepid pioneers. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it will include famous names like Belle Starr and Big Nose Kate, as well as lesser known characters.

From Thomas Jefferson?s birth in 1743 to the California Gold rush in 1849, America?s Manifest destiny comes to life in Robert Morgan?s skilled hands. Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary, dreamed that the United States would stretch across the continent from ocean to ocean. The account of how...  more

From Thomas Jefferson?s birth in 1743 to the California Gold rush in 1849, America?s Manifest destiny comes to life in Robert Morgan?s skilled hands. Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary, dreamed that the United States would stretch across the continent from ocean to ocean. The account of how that dream became reality unfolds in the stories of Jefferson and nine other Americans whose adventurous spirits and lust for land pushed the westward boundaries: Andrew Jackson, John ?Johnny Appleseed? Chapman, David Crockett, Sam Houston, James K. Polk, Winfield Scott, Kit Carson, Nicholas Trist, and John Quincy Adams. Their tenacity was matched only by that of their enemies?the Mexican army under Santa Anna at the Alamo, the Comanche and Apache Indians, and the forbidding geography itself. Known also for his powerful fiction (Gap Creek, The Truest Pleasure, Brave Enemies), Morgan uses his skill at characterization to give life to the personalities of these ten Americans without whom the United States might well have ended at the Arkansas border. Their stories?and those of the nameless thousands who risked their lives to settle on the frontier, displacing thousands of Native Americans?form an extraordinary chapter in American history that led directly to the cataclysm of the Civil War. With illustrations, portraits, maps, battle plans, appendixes, notes, and time lines, Lions of the West is a richly authoritative biography of America as compelling as a grand novel.

From Thomas Jefferson?s birth in 1743 to the California Gold Rush in 1849, America?s westward expansion comes to life in the hands of a writer fascinated by the way individual lives link up, illuminate one another, and collectively impact history. Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary,...  more

From Thomas Jefferson?s birth in 1743 to the California Gold Rush in 1849, America?s westward expansion comes to life in the hands of a writer fascinated by the way individual lives link up, illuminate one another, and collectively impact history. Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary, dreamed that the United States would stretch across the North American continent, from ocean to ocean. The account of how that dream became reality unfolds in the stories of Jefferson and nine other Americans whose adventurous spirits and lust for land pushed the westward boundaries: Andrew Jackson, John ?Johnny Appleseed? Chapman, David Crockett, Sam Houston, James K. Polk, Winfield Scott, Kit Carson, Nicholas Trist, and John Quincy Adams. Their stories?and those of the nameless thousands who risked their lives to settle on the frontier, displacing thou- sands of Native Americans?form an extraordinary chapter in American history that led directly to the cataclysm of the Civil War. Filled with illustrations, portraits, maps, battle plans, notes, and time lines, Lions of the West is a richly authoritative biography of America?its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny.

By focusing on the experiences of ordinary Mexicans and Americans, The Dead March offers a clearer historical picture than we have ever had of the brief, bloody war that redrew the map of North America.Peter Guardino invites skepticism about the received view that the United States emerged...  more

By focusing on the experiences of ordinary Mexicans and Americans, The Dead March offers a clearer historical picture than we have ever had of the brief, bloody war that redrew the map of North America.Peter Guardino invites skepticism about the received view that the United States emerged victorious in the Mexican-American War (1846?1848) because its democratic system was more stable and its citizens more loyal. In fact, heading into the war, American forces dramatically underestimated the strength of Mexicans? patriotism and failed to see how bitterly Mexicans resented America?s claims to national and racial superiority. Having regarded the United States as a sister republic, Mexicans were shocked by the scope of America?s expansionist ambitions, and their fierce resistance surprised U.S. political and military leaders, who had expected a quick victory with few casualties. As the fighting intensified over the course of two years, it claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and at least twice as many Mexicans, including many civilians.As stark as they were, the misconceptions that the Mexican-American War laid bare on both sides did not determine the final victor. What differentiated the two countries in battle was not some notion of American unity and loyalty to democracy but the United States? huge advantages in economic power and wealth?advantages its poorer Latin American neighbor could not hope to overcome.

Big Bear, chief of a Plains Cree community in western Canada in the late 19th century, was a transitional figure between the height of Plains Indian culture and the modern era. During the 1870s and early 1880s, Big Bear became the focal point of opposition for Cree and Saulteaux bands that did...  more

Big Bear, chief of a Plains Cree community in western Canada in the late 19th century, was a transitional figure between the height of Plains Indian culture and the modern era. During the 1870s and early 1880s, Big Bear became the focal point of opposition for Cree and Saulteaux bands that did not wish to make treaty with Canada. During the early 1880s, he spearheaded a Plains diplomatic movement to renegotiate the treaties in favor of the Aboriginal groups whose way of life had been devastated by the disappearance of the buffalo. Although Big Bear personally favored peaceful protest, violent acts by some of his followers during the Northwest Rebellion of 1885 provided the federal government with the opportunity to crush him by prosecuting him for treason-felony. Big Bear died in 1888, after serving part of his sentence in penitentiary.

