Native American Wars

King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war - colonists against Indians - that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war". Telling the story of what may have been the bitterest of American conflicts, and its reverberations over the centuries, Lepore has enabled us to see how the ways in which we remember past events are as important in their effect on our history as were the events themselves.

George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: Former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radical change without their colonists’ consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783.

When Vicksburg fell to Union forces under General Grant in July 1863, the balance turned against the Confederacy in the trans-Appalachian theater. The Federal success along the river opened the way for advances into central and eastern Tennessee, which culminated in the bloody battle of Chickamauga and then a struggle for Chattanooga. Chickamauga is usually counted as a Confederate victory, albeit a costly one.

What was the bloodiest war in American history? Most people with at least a little knowledge of history would quickly say that it was the Civil War (1861-65), and they would certainly be correct overall. In recently-updated numbers, it is thought that over 750,000 Americans died in the Civil War from battle wounds, diseases and other causes. In a single day at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, almost 27,000 soldiers were killed, wounded and missing.

For generations, they ruled over blacks and whites. They were—and still are—the Seminoles, the only American Indians who never surrendered to Uncle Sam. Runaways from other tribes, the Seminoles carved a kingdom for themselves out of the wilds of Florida, despite British and Spanish imperialists theoretically ruling the day. The Seminoles also enslaved fugitives from American plantations, creating a slaveholding society unlike any other. When the Americans wanted not only their slaves back, but unsurpassed control over Florida, the Seminoles formed a groundbreaking alliance with those ...

Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. While little remembered today, their mutual hatred shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone, even the reviled President Andrew Jackson, ever did.

Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.

Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict - involving not just the North and South, but also the West.

On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the US 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer.

Dances with Wolves meets the story of Job in this gripping historical epic of tragedy, loss, and redemption. Georgia, 1861. As the tides of war sweep south, Aidan MacAlister is drawn north like water up a reed by the inexorable pull to defend his land. After tragedy strikes at Gettysburg, Aidan spirals into unfamiliar, dark places of unbridled fury, earning him the nickname, the Fourth Horseman. A hero to his fellow soldiers, Aidan’s self-loathing consumes him, and every lesson his family taught him crumbles to dust beneath its weight. Aidan returns to the farm to find it ravaged by ...

For more than 150 years between their first encounters with the English in the 1670s and forced removal along the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees negotiated mounting pressures. As their world was convulsed by the spread of European diseases, competition for guns, furs, and deerskins, and imperial powers’ unrelenting pursuit of “savage” allies, Cherokee communities responded by creating new solidarities.

A rousing and meticulously researched account of the notorious Battle of Little Big Horn and its unforgettable cast of characters from Sitting Bull to Custer himself.

In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the US Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from Northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border.

The history of the Sioux is replete with constant reminders of the consequences of both their accommodation of and resistance to American incursions into their territory by pioneering white settlers pushing further westward during the 19th century. Some Sioux leaders and their bands resisted incoming whites, while others tried to accommodate them, but the choice often had little impact on the ultimate outcome. Crazy Horse, who was never defeated in battle by U.S. troops, surrendered to them in 1877, only to be bayoneted to death by soldiers attempting to imprison him.

William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be: a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi.

What happens when a trained killer discovers, in the aftermath of war, that his true vocation is love? Having survived the killing fields of World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns home to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action.

With a bit of insight into the Native American culture, paired with a larger understanding of how the settlers of the west actually lived, you'll be able to decipher what happened to the Oatman family of your own accord, empowering an honest understanding of this history. In The Captivity of the Oatman Girls, you’ll discover powerful insight into the truth of the relations between the settlers and the Plains Indians of North America, why the actions of the colonists in the late 18th century bordered genocide - and how this shifted the landscape forever, and more.

The first people who lived on the northern plains of what today is the US called themselves "Lakota", meaning "the people", a word which provides the semantic basis for Dakota. The first European people to meet the Lakota called them "Sioux", a contraction of "Nadowessioux", a now-archaic French-Canadian word meaning "snake", or enemy.

The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. A conflict involving not only white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and the Spanish, the Creek War opened the Deep South to the Cotton Kingdom, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.