Full color maps and illustrations throughout.

Full color maps and illustrations throughout.

The Cheyenne people made up one of the largest tribes in the region during the mid 19th century. Prior to the 18th century, the Cheyenne lived in the Great Lakes region until stronger tribes in that area forced them westward. Over time, the Cheyenne migrated toward the Black Hills and the Platte River valley. Eventually, the massive herds of buffalo roaming the plains lured a branch of the tribe southward across the Platte River into the Arkansas River valley of today's southern Colorado and Kansas. By the mid 1800s, the Cheyenne had totally abandoned their sedentary agricultural traditions and completely adopted the nomadic buffalo-hunting culture. They replaced their earthen lodges with tepees, and their diet changed from agricultural products to mainly buffalo meat. The Cheyenne flourished in the Arkansas River region up into the late 1840s. War between the US and Mexico in 1846, brought increased traffic onto the Santa Fe Trail, but most travelers passed unmolested through the Cheyenne territory. However, the discovery of gold in California brought hordes of miners through the Cheyenne lands. The gold prospectors were only passing through, but without realizing it, they brought cholera to the Southern Plains in 1849; the disease was devastating to the Cheyenne and may have killed more than half the Southern Cheyenne population.

From the Battle of Bunker Hill to the Battle of Midway

The Sand Creek Battle, or Massacre, occurred on November 29-30, 1864, a confrontation between Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians and Colorado volunteer soldiers. The affair was a tragic event in American history, and what occurred there continues to be hotly contested. Indeed, labeling it a “battle” or a “massacre” will likely start an argument before any discussion on the merits even begins. Even questions about who owns the story, and how it should be told, are up for debate. Many questions arise whenever Sand Creek is discussed: were the Indians peaceful? Did they hold white prisoners? Were they under army protection? Were excessive numbers of women and children killed, and were bodies mutilated? Did the Indians fly an American flag? Did the chiefs die stoically in front of their tipis? Were white scalps found in the village? Three hearings were conducted, and there seems to be an overabundance of evidence from which to answer these and other questions. Unfortunately, the evidence only muddies the issues. Award-winning Indian Wars author Gregory Michno divides his study into three sections. The first, “In Blood,” details the events of November 29 and 30, 1864, in what is surely the most comprehensive account published to date. The second section, “In Court,” focuses on the three investigations into the affair, illustrates some of the biases involved, and presents some of the contradictory testimony. The third and final section, “The End of History,” shows the utter impossibility of sorting fact from fiction. Using Sand Creek as well as contemporary examples, Michno examines the evidence of eyewitnesses—all of whom were subject to false memories, implanted memories, leading questions, prejudice, self-interest, motivated reasoning, social, cultural, and political mores, an over-active amygdala, and a brain that had a “mind” of its own—obstacles that make factual accuracy an illusion. Living in a postmodern world of relativism suggests that all history is subject to the fancies and foibles of individual bias. The example of Sand Creek illustrates why we may be witnessing “the end of history.” Studying Sand Creek exposes our prejudices because facts will not change our minds—we invent them in our memories, we are poor eyewitnesses, we follow the leader, we are slaves to our preconceptions, and assuredly we never let truth get in the way of what we already think, feel, or even hope. We do not believe what we see; instead, we see what we believe. Michno’s extensive research includes primary and select secondary studies, including recollections, archival accounts, newspapers, diaries, and other original records. The Three Battles of Sand Creek will take its place as the definitive account of this previously misunderstood, and tragic, event.

Presents an illustrated reference that covers the history, culture and tribal distribution of North American Indians.

Battles of the Red River War unearths a long-buried record of the collision of two cultures. In 1874, U.S. forces led by Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie carried out a surprise attack on several Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa bands that had taken refuge in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas panhandle and destroyed their winter stores and horses. After this devastating loss, many of these Indians returned to their reservations and effectively brought to a close what has come to be known as the Red River War, a campaign carried out by the U.S. Army during 1874 as a result of Indian attacks on white settlers in the region. After this operation, the Southern Plains Indians would never again pose a coherent threat to whites’ expansion and settlement across their ancestral homelands. Until now, the few historians who have undertaken to tell the story of the Red River War have had to rely on the official records of the battles and a handful of extant accounts, letters, and journals of the U.S. Army participants. Starting in 1998, J. Brett Cruse, under the auspices of the Texas Historical Commission, conducted archeological investigations at six battle sites. In the artifacts they unearthed, Cruse and his teams found clues that would both correct and complete the written records and aid understanding of the Indian perspectives on this clash of cultures. Including a chapter on historiography and archival research by Martha Doty Freeman and an analysis of cartridges and bullets by Douglas D. Scott, this rigorously researched and lavishly illustrated work will commend itself to archeologists, military historians and scientists, and students and scholars of the Westward Expansion.

Atlas of the Indian Tribes of the Continental United States and the Clash of Cultures The Atlas identifies of the Native American tribes of the United States and chronicles the conflict of cultures and Indians' fight for self-preservation in a changing and demanding new word. The Atlas is a compact resource on the identity, location, and history of each of the Native American tribes that have inhabited the land that we now call the continental United States and answers the three basic questions of who, where, and when. Regretfully, the information on too many tribes is extremely limited. For some, there is little more than a name. The history of the American Indian is presented in the context of America's history its westward expansion, official government policy and public attitudes. By seeing something of who we were, we are better prepared to define who we need to be. The Atlas will be a convenient resource for the casual reader, the researcher, and the teacher and the student alike. A unique feature of this book is a master list of the varied names by which the tribes have been known throughout history.

This atlas represents a modest effort to examine the Army's campaigns against the Sioux, one of the great Indian tribes of the American West. The three Sioux wars covered in this atlas offer a variety of historical case studies for the student of low-intensity conflict. The difficulties of using volunteer forces to quell a rebellion of suppressed peoples are investigated in the 1862 campaign in Minnesota. The 1866-68 Sioux War in Wyoming and Montana is the story of securing a fixed route of travel through hostile territory with limited resources. The final conflict, that of 1876, encompasses one of the largest and most ambitious search-and-destroy missions in the history of Indian warfare. This atlas will be especially useful to those soldiers who wish to study the Sioux campaigns on the actual sites by using the Staff Ride methodology. For them, this work may serve as an educational reference as they begin their study, provide a handy companion on the battlefield, and serve as a helpful reminder as they integrate their insights from the classroom with those of the battlefield.

This 230 page atlas is divided into seven parts. Part I, Missouri's Divided Loyalties, and Part II, Missouri's Five Seasons, provide an overview of Missouri's history from the initial settlement of the Louisiana Purchase Territories through the opening years of the American Civil War. The remaining parts cover the Confederate plan, the Confederate movement into Missouri and the Union reaction, the Confederate retreat and Union pursuit into Kansas, and the final Confederate escape back into Arkansas. The atlas has a standard format with the map to left and the narrative to the right. Each narrative closes with two or more primary source vignettes. These vignettes provide an overview of the events shown on the map and discussed in the narrative from the perspective of persons who participated in the events. In most cases there are two vignettes with the first from a person loyal to the Union and the second from a person who supported the southern cause. A few narratives have two or more vignettes from only the Union side. This was done to emphasize disagreements and struggles among senior leaders to establish a common course of action. Map 25, Decision at the Little Blue River, is a good example and the three vignettes emphasize the disagreement between Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis and his subordinate, Maj. Gen. James Blunt on where to locate the Union defensive line.