This study, following on from the author's acclaimed book 'I Will Not Surrender a Hair of a Horse's Tail', commences with Victorio?s return to New Mexico in January 1880. The US army?s January to February campaign illustrates the operational decoy strategy employed by Victorio to protect his own...  more

This study, following on from the author's acclaimed book 'I Will Not Surrender a Hair of a Horse's Tail', commences with Victorio?s return to New Mexico in January 1880. The US army?s January to February campaign illustrates the operational decoy strategy employed by Victorio to protect his own logistic support whilst simultaneously undermining that of his opponents. The Hembrillo Canyon operation in April 1880 saw the largest battle of the Victorio Campaign. By the end of May 1880, Victorio?s warriors have rendered the Ninth Cavalry unfit for field service. This was achieved through the Apache strategy of directly and indirectly targeting the US army?s horses and mules. Yet the Apaches also suffer their first major defeat of the campaign at the end of May. After regrouping and engaging in widespread raiding in northern Mexico, Victorio engaged the Tenth Cavalry in Western Texas during July-August 1880. Failing to break through that regiment?s defences he retreated back into Mexico. This allowed the US army in New Mexico to rest and recover. By September 1880, the US army had negotiated a cross border operation of questionable legality. Known as the Buell Expedition, the aim was to coordinate with Mexican state troops to destroy the Apaches. This volume will end with Mexican state troops, led by Colonel Joaquin Terrazas?, inflicting a major defeat upon the Apaches at Tres Castillos. It will be argued that the setbacks in Western Texas and at Tres Castillos demonstrate the employment of strategies and tactics by the Apaches which came very close to succeeding. See:

Colorado Territory in 1864 wasn't merely the wild west, it was a land in limbo while the Civil War raged in the east and politics swirled around its potential admission to the union. The territorial governor, John Evans, had ambitions on the national stage should statehood occur--and he was...  more

Colorado Territory in 1864 wasn't merely the wild west, it was a land in limbo while the Civil War raged in the east and politics swirled around its potential admission to the union. The territorial governor, John Evans, had ambitions on the national stage should statehood occur--and he was joined in those ambitions by a local pastor and erstwhile Colonel in the Colorado militia, John Chivington. The decision was made to take a hard line stance against any Native Americans who refused to settle on reservations--and in the fall of 1864, Chivington set his sights on a small band of Cheyenne under the chief Black Eagle, camped and preparing for the winter at Sand Creek. When the order to fire on the camp came on November 28, one officer refused, other soldiers in Chivington's force, however, immediately attacked the village, disregarding the American flag, and a white flag of surrender that was run up shortly after the soldiers commenced firing. In the ensuing "battle" fifteen members of the assembled militias were killed and more than 50 wounded Between 150 and 200 of Black Kettle?s Cheyenne were estimated killed, nearly all elderly men, women and children. As with many incidents in American history, the victors wrote the first version of history--turning the massacre into a heroic feat by the troops. Soon thereafter, however, Congress began an investigation into Chivington's actions and he was roundly condemned. His name still rings with infamy in Colorado and American history. Mochi?s War explores this story and its repercussions into the last part of the nineteenth Century from the perspective of a Cheyenne woman whose determination swept her into some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking moments in the conflicts that grew through the West in the aftermath of Sand Creek.

As one of America?s most prominent nineteenth-century painters, Albert Bierstadt (1830?1902) is justly renowned for his majestic paintings of the western landscape. Yet Bierstadt was also a painter of history, and his figural works, replete with images of Plains Indians and the American bison,...  more

As one of America?s most prominent nineteenth-century painters, Albert Bierstadt (1830?1902) is justly renowned for his majestic paintings of the western landscape. Yet Bierstadt was also a painter of history, and his figural works, replete with images of Plains Indians and the American bison, are an important part of his legacy as well. This splendid full-color volume highlights his achievements in chronicling a rapidly changing American West. Born in Germany, Bierstadt rose to prominence as an American artist in the late 1850s and enjoyed nearly two decades of critical success. His paintings propelled him to the forefront of the American art scene, but they also met with reproach from his peers and critics in the press who viewed his painting style as outmoded. Bierstadt?s star has both risen and fallen as modern art historians have reconsidered his complex oeuvre. This volume takes a major step in reappraising Bierstadt?s contributions by reexamining the artist through a new lens. It shows how Bierstadt conveyed moral messages through his paintings, often to preserve the dignity of Native peoples and call attention to the tragic slaughter of the American bison. More broadly, the book reconsiders the artist?s engagement with contemporary political and social debates surrounding wildlife conservation in America, the creation and perpetuation of national parks, and the prospects for the West?s indigenous peoples. Bierstadt?s final history paintings, including his dual masterworks titled The Last of the Buffalo?a special focus of this volume?stand out as elegiac odes to an earlier era, giving voice to concerns about the intertwined fates of Native peoples and endangered wildlife, especially bison. Along with its rich sampling of Bierstadt?s diverse artwork, Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West features informative essays by noted curators, scholars of art history, and historians of the American West.  

When gold rush fever gripped the globe in 1849, thousands of Chinese immigrants came through San Francisco on their way to seek their fortunes. They were called sojourners, for they never intended to stay. In The Poker Bride, Christopher Corbett uses a little-known legend from Idaho lore as a...  more

When gold rush fever gripped the globe in 1849, thousands of Chinese immigrants came through San Francisco on their way to seek their fortunes. They were called sojourners, for they never intended to stay. In The Poker Bride, Christopher Corbett uses a little-known legend from Idaho lore as a lens into this Chinese experience. Before 1849, the Chinese in the United States were little more than curiosities. But as word spread of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California, they soon became a regular sight in the American West. In San Francisco, a labyrinthine Chinatown soon sprang up, a clamorous city within a city full of exotic foods and strange smells, where Chinese women were smuggled into the country, and where the laws were made by "hatchet men." At this time, Polly, a young Chinese concubine, was brought by her owner by steamboat and pack train to a remote mining camp in the highlands of Idaho. There he lost her in a poker game, having wagered his last ounce of gold dust. Polly found her way with her new owner to an isolated ranch on the banks of the Salmon River in central Idaho. As the gold rush receded, it took with it the Chinese miners--or their bones, which were disinterred and shipped back to their homeland in accordance with Chinese custom. But it left behind Polly, who would make headlines when she emerged from the Idaho hills nearly half a century later to visit a modern city and tell her story. Peppered with characters such as Mark Twain and the legendary newswoman Cissy Patterson, The Poker Bride vividly reconstructs a lost period of history when the first Chinese sojourners flooded into the country, and left only glimmering traces of their presence scattered across the American West.

?Perhaps the best account of the fur trapper in the Rocky Mountains when the trade there was at its peak.? Aubrey L. Haines In 1834, Osborne Russell joined an expedition from Boston, under the direction of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, which proceeded to the Rocky Mountains to capitalise on the...  more

?Perhaps the best account of the fur trapper in the Rocky Mountains when the trade there was at its peak.? Aubrey L. Haines In 1834, Osborne Russell joined an expedition from Boston, under the direction of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, which proceeded to the Rocky Mountains to capitalise on the salmon and fur trade. He would remain there, hunting, trapping, and living off the land, for the next nine years. Journal of a Trapper is his remarkable account of that time as he developed into a seasoned veteran of the mountains and experienced trapper. In Russell?s own words he explains to the reader ?if you are in search of the travels of a classical and scientific tourist, please lay this volume down, and pass on, for this simply informs you what a trapper has seen and experienced. But if you wish to peruse a hunter?s rambles among the wild regions of the Rocky Mountains, please read this?. Russell encounters grizzly bears, hunts buffalos, trades with Native Americans and suffers from the extreme conditions of his mountainous environment. His account is written in vivid prose that transports the reader to nineteenth century Northwest America. Of particular note are his descriptions of the landscapes in which he lived. Although it had not been designated a national park during Russell?s time, his portrayal of Yellowstone is truly breath-taking. This is the perfect book for anyone wishing to find out more about the lives of the mountain men, what they ate, how they hunted, what shelters they used and how they survived in some of the most inhospitable conditions. After this book was written Osborne Russell became a politician who helped form the government of the state of Oregon. He was born in 1814 in Maine. He ran away from home as a young man for a life at sea, but eventually found employment as a trapper. In 1844, he was elected to the second Executive Committee of the Provisional Government of Oregon, but after he was not re-elected he eventually went and lived in California. He died in 1892. This edition was published in 1921.

An accurate, firsthand description of the life led by a trapper in the Rocky Mountains.Ever wonder how everyone made it west? They used trails beaten by such men as Osborne Russell. In 1830, sixteen-year-old Russell left his farm in Maine and ran away to the sea. He didn?t like it. He ended up...  more

An accurate, firsthand description of the life led by a trapper in the Rocky Mountains.Ever wonder how everyone made it west? They used trails beaten by such men as Osborne Russell. In 1830, sixteen-year-old Russell left his farm in Maine and ran away to the sea. He didn?t like it. He ended up joining an expedition headed to Oregon by way of the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, he acquired the skills necessary for survival. He also hunted buffalo and trapped beaver, looked for new trails west, and kept a journal that forms the basis of this vigorously authentic book, only including information he considered ?proved true by experience.? Written in an intensely personal style that lacks punctuation at times, The Journal of a Trapper abounds with details about hunting and trapping in the Rocky Mountains, including descriptions of the animals he encountered. He travelled along the Yellowstone, Snake, and Sweetwater rivers (among others), through the Rockies and Tetons. His book is so accurate that recent readers have retraced his steps using it. Russell?s journal reflects the complex character of many of the independent men of that era: adventurous, tough, and resourceful. He was a politician in Oregon when he decided to write about his earlier life as a trapper in the Rockies, and he retained the authentic ?voice of the West.? Read this book for its exact and colorful descriptions, and for a rollicking good time.

Even among the mighty mountain men, Jim Bridger was a towering figure. He was one of the greatest explorers and pathfinders in American history. He couldn't write his name, but at eighteen he had braved the fury of the Missouri, ascending it in a keelboat flotilla commanded by that stalwart...  more

Even among the mighty mountain men, Jim Bridger was a towering figure. He was one of the greatest explorers and pathfinders in American history. He couldn't write his name, but at eighteen he had braved the fury of the Missouri, ascending it in a keelboat flotilla commanded by that stalwart Mike Fink. By 1824, when he was only twenty, he had discovered the Great Salt Lake. Later he was to open the Overland Route, which was the path of the Overland Stage, the Pony Express, and the Union Pacific. One of the foremost trappers in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, he was a legend in his own time as well as ours. He remains one of the most important scouts and guides in the history of the West.

The Portable North American Indian Reader compiles myths, tales, poetry, and oratory from the Iroquois, Cherokee, Winnebago, Sioux, Blackfeet, Hopi, and many other tribes. In addition, Frederick Turner includes a number of "culture contact" selections -- explorers' accounts,...  more

The Portable North American Indian Reader compiles myths, tales, poetry, and oratory from the Iroquois, Cherokee, Winnebago, Sioux, Blackfeet, Hopi, and many other tribes. In addition, Frederick Turner includes a number of "culture contact" selections -- explorers' accounts, captives' narratives, and Indian autobiographies -- as well as a section on the conflicting popular images of the Indian in white literature and, finally, contemporary reassessments by such writers as Luther Standing Bear, N. Scott Momaday, Vine Deloria, Jr., James Welch, Simon Ortiz, and Gary Snyder.

Sarah Raymond was an unmarried woman of twenty-four who, in May 1865--barely a month after the end of the Civil War -- mounted her beloved pony and headed west alongside the wagon carrying her mother and two younger brothers. They traveled by wagon train over the Great Plains toward the Rocky...  more

Sarah Raymond was an unmarried woman of twenty-four who, in May 1865--barely a month after the end of the Civil War -- mounted her beloved pony and headed west alongside the wagon carrying her mother and two younger brothers. They traveled by wagon train over the Great Plains toward the Rocky Mountains, with no certain idea of where they would settle themselves but a strong desire to leave war-torn Missouri behind and start a new life. Days on the Road is the story of this remarkable journey and of the young woman who made it. Written on the trail and originally published in 1902, it is a tribute to all of the emigrants who made their way west and the tale of a truly extraordinary woman.

The Mormon handcart tragedy of 1856 is the worst disaster in the history of the Western migrations, and yet it remains virtually unknown today outside Mormon circles.Following the death of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, its second Prophet and new leader, Brigham Young, determined to...  more

The Mormon handcart tragedy of 1856 is the worst disaster in the history of the Western migrations, and yet it remains virtually unknown today outside Mormon circles.Following the death of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, its second Prophet and new leader, Brigham Young, determined to move the faithful out of the Midwest, where they had been constantly persecuted by their neighbors, to found a new Zion in the wilderness. In 1846-47, the Mormons made their way west, generally following the Oregon Trail, arriving in July 1847 in what is today Utah, where they established Salt Lake City. Nine years later, fearing a federal invasion, Young and other Mormon leaders wrestled with the question of how to bring thousands of impoverished European converts, mostly British and Scandinavian, from the Old World to Zion. Young conceived of a plan in which the European Mormons would travel by ship to New York City and by train to Iowa City. From there, instead of crossing the plains by covered wagon, they would push and pull wooden handcarts all the way to Salt Lake.But the handcart plan was badly flawed. The carts, made of green wood, constantly broke down; the baggage allowance of seventeen pounds per adult was far too small; and the food provisions were woefully inadequate, especially considering the demanding physical labor of pushing and pulling the handcarts 1,300 miles across plains and mountains. Five companies of handcart pioneers left Iowa for Zion that spring and summer, but the last two of them left late. As a consequence, some 900 Mormons in these two companies were caught in early snowstorms in Wyoming. When the church leadership in Salt Lake became aware of the dire circumstances of these pioneers, Younglaunched a heroic rescue effort. But for more than 200 of the immigrants, the rescue came too late.The story of the Mormon handcart tragedy has never before been told in full despite its stunning human drama: At least five times as many people died in the Mormon tragedy as died in the more famous Donner Party disaster.David Roberts has researched this story in Mormon archives and elsewhere, and has traveled along the route where the handcart pioneers came to grief. Based on his research, he concludes that the tragedy was entirely preventable. Brigham Young and others in the Mormon leadership failed to heed the abundant signs of impending catastrophe, including warnings from other Mormon elders in the East and Midwest, where the journey began. Devil's Gate is a powerful indictment of the Mormon leadership and a gripping story of survival and suffering that is superbly told by one of our finest writers of Western history.

Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens...  more

Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens now explores that era through the lens of Harrison?s career, providing a new synthesis of his role in the political development of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian policy in the Old Northwest.Owens traces Harrison?s political career as secretary of the Northwest Territory, territorial delegate to Congress, and governor of Indiana Territory, as well as his military leadership and involvement with Indian relations. Thomas Jefferson, who was president during the first decade of the nineteenth century, found in Harrison the ideal agent to carry out his administration?s ruthless campaign to extinguish Indian land titles.More than a study of the man, Mr. Jefferson?s Hammer is a cultural biography of his fellow settlers, telling how this first generation of post-Revolutionary Americans realized their vision of progress and expansionism. It surveys the military, political, and social world of the early Ohio Valley and shows that Harrison?s attitudes and behavior reflected his Virginia background and its eighteenth-century notions as much as his frontier milieu.To this day, we live with the echoes of Harrison?s proclamations, the boundaries set by his treaties, and the ramifications of his actions. Mr. Jefferson?s Hammer offers a much needed reappraisal of Harrison?s impact on the nation?s development and key lessons for understanding American sentiments in the early republic.

Fanny Kelly's story of her forced stay among the Sioux Indians is among the best of "Captivity Stories" a popular genre in the nineteenth century. It details her capture and ordeals, while at the same time painting a vivid picture of a way of life that was soon to disappear.

The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male—and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold--until now. The story of ten African-American women is reconstructed from historic documents found in...  more

The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male—and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold--until now. The story of ten African-American women is reconstructed from historic documents found in century-old archives. The ten remarkable women in Black Women of the Old West were all born before 1900, some were slaves, some were free, and some lived both ways during their lifetime. Among them were laundresses, freedom advocates, journalists, educators, midwives, business proprietors, religious converts, philanthropists, mail and freight haulers, and civil and social activists.

The many difficulties and occasional rewards of early travel and transportation in Minnesota are highlighted in this book, along with the state's relations with what became western Canada and insights into the development of business in Minnesota. The meeting of Indian and European cultures...  more

The many difficulties and occasional rewards of early travel and transportation in Minnesota are highlighted in this book, along with the state's relations with what became western Canada and insights into the development of business in Minnesota. The meeting of Indian and European cultures is vividly manifested by the mixed-blood Mtis who became the mainstay of the Red River trade.

SUNSHINE ON THE PRAIRIE is the story of CYNTHIA ANN PARKER, captured by a band of Comanches as a nine-year-old while living in Fort Parker with her family. It was 24 years before she was "re-captured" by her "white family". This is the intriguing story of why she did not want to be rescued from...  more

SUNSHINE ON THE PRAIRIE is the story of CYNTHIA ANN PARKER, captured by a band of Comanches as a nine-year-old while living in Fort Parker with her family. It was 24 years before she was "re-captured" by her "white family". This is the intriguing story of why she did not want to be rescued from her Comanche family. During her 24-year captivity, she had become a wife to Nocona, the most feared of the Comanche war chiefs and the mother of Quanah, last and most famous of the Comanche war chiefs. Cynthia Ann adopted completely the lifestyle and culture of the Comanches. She endured their hardships and she also learned to love the freedom of the pristine wilderness. Using exhaustive research, the author follows Cynthia's footprints over the prairie with a sensitivity rare among non-native Americans.

Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions from the book Black Elk Speaks, which has been read as a spiritual guide and philosophical manifesto. Meanwhile the man Black Elk has faded from view, even though his dramatic life converged with momentous events in the American West,...  more

Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions from the book Black Elk Speaks, which has been read as a spiritual guide and philosophical manifesto. Meanwhile the man Black Elk has faded from view, even though his dramatic life converged with momentous events in the American West, including the Battle of the Little Big Horn. But Black Elk was not a warrior and chose to be a healer and holy man, motivated by a prophetic vision that haunted him. Joe Jackson has crafted an American epic, restoring to Black Elk the richness of his times and portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of crisis on the Great Plains.

The most complete collection available of Willa Cather's remarkable short fiction, Collected Stories brings together all the stories published in book form during her lifetime along with two additional volumes compiled after her death. These nineteen...  more

The most complete collection available of Willa Cather's remarkable short fiction, Collected Stories brings together all the stories published in book form during her lifetime along with two additional volumes compiled after her death. These nineteen stories resonate with all the great themes that Cather staked out like tracts of fertile land: the plight of people hungry for beauty in a country that has no room for it; the mysterious arc of human lives; and the ways the American frontier transformed the strangers who came to it, turning them imperceptibly into Americans. In these fictions, Cather displays her vast moral vision, her unerring sense of place, and her ability to find the one detail or episode that makes a closed life open wide in a single exhilarating moment.

Texans of Mexican descent built a unique and highly developed ranching culture that thrived in South Texas until the 1880s. In Tejano Empire historian Andrés Tijerina describes the major elements that gave the Tejano ranch community its identity: shared reaction to Anglo-American in-migration,...  more

Texans of Mexican descent built a unique and highly developed ranching culture that thrived in South Texas until the 1880s. In Tejano Empire historian Andrés Tijerina describes the major elements that gave the Tejano ranch community its identity: shared reaction to Anglo-American in-migration, tightly interconnected families, cultural loyalty, networks of communication, Catholic religion, and a material culture well adapted to the conditions of the region. After the introduction's historical overview of the region, the chapters address specific elements of the lives people led in the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas: work ways and tools, housing and ranch layouts, family networks and authority patterns, education and the arts, religion and daily prayer. A gallery of energetic line drawings by the late Ricardo M. Beasley and graceful pen-and-ink detail drawings by Servando G. Hinojosa of Alice, Texas, commissioned especially for this book, intricately portray scenes from South Texas daily life. "The scope and depth of Tijerina's research is breathtaking and the detail in which he passes his findings to us is exhaustive. . . . Tejano Empire is a long-needed corrective and valuable addition to the historical record of Texas. It's sure to become a standard reference on Hispanic culture in the state."--Dallas Morning News

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History From the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a...  more

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History From the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer?s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer?s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person?capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. During Custer?s lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation?s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer?s tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood. From the Hardcover edition.

A riveting look at one of the most colorful, dangerous, and peculiar places in America’s historical landscape: the strange, wonderful, and mysterious Mississippi River of the nineteenth century.  Beginning in the early 1800s and climaxing with the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, Wicked River...  more

A riveting look at one of the most colorful, dangerous, and peculiar places in America’s historical landscape: the strange, wonderful, and mysterious Mississippi River of the nineteenth century.  Beginning in the early 1800s and climaxing with the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, Wicked River takes us back to a time before the Mississippi was dredged into a shipping channel, and before Mark Twain romanticized it into myth. Drawing on an array of suspenseful and bizarre firsthand accounts, Lee Sandlin brings to life a place where river pirates brushed elbows with future presidents and religious visionaries shared passage with thieves—a world unto itself where, every night, near the levees of the big river towns, hundreds of boats gathered to form dusk-todawn cities dedicated to music, drinking, and gambling. Here is a minute-by-minute account of Natchez being flattened by a tornado; the St. Louis harbor being crushed by a massive ice floe; hidden, nefarious celebrations of Mardi Gras; and the sinking of the Sultana, the worst naval disaster in American history. And here is the Mississippi itself: gorgeous, perilous, and unpredictable, lifeblood to the communities that rose and fell along its banks.  An exuberant work of Americana—at once history, culture, and geography—Wicked River is a grand epic that portrays a forgotten society on the edge of revolutionary change.

