In 1846, before he became the first great historian of the American frontier, Francis Parkman left his privileged Boston home to follow the Conestoga wagons of the pioneers making their way west along the Oregon Trail. It was a year of decision for America--and a year of high adventure for Parkman. This is a spirited account of his experiences on the Great Plains and along the Great Divide, as Parkman and two companions traveled the Oregon Trail as...

"A Woman of Courage Makes an Epic Journey Take a three-thousand mile journey with Amanda Pearson as she leaves the disgrace of a broken engagement and joins the work at a Quaker mission in the western wilds. The trip is fraught with danger, and Amanda is near death before reaching her destination. Among those she meets are an Indian woman who becomes her first convert and a half-Indian trapper who seems to be her biggest critic. But love follows her...

Here are the true stories of the West's most terrible massacres-Sacramento River, Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, Marias River, Camp Grant, and Wounded Knee, among others. These massacres involved Americans killing Indians, but also Indians killing Americans and, in the case of the currently hugely controversial Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, Mormons slaughtering a party of American settlers, including women and children.McMurtry's evocative descriptions...

Presents accounts of a young man's travels on the Oregon Trail and his sojourn with the Oglala Indians.

"This book is the story of the Lakota and how they were forced onto a reservation, told from the point of view of Red Cloud, warrior and chief of the Lakota. It is a heavily illustrated account, with both text and illustrations by S. D. Nelson."--

"A dramatic, riveting, and deeply researched narrative account of the epic struggle for the West during the Civil War, revealing a little-known, vastly important episode in American history. In The Three-Cornered War Megan Kate Nelson reveals the fascinating history of the Civil War in the American West. Exploring the connections among the Civil War, the Indian wars, and western expansion, Nelson reframes the era as one of national conflict--involving...

"A revealing history of the West that pivots on Native peoples and the mixed families they made with European settlers. There is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using marriage to link communities and protect people within circles of kin. These family circles took in European newcomers who followed the fur trade into Indian Country from the Great Lakes to the Columbia...

"[This book] is about the expedition that Meriweather Lewis and William Clark led across the North American continent and back to St. Louis between 1803 and 1806. It is about the journals that they and other members of the expedition kept, the people whoaccompanied them and those they met along the way, and the animals they killed and those that transformed them ... It is about naming, discovery, being an explorer, finding yourself, and losing your...

All his life Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacagawea and a French fur-trapper, has lived in two worlds: the Westernized world of his godfather, William Clark, and the frontier world beyond St. Louis--but he is troubled by the way Americans mistreat tribes like the Osage, Arikara, and Mandan, and as a man of mixed ancestry, he must ultimately choose which of the two heritages is more important to him.