Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History
A dramatic, riveting, and âfresh look at a region typically obscured in accounts of the Civil War. American history buffs will relish this entertaining and eye-opening portraitâ (Publishers Weekly).
Megan Kate Nelson âexpands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nationâ (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflictâinvolving not just the North and South, but also the West.
Against the backdrop of this larger series of battles, Nelson introduces nine individuals: John R. Baylor, a Texas legislator who established the Confederate Territory of Arizona; Louisa Hawkins Canby, a Union Army wife who nursed Confederate soldiers back to health in Santa Fe; James Carleton, a professional soldier who engineered campaigns against Navajos and Apaches; Kit Carson, a famous frontiersman who led a regiment of volunteers against the Texans, Navajos, Kiowas, and Comanches; Juanita, a Navajo weaver who resisted Union campaigns against her people; Bill Davidson, a soldier who fought in all of the Confederacyâs major battles in New Mexico; Alonzo Ickis, an Iowa-born gold miner who fought on the side of the Union; John Clark, a friend of Abraham Lincolnâs who embraced the Republican vision for the West as New Mexicoâs surveyor-general; and Mangas Coloradas, a revered Chiricahua Apache chief who worked to expand Apache territory in Arizona.
As we learn how these nine charismatic individuals fought for self-determination and control of the region, we also see the importance of individual actions in the midst of a larger military conflict. Based on letters and diaries, military records and oral histories, and photographs and maps from the time, âthis history of invasions, battles, and forced migration shapes the United States to this dayâand has never been told so wellâ (Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author T.J. Stiles).