The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film, with more than 150 illustrations, most in full color. In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President oThomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the...  more

The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film, with more than 150 illustrations, most in full color. In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President oThomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders--the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy, gregarious friend William Clark--was to be the United States' first exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every corner of the young nation: soldiers from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Kentucky, French Canadian boatmen, several sons of white fathers and Indian mothers, a slave named York, and eventually a Shoshone Indian woman, Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son. Together they would cross the continent, searching for the fabled Northwest Passage that had been the great dream of explorers since the time of Columbus. Along the way they would face incredible hardship, disappointment, and danger; record in their journals hundreds of animals and plants previously unknown to science; encounter a dizzying diversity of Indian cultures; and, most of all, share in one of America's most enduring adventures. Their story may have passed into national mythology, but never before has their experience been rendered as vividly, in words and pictures, as in this marvelous homage by Dayton Duncan. Plentiful excerpts from the journals kept by the two captains and four enlisted men convey the raw emotions, turbulent spirits, and constant surprises of the explorers, who each day confronted the unknown with fresh eyes. An elegant preface by Ken Burns, as well as contributions from Stephen E. Ambrose, William Least Heat-Moon, and Erica Funkhouser, enlarge upon important threads in Duncan's narrative, demonstrating the continued potency of events that took place almost two centuries ago. And a wealth of paintings, photographs, journal sketches, maps, and film images from the PBS documentary lends this historic, nation-redefining milestone a vibrancy and immediacy to which no American will be immune.

Celebrated nature classic offers unusual perspective on treeless grasslands of Argentina. Detailed, accurate observations of desert pampas, wildlife, animal defense mechanisms, more.

The Pomo Indians once occupied a large part of northern California, living in this beautiful area for hundreds of years without spoiling it. Comes with a color map of their territory.

Illustrated with color and B&W photos of Sand Painting, Kachina Carving, Basketry and other Indian crafts and maps. Past history and present information about Indian art.

In August 1906, Chauncey Canfield committed to his publisher a found text: the diary, ostensibly verified, of one Alfred T. Jackson, a pioneer miner who joined the Gold Rush from his home in Norfolk, Connecticut, migrating to Rock Creek, Nevada County, California, where he cabined and worked....  more

In August 1906, Chauncey Canfield committed to his publisher a found text: the diary, ostensibly verified, of one Alfred T. Jackson, a pioneer miner who joined the Gold Rush from his home in Norfolk, Connecticut, migrating to Rock Creek, Nevada County, California, where he cabined and worked. The Diary covers two years of Jackson's life, and provides us with one of the richest documents of a period of perhaps unequaled importance to the expansion of the United States.

Brokeback Mountain exploded the myth of the American cowboy as a tough, gruff, and grizzled loner. Queer Cowboys exposes, through books by legendary Western writers such as Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, and Owen Wister, how same-sex intimacy and homoerotic admiration were key aspects of...  more

Brokeback Mountain exploded the myth of the American cowboy as a tough, gruff, and grizzled loner. Queer Cowboys exposes, through books by legendary Western writers such as Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, and Owen Wister, how same-sex intimacy and homoerotic admiration were key aspects of Westerns well before Brokeback's 1960's West, and well before the word "homosexual" was even invented. Chris Packard introduces readers to the males-only clubs of journalists, cowboys, miners, Indians, and vaqueros who defined themselves by excluding women and the cloying ills of domesticity and recovers a forgotten culture of exclusively masculine, sometimes erotic, and often intimate camaraderie in the fiction, photographs, and theatrical performances of the 1800's Wild West.

Take a step back in time with the Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw women of the Midwest. Join author Chris Enss as she digs up and reveals startling facts about some of the most fascinating renegade women of the Midwest. Meet Flora Mundis, the horse thief who disguised herself as a man;...  more

Take a step back in time with the Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw women of the Midwest. Join author Chris Enss as she digs up and reveals startling facts about some of the most fascinating renegade women of the Midwest. Meet Flora Mundis, the horse thief who disguised herself as a man; Victoria Woodhull, out-spoken activist for free love, con artist, and the first female candidate for president; Ma Barker, mother of the notorious Barker Gang; Opal Long and Patricia Cherrington, trusted sisters of the Dillinger Gang; and many more. Experience history as if you were actually there. Stand witness to the trial and hanging of Elizabeth Reed, and ride the rails with Fannie and Jennie Freeman, the mother-daughter team who bilked railroad companies out of more than $150,000. In eleven captivating profiles, Enss brings to life the stories of these fascinating pistol-packing, horse-thieving, poker-swindling outlaws.

From Calamity Jane?s relentless pursuit of Wild Bill Hickok to Emma Walters, who gave it all up for the dashing Bat Masterson?and learned to regret it, these romantic stories from the Old West are still familiar and entertaining to readers today. Meet Agnes Lake Hickok, the intrepid wife of Wild...  more

From Calamity Jane?s relentless pursuit of Wild Bill Hickok to Emma Walters, who gave it all up for the dashing Bat Masterson?and learned to regret it, these romantic stories from the Old West are still familiar and entertaining to readers today. Meet Agnes Lake Hickok, the intrepid wife of Wild Bill Hickok and learn about the last love letter he sent before being dealt the dead man?s hand. Learn the story behind the charming performer Lotta Crabtree?s heartaches. And discover the tale of the dashing Kit Carson and his beautiful bride. This collection features the lessons learned by and from the antics of the women who shaped the West.

“What we want to do is give our women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay.”—William F. Cody, 1899 With rough-riding cowboys, sure shots, and fantastic reenactments of...  more

“What we want to do is give our women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay.”—William F. Cody, 1899 With rough-riding cowboys, sure shots, and fantastic reenactments of battles and train robberies, Buffalo Bill Cody brought the myth of the Old West to life for audiences all over the world—and some of the most popular cowboys in his Wild West Show were young ladies. Cody surrounded himself with strong, intelligent, talented, beautiful women—and this revealing portrait tells the stories of his life and of his relationships with many of the trick riders, sharpshooters, and other women associated with the show for which he was famous.

