In 1856 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints employed a new means of getting converts to Great Salt Lake City who could not afford the journey otherwise. They began using handcarts, thus initiating a five-year experiment that has become a legend in the annals of Mormon and North American migration. Only one in ten Mormon emigrants used handcarts, but of those 3,000 who did between 1856 and 1860, most survived the harrowing journey to settle Utah and become members of a remarkable pioneer generation. Others were not so lucky. More than 200 died along the way, victims of exhaustion, accident, and, for a few, starvation and exposure to late-season Wyoming blizzards. Now, Candy Moulton tells of their successes, travails, and tragedies in an epic retelling of a legendary story. The Mormon Handcart Migration traces each stage of the journey, from the transatlantic voyage of newly converted church members to the gathering of the faithful in the eastern Nebraska encampment known as Winter Quarters. She then traces their trek from the western Great Plains, across modern-day Wyoming, to their final destination at Great Salt Lake. The handcart experiment was the brainchild of Mormon leader Brigham Young, who decreed that the saints could haul their own possessions, pushing or pulling two-wheeled carts across 1,100 miles of rough terrain, much of it roadless and some of it untrodden. The LDS church now embraces the saga of the handcart emigrants - including even the disaster that befell the Martin and Willie handcart companies in central Wyoming in 1856 - as an educational, faith-inspiring experience for thousands of youth each year. Moulton skillfully weaves together scores of firsthand accounts from the journals, letters, diaries, reminiscences, and autobiographies the handcart pioneers left behind. Depth of research and unprecedented detail make this volume an essential history of the Mormon handcart migration.

The Nez Perce people lived in peace with white intruders in their homelands from the time of Lewis & Clark until 1863 when a treaty called for the tribe's removal to a reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph (1840-1904), headman of the Nez Perce band in northeastern Oregon's Wallowa Valley, became the greatest diplomat, philosopher, and--from necessity rather than choice--war leader of his people and among the most respected Indian leaders of American history.
In this meticulous and moving new study of Joseph's life, Candy Moulton--
who has traveled over all the trails he and his people blazed--emphasizes the pivotal year of 1877, when the frontier military tried to force Joseph and his people onto the reservation. Instead of meekly following these outrageous orders, he led 750 Nez Perces on a 1,500-mile, four-month flight from western Idaho across Montana and through the Yellowstone country and northwest Wyoming toward safety in Canada. After many battles, the flight ended at the Bear Paws mountains in north-central Montana, just forty miles from the Canadian border and potential refuge. There the U.S. Army surrounded the Nez Perces, captured their horse herd, killed all but two of their primary chiefs, and forced capitulation. When Joseph surrendered to military leaders he told them, "From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."
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Colorado's roads wind through country that is steeped in history, sometimes tracing routes with a history of their own, from the Santa Fe Trail to the Million Dollar Highway. But no matter where you roam in this beautiful state, this book can guide you. Like other books in this popular series, _Roadside History of Colorado_ is divided into geographical-historical areas, making it easy to explore the state region by region. Mesmerizing tales of adventure and tragedy - including canibalism on the "Starvation Trail," the infamous Sand Creek Massacre, the jailing of Mother Jones, and the Big Thompson River flood of 1976 - will thrill both Coloradans and visitors. Includes 120 black-and-white photographs, 7 maps, chronology, bibliography, and index.

A perfect guide for writers, students, and historians! Everyday Life Among the American Indians corrects decades of misinformation with insightful, accurate scholarship that belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in reading - or writing - the real story. Covering more than 500 tribes and including maps, illustrations, chronologies, and detailed overviews of day-to-day life, this invaluable reference for writers, researchers and students is at once comprehensive and strikingly accessible. From the Louisiana Purchase to the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and beyond, the author vividly portrays the disappearing cultures of nineteenth-century American Indians with dignity and in astonishing detail, including information on: tribal leadership, weaponry and warfare, food and shelter, tools and medicine, languages, customs, religions, and crime and punishment.

Everyday Life in the Wild West shows you firsthand what it was like to tame the praries, fight the battles and build the boomtowns. From the vittles people ate (including boudins and buffalo humps) to what they wore (such as linsey-woolsey, caliso and duck), this book is packed with historical accounts, maps and photographs to give you a complete perspective of this fascinating era.

The "Roadside History" series charts a course to the present through carefully selected and thoroughly researched stories relating what we see today with what happened before. Through vivid anecdotes, old photographs, and maps, the "Roadside History" guides provide entertaining insight into the states they describe.

Each state is divided into geographical and historical regions, and each region is described in the context of highways that pass through it. This "road log" approach helps place modern travelers in the past.

This overview of Nebraska history follows roadways to all the well-known and many lesser-known points of interest. From early French and Spanish explorers to modern agriculture and the ongoing plight of Native Americans, the complete story of Nebraska unfolds here.

On a September day in 1877, hundreds of Sioux and soldiers at Camp Robinson crowded around a fatally injured Lakota leader. A young doctor forced his way through the crowd, only to see the victim fading before him. It was the famed Crazy Horse. From intense moments like this to encounters with such legendary western figures as Calamity Jane and Red Cloud, Valentine Trant O'Connell McGillycuddy's life (1849-1939) encapsulated key events in American history that changed the lives of Native people forever. In Valentine T. McGillycuddy: Army Surgeon, Agent to the Sioux, the first biography of the man in seventy years, award-winning author Candy Moulton explores McGillycuddy's fascinating experiences on the northern plains as topographer, cartographer, physician, and Indian agent.Drawing on family papers, interviews, government documents, and a host of other sources, Moulton presents a colorful character - a thin, blue-eyed, cultured physician who could outdrink trail-hardened soldiers. In fresh, vivid prose, she traces McGillycuddy's work mapping out the U.S.-Canadian border; treating the wounded from the battles of the Rosebud, the Little Bighorn, and Slim Buttes; tending to Crazy Horse during his final hours; and serving as agent to the Sioux at Pine Ridge, where he clashed with Chief Red Cloud over the government's assimilation policies. Along the way, Moulton weaves in the perspective of McGillycuddy's devoted first wife, Fanny, who followed her husband west and wrote of the realities of camp life. McGillycuddy's doctoring of Crazy Horse marked only one point of his interaction with American Indians. But those relationships were also just one aspect of his life in the West, which extended well into the twentieth century. Enhanced by more than 20 photographs, this long-overdue biography offers general readers and historians an engaging adventure story as well as insight into a period of tumultuous change.