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An Epic of the American West
Doubleday
October 2006
On Sale: October 3, 2006
480 pages
ISBN: 0385507771
EAN: 9780385507776
Hardcover
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Historical
A Magnificent History of How the West Was Really Wonโa Sweeping Tale of Shame and Glory
In the fall of 1846 the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his peopleโs chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were trueโif an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquishedโbut what did the arrival of these โNew Menโ portend for the Navajo?
Narbona could not have known that โThe Army of the West,โ in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as โManifest Destiny.โ For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.
Hampton Sidesโs extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to ringing life. It is a tale with many heroes and villains, but as is found in the best history, the same person might be both. At the center of it all stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carsonโthe legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American experience in the West. Brave and clever, beloved by his contemporaries, Carson was an illiterate mountain man who twice married Indian women and understood and respected the tribes better than any other American alive. Yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Carsonโs almost unimaginable exploits made him a household name when they were written up in pulp novels known as โblood-and-thunders,โ but now that name is a bitter curse for contemporary Navajo, who cannot forget his role in the travails of their ancestors.
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