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic...  more

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West. On the distant margins of empire, Great Basin Indians increasingly found themselves engulfed in the chaotic storms of European expansion and responded in ways that refashioned themselves and those around them. Focusing on Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone Indians, Blackhawk illuminates this history through a lens of violence, excavating the myriad impacts of colonial expansion. Brutal networks of trade and slavery forged the Spanish borderlands, and the use of violence became for many Indians a necessary survival strategy, particularly after Mexican Independence when many became raiders and slave traffickers. Throughout such violent processes, these Native communities struggled to adapt to their changing environments, sometimes scoring remarkable political ends while suffering immense reprisals. Violence over the Land is a passionate reminder of the high costs that the making of American history occasioned for many indigenous peoples, written from the vantage point of an Indian scholar whose own family history is intimately bound up in its enduring legacies.

"Because he has been criticized as a destroyer, a ruthless killer, and wastrel of a great game resource of a Nation, the buffalo hunter appeals to the bar of history for his vindication. . . . Within four years we opened up a vast empire to settlement, and put the Indians forever out of...  more

"Because he has been criticized as a destroyer, a ruthless killer, and wastrel of a great game resource of a Nation, the buffalo hunter appeals to the bar of history for his vindication. . . . Within four years we opened up a vast empire to settlement, and put the Indians forever out of Texas." J. Wright Mooar tells the story of the buffalo hunter, from the hunter's perspective, in this first-person account published more than seventy years ago in several installments in Holland's, The Magazine of the South. Mooar was more than eighty years old when he sat down with Methodist minister/educator James Winford Hunt and recounted his years as a buffalo hunter. He describes how buffalo hunting became a huge business that thrived for less than a decade in the 1870s and makes the case that the buffalo hunter, more than anyone else, opened the way for white settlement by eradicating the Indians' source of food. "Buffalo hunting was a business and not a sport. It required capital, management, and a lot of hard work. Magazine writers and others who claim that the killing of the buffalo was a national calamity and was accomplished by vandals simply expose their ignorance, and I resent such an unjust judgment upon us. "If it had not been for the work of the buffalo hunters, the wild bison would still graze where Amarillo now is, and the red man would still reign supreme over the pampas of the Panhandle of Texas. "Any one of the families killed and homes destroyed by the Indians would have been worth more to Texas and to civilization than all the millions of buffalo that ever roamed from the Pecos River on the south to the Platte River on the north." "Here is an odyssey of hairbreadth escapes from death with wild Indians, wilder white men, and thundering herds of wild buffalo," writes J. W. Hunt, founding president of Abilene's McMurry College (now University), in his introduction. Illustrated by Texas folklore artist Granville Bruce, the stories of J. Wright Mooar make for lively reading and continuing debate.

"Texas, by God!" cried notorious killer John Wesley Hardin when he saw a Colt .45 pointed at him on a train in Florida. At the other end of the pistol stood Texas Ranger John B. Armstrong. Hardin's arrest assured Armstrong a place in history, but his story is larger, fuller, and even more...  more

"Texas, by God!" cried notorious killer John Wesley Hardin when he saw a Colt .45 pointed at him on a train in Florida. At the other end of the pistol stood Texas Ranger John B. Armstrong. Hardin's arrest assured Armstrong a place in history, but his story is larger, fuller, and even more important--and until now it has never been told. Serving in the Rangers' famed Frontier Battalion from 1875 to 1878, Armstrong rode with Captain L. H. McNelly in the capture of King Fisher, was called to Round Rock when Sam Bass was cornered, and helped patrol the region caught in the Taylor-Sutton Feud. His more lasting legacy, though, was as founder of the Armstrong Ranch, an operation that remains active and important to this day. From this family base he helped change ranching techniques and was an important sponsor for bringing the railroads to South Texas. In the 1890s he joined a special Ranger division that supplemented the force's efforts, especially in pursuit and apprehension of gunmen and cattle rustlers in the region. As Elmer Kelton notes in his afterword to this book, "Chuck Parsons' biography is a long-delayed and much-justified tribute to Armstrong's service to Texas." Parsons fills in the missing details of a Ranger and rancher's life, correcting some common misconceptions and adding to the record of a legendary group of lawmen and pioneers.

Few names in the lore of western gunmen are as recognizable. Few lives of the most notorious are as little known. Romanticized and made legendary, John Ringo fought and killed for what he believed was right. As a teenager, Ringo was rushed into sudden adulthood when his father was killed...  more

Few names in the lore of western gunmen are as recognizable. Few lives of the most notorious are as little known. Romanticized and made legendary, John Ringo fought and killed for what he believed was right. As a teenager, Ringo was rushed into sudden adulthood when his father was killed tragically in the midst of the family's overland trek to California. As a young man he became embroiled in the blood feud turbulence of post-Reconstruction Texas. The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War in Texas began as a war over range rights, but it swiftly deteriorated into blood vengeance and spiraled out of control as the body count rose. In this charnel house Ringo gained a reputation as a dangerous gunfighter and man killer. He was proclaimed throughout the state as a daring leader, a desperate man, and a champion of the feud. Following incarceration for his role in the feud, Ringo was elected as a lawman in Mason County, the epicenter of the feud's origin. The reputation he earned in Texas, further inflated by his willingness to shoot it out with Victorio's raiders during a deadly confrontation in New Mexico, preceded him to Tombstone in territorial Arizona. Ringo became immersed in the area's partisan politics and factionalized violence. A champion of the largely Democratic ranchers, Ringo would become known as a leader of one of these elements, the Cowboys. He ran at bloody, tragic odds with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday, finally being part of the posse that hounded these fugitives from Arizona. In the end, Ringo died mysteriously in the Arizona desert, his death welcomed by some, mourned by others, wrongly claimed by a few. Initially published in 1996, John Ringo has been updated to a second edition with much new information researched and uncovered by David Johnson and other Ringo researchers.

George Washington insisted that his portrait be painted with one. Daniel Boone created a legend with one. Abraham Lincoln shot them on the White House lawn. And Teddy Roosevelt had his specially customized. Now, in this first-of-its-kind book, historian Alexander Rose delivers a colorful,...  more

George Washington insisted that his portrait be painted with one. Daniel Boone created a legend with one. Abraham Lincoln shot them on the White House lawn. And Teddy Roosevelt had his specially customized. Now, in this first-of-its-kind book, historian Alexander Rose delivers a colorful, engrossing biography of an American icon: the rifle. Drawing on the words of soldiers, inventors, and presidents, based on extensive new research, and encompassing the Revolution to the present day, American Rifle is a balanced, wonderfully entertaining history of this most essential firearm and its place in American culture. In the eighteenth century American soldiers discovered that they no longer had to fight in Europe?s time-honored way. With the evolution of the famed ?Kentucky? Rifle?a weapon slow to load but devastatingly accurate in the hands of a master?a new era of warfare dawned, heralding the birth of the American individualist in battle. In this spirited narrative, Alexander Rose reveals the hidden connections between the rifle?s development and our nation?s history. We witness the high-stakes international competition to produce the most potent gunpowder . . . how the mysterious arts of metallurgy, gunsmithing, and mass production played vital roles in the creation of American economic supremacy . . . and the ways in which bitter infighting between rival arms makers shaped diplomacy and influenced the most momentous decisions in American history. And we learn why advances in rifle technology and ammunition triggered revolutions in military tactics, how ballistics tests?frequently bizarre?were secretly conducted, and which firearms determined the course of entire wars. From physics to geopolitics, from frontiersmen to the birth of the National Rifle Association, from the battles of the Revolution to the war in Iraq, American Rifle is a must read for history buffs, gun collectors, soldiers?and anyone who seeks to understand the dynamic relationship between the rifle and this nation?s history.

A scrupulously detailed account of the development of the West through James Clyman's eyes, surviving life in the plains and mountains, then with the overland emigrants.

With a scholar's authority and a storyteller's passion, Leon Metz chronicles the lives of famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok, as well as lesser known desperadoes who left just as many corpses and whiskey bottles in their wake. Rich in detail, and...  more

With a scholar's authority and a storyteller's passion, Leon Metz chronicles the lives of famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok, as well as lesser known desperadoes who left just as many corpses and whiskey bottles in their wake. Rich in detail, and woven with wit and insight, these fascinating portraits reveal The Shooters as they really lived, fought and died. Shooters -- Billy [the Kid]: the enduring legend -- Sam Bass: a square shooter -- Black Jack Ketchum: a true loser -- Tom Smith: he brought them in alive -- The James boys -- The Daltons: brothers on the prowl -- Elfego Baca: last of the old-time shooters -- Print Olive: just plain mean a hell -- Stoudenmire: El Paso marshal -- King Fisher: frontier dandy -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- Dave Mather: a deadly shooter -- Pat Garrett -- Jim Miller: bushwhacker -- Chisum: cattle baron -- Luke Short and Jim Courtright -- Johnson County War -- Buffalo Bill: the remarkable showman -- Wild Bill Hickok -- Clay Allison: wild wolf of the Washita -- Texas Rangers -- Blood and salt -- John Larn: Texas killer -- Bass outlaw -- James Garrett: Texas Ranger -- Pearl Hart, John Ringo, and Jack Slade -- John Wesley Hardin -- Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp

In 1877, Chief Standing Bear?s Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to what was then known as Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), in what became the tribe?s own Trail of Tears. ?I Am a Man? chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a...  more

In 1877, Chief Standing Bear?s Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to what was then known as Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), in what became the tribe?s own Trail of Tears. ?I Am a Man? chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a six-hundred-mile walk to return the body of his only son to their traditional burial ground. Along the way, it examines the complex relationship between the United States government and the small, peaceful tribe and the legal consequences of land swaps and broken treaties, while never losing sight of the heartbreaking journey the Ponca endured. It is a story of survival---of a people left for dead who arose from the ashes of injustice, disease, neglect, starvation, humiliation, and termination. On another level, it is a story of life and death, despair and fortitude, freedom and patriotism. A story of Christian kindness and bureaucratic evil. And it is a story of hope---of a people still among us today, painstakingly preserving a cultural identity that had sustained them for centuries before their encounter with Lewis and Clark in the fall of 1804.Before it ends, Standing Bear?s long journey home also explores fundamental issues of citizenship, constitutional protection, cultural identity, and the nature of democracy---issues that continue to resonate loudly in twenty-first-century America. It is a story that questions whether native sovereignty, tribal-based societies, and cultural survival are compatible with American democracy. Standing Bear successfully used habeas corpus, the only liberty included in the original text of the Constitution, to gain access to a federal court and ultimately his freedom. This account aptly illuminates how the nation?s delicate system of checks and balances worked almost exactly as the Founding Fathers envisioned, a system arguably out of whack and under siege today. Joe Starita?s well-researched and insightful account reads like historical fiction as his careful characterizations and vivid descriptions bring this piece of American history brilliantly to life.