"Death on the Prairie" is a sweeping narrative history of the Indian wars on the western plains that never loses sight of the individual actors. Beginning with the Minnesota Sioux Uprising in 1862, Paul I. Wellman shifts to conflicts in present-day Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and South Dakota, involving, most spectacularly, the Sioux, but also the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Comanches, Kiowas, Utes, and Nez Perces--all being ezed out of their hunting grounds by white settlers. There is never a quiet page as Wellman describes the Sand Creek Massacre (1864), the Fetterman Massacre (1866), the Battle of the Washita (1868), the Battle of Adobe Walls (1874), the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876), the Nez Perce War (1877), the Meeker Massacre (1879), and the tragedy at wounded Knee (1890) that ended the fighting on the plains. Celebrated chiefs (Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Black Kettle, Satanta, Joseph, Ouray, Sitting Bull) clash with army officers (notably Custer, Sheridan, Miles, and Crook), and uncounted men, women, and children on both sides are cast in roles of fatal consequence.

This is a new release of the original 1954 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Buckskin Clad Scout, Indian Fighter, Plainsman, Cowboy, Hunter, Guide And Actor, And His Wife Morlacchi, Premier Danseuse In Satin Slippers.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

The Apache Indians and the white settlers came face to face after the Mexican War, when the migrations across the continent reached the Southwest. In depicting the long, bitter resistance of the Apaches, Death in the Desert reveals incidents that provoked their undying hatred of whites. This rousing narrative history by Paul I. Wellman begins in 1837 with the rise to tribal leadership of Mangas Coloradas and ends in 1886 with the surrender of Geronimo. For a half century the dust never settles as U.S. troops fight the Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico and defeat the single uprisings of the Navajos and Pueblos. Two chapters describe the Modoc War in northern California from 1871 to 1873.

The organized gangs of robbers and killers who roamed the Midwest and Southwest from the 1860s to the 1930s went to the same school and were succored by each other's notoriety. So Paul I. Wellman makes a case for "the contagious nature of crime." William Quantrill and his guerrillas established a criminal tradition that was to link the James, Dalton, Doolin, Jennings, and Cook gangs; Belle and Henry Starr; Pretty Boy Floyd; and others in "a long and crooked train of unbroken personal connections."

In the centuries of war between Indians and whites one episode is surely epical: the flight of the Nez Perce. Provoked by bad treaties and bitter memories, in 1877 a few Nez Perce raided homesteads in Idaho and killed their inhabitants. The raid quickly escalated into a series of skirmishes, and at last involved Chief Joseph and the ablest Nez Perce warriors in a prolonged chase by the army for over a thousand miles through Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The band of Nez Perce astonished military experts by their tactical ingenuity, swift maneuvers, daring, and endurance. By the time the chase concluded, barely forty miles from the Canadian border, the Nez Perce had left behind a record of heroic sacrifices, spectacular escapes, and incredible courage.