Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West


Dee Brown - 1970
    A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn - the Last Great Battle of the American West


James Donovan - 2008
    The news of this devastating loss caused a public uproar, and those in positions of power promptly began to point fingers in order to avoid responsibility. Custer, who was conveniently dead, took the brunt of the blame.The truth, however, was far more complex. A TERRIBLE GLORY is the first book to relate the entire story of this endlessly fascinating battle, and the first to call upon all the significant research and findings of the past twenty-five years--which have changed significantly how this controversial event is perceived. Furthermore, it is the first book to bring to light the details of the U.S. Army cover-up--and unravel one of the greatest mysteries in U.S. military history. Scrupulously researched, A TERRIBLE GLORY will stand as ta landmark work. Brimming with authentic detail and an unforgettable cast of characters--from Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to Ulysses Grant and Custer himself--this is history with the sweep of a great novel.

The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History


Paul Andrew Hutton - 2016
    His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides--the Apaches and the white invaders—blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid. In this sprawling, monumental work, Paul Hutton unfolds over two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. This is Mickey Free's story, but also the story of his contemporaries: the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands--a bleak and unforgiving world where a people would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn


Nathaniel Philbrick - 2010
    Mythologized as Custer's Last Stand, the June 1876 battle has been equated with other famous last stands, from the Spartans' defeat at Thermopylae to Davy Crockett at the Alamo.In his tightly structured narrative, Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly sketches the two larger-than-life antagonists: Sitting Bull, whose charisma and political savvy earned him the position of leader of the Plains Indians, and George Armstrong Custer, one of the Union's greatest cavalry officers and a man with a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage. Philbrick reminds readers that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also, even in victory, the last stand for the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian nations. Increasingly outraged by the government's Indian policies, the Plains tribes allied themselves and held their ground in southern Montana. Within a few years of Little Bighorn, however, all the major tribal leaders would be confined to Indian reservations.Throughout, Philbrick beautifully evokes the history and geography of the Great Plains with his characteristic grace and sense of drama. "The Last Stand" is a mesmerizing account of the archetypal story of the American West, one that continues to haunt our collective imagination.

Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto


Vine Deloria Jr. - 1969
    race relations, federal bureaucracies, Christian churches, and social scientists. This book continues to be required reading for all Americans, whatever their special interest.

The Way to Rainy Mountain


N. Scott Momaday - 1969
    One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth."The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself." —From the new Preface

Four Years in the Rockies -- the Adventures of Isaac P. Rose--Hunter and Trapper in that Remote Region (1884)


James B. Marsh - 2010
    Rose (1815-1899) was a Rocky Mountain trapper and mountain man. No novel was ever written depicting more thrilling encounters with Indians or hair-breadth escapes than were experienced by Isaac Rose and his companions. These are fully recounted in a volume entitled, "Four Years in the Rockies," the authorship of which is accredited to James B. Marsh. It is a work full of interest for all readers. He was nineteen years old when he left his plough and, in company with a companion, Joe Lewis, he made his way to Pittsburg. The boys had cherished the hope of securing employment as stage drivers but, as they found no opening in that direction, they accepted berths at $15 per month as deck hands on a steamboat that was then loading for St. Louis. When they reached the latter city, Rose found employment as a hack driver in a livery stable, and Lewis a job of attending to the horses. Here the boys became acquainted with a number of "Rocky Mountain Boys," as they were called, and became fascinated with their stories of mountain life, of fights with bear and adventures in buffalo, elk and deer hunting, together with skirmishes with the Indians. Soon after this he joined a company formed by Nathaniel Wyeth, which started from Independence for the Rocky Mountains, with an outfit worth $100,000, sixty men and 200 horses and mules heavily loaded with goods. At the Gallatin River Isaac Rose and his party were joined by some trappers belonging to the American Fur Company, one of whom was Kit Carson. For years this noted trapper and Mr. Rose were closely associated in their adventurous life. Later, Mr. Rose became so expert a trapper himself that he won a prize of $300 as a trapper of beaver. In 1836 he had a thrilling experience with Indians, which almost caused the loss of his arm. The author writes: "The hunters and trappers of the far west, at the time when the incidents I am about to relate occurred, were a brave, hardy and adventurous set of men, and they had peculiarities in their characters that cannot be found in any other people. From the time they leave civilization they—metaphorically speaking—carry their lives in their hands. An enemy may be concealed in every thicket or looked for behind every rock. They have not only the wild and savage beasts to contend with, but the still more wily and savage Indian, and their life is one continual round of watchfulness and excitement. Their character is a compound of two extremes— recklessness and caution—and isolation from the world makes them at all times self-reliant. In moments of the greatest peril, or under the most trying circumstances, they never lose their presence of mind, but are ready to take advantage of any incident that may occur to benefit themselves or foil their enemies. "As, in the course of this narrative, we may have occasion to describe some of the trappers who were comrades of Mr. Rose, and who took part in many of his adventures, I wish my readers to be fully aware of the character of these men, and that their camp stories are not all idle boasting. A more hardy, fearless, improvident set of men can nowhere else be found." This book originally published in 1884 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.

On the Rez


Ian Frazier - 2000
    Crazy Horse, perhaps the greatest Indian war leader of the 1800s, and Black Elk, the holy man whose teachings achieved worldwide renown, were Oglala; in these typically perceptive pages, Frazier seeks out their descendants on Pine Ridge--a/k/a the rez--which is one of the poorest places in America today.Along with his longtime friend Le War Lance (whom he first wrote about in his 1989 bestseller, Great Plains) and other Oglala companions, Frazier fully explores the rez as they visit friends and relatives, go to pow-wows and rodeos and package stores, and tinker with a variety of falling-apart cars. He takes us inside the world of the Sioux as few writers ever have, writing with much wit, compassion, and imagination. In the career of SuAnne Big Crow, for example, the most admired Oglala basketball player of all time, who died in a car accident in 1992, Frazier finds a contemporary reemergence of the death-defying, public-spirited Sioux hero who fights with grace and glory to save her followers.On the Rez vividly portrays the survival, through toughness and humor, of a great people whose culture has helped to shape the American identity.

The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America


James Wilson - 1998
    Combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition, and years of his original research, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures. The Earth Shall Weep charts the collision course between Euro-Americans and the indigenous people of the continent, from the early interactions at English settlements on the Atlantic coast, through successive centuries of encroachment and outright warfare, to the new political force of the Native American activists of today. It is a clash that would ultimately result in the reduction of the Native American population from an estimated seven to ten million to 250,000 over a span of four hundred years, and change the face of the continent forever. A tour de force of narrative history, The Earth Shall Weep is a powerful, moving telling of the story of Native Americans that has become the new standard for future work in the field.

Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America


Theodora Kroeber - 1961
    For more than forty years, Theodora Kroeber's biography has captivated readers. Now recent advances in technology make it possible to return to print the 1976 deluxe edition, filled with plates and historic photographs that enhance Ishi's story and bring it to life.Ishi stumbled into the twentieth century on the morning of August 29, 1911, when, desperate with hunger and terrified of the white murderers of his family, he was found in the corral of a slaughter house near Oroville, California. Finally identified as a Yahi by an anthropologist, Ishi was brought to San Francisco by Professor T. T. Waterman and lived there the rest of his life under the care and protection of Alfred Kroeber and the staff of the University of California's Museum of Anthropology.Karl Kroeber adds an informative tribute to the text, describing how the book came to be written and how Theodora Kroeber's approach to the project was a product of both her era and her special personal insight and empathy.

Crazy Horse and Custer


Stephen E. Ambrose - 1975
    Ambrose, a dual biography of two great nineteenth century warriors, General Custer and Crazy Horse, culminating in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Cripple Creek Days


Mabel Barbee Lee - 1958
    She speaks with authority because she arrived there as a child in 1892, and with wide-eyed wonder saw the whole place turn to gold.With his divining rod, Mabel's father tapped gold ore on Beacon Hill but missed becoming a millionaire by selling his claim short. Nonetheless, life was rich for young Mabel in a booming town with points of interest like Poverty Gulch, the Continental Hotel, and a fantastic house called Finn's Folly; with characters around like the promoter Windy Joe and (seen from a distance) the madam Pearl De Vere; with something always going on, whether a celebration or a disastrous fire or train wreck or a no-nonsense miners' strike.Mabel Lee's book brings back a time and place with affection. The foreword is by Lowell Thomas, who was her pupil when she was a young schoolmarm in Cripple Creek.

Little Big Man


Thomas Berger - 1964
    As a "human being", as the Cheyenne called their own, he won the name Little Big Man. He dressed in skins, feasted on dog, loved four wives and saw his people butchered by the horse soldiers of General Custer, the man he had sworn to kill.As a white man, Crabb hunted buffalo, tangled with Wyatt Earp, cheated Wild Bill Hickok and survived the Battle of Little Bighorn. Part-farcical, part-historical, the picaresque adventures of this witty, wily mythomaniac claimed the Wild West as the stuff of serious literature.

The Yosemite


John Muir - 1912
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


Ron Hansen - 1983
    Jesse James, at the age of 34, is at the height of his fame and powers as a singularly successful outlaw. Robert Ford is the skittish younger brother of one of the James gang: he has made himself an expert on the gang, but his particular interest - his obsession - is Jesse James himself. Both drawn to him and frightened of him, the nineteen-year-old is uncertain whether he wants to serve James or destroy him or, somehow, become him.Never have these two men been portrayed and their saga explored with such poetry, such grim precision and such raw-boned feeling as Ron Hansen has brought to this masterful retelling.'Wonderful. This is great storytelling, not undermined by our knowin how it turns out. The reader is driven - by story and by language and by history... the best blend of fiction and history I've read in a long while!' -- John Irving, author of The World According to Garp