Will Croft Barnes (1858–1937) first came to Arizona as a cavalryman and went on to become a rancher, state legislator, and conservationist. From 1905 to 1935, his travels throughout the state, largely on horseback, enabled him to gather the anecdotes and geographical information that came to constitute Arizona Place Names.For this first toponymic encyclopedia of Arizona, Barnes compiled information from published histories, federal and state government doc...

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award**A New York Times Notable Book**Winner of the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award*This New York Times bestseller and stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revela...

Dee Brown’s powerful and unforgettable classic that awakened the world to the nineteenth-century decimation of American Indian tribesFirst published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee generated shockwaves with its frank and heartbreaking depiction of the systematic annihilation of American Indian tribes across the western frontier. In this nonfiction account, Dee Brown focuses on the betrayals, battles, and massacres suffered by American Indians betwee...

Little did Louis L'Amour realize back in 1960 when he published The Daybreakers, a novel about two brothers who came west after the Civil War, that he had begun creating what would become perhaps North America's most widely followed literary family: the Sacketts. The stories of ten generations of Sackett men and women as they forged westward from tyranny-wracked seventeenth-century England across the American continent have captivated readers for three decades through seventeen no...

This lavishly illustrated volume reassesses and celebrates the life and legacy of the West’s most legendary figure, George Armstrong Custer, from Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove and “one of America’s great storytellers” (The Wall Street Journal), Larry McMurtry.On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry attacked a large Lakota Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. He lost not o...

This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initia...

A major one-volume history of the Oregon Trail from its earliest beginnings to the present, by a prize-winning historian of the American West.Starting with an overview of Oregon Country in the early 1800s, a vast area then the object of international rivalry among Spain, Britain, Russia, and the United States, David Dary gives us the whole sweeping story of those who came to explore, to exploit, and, finally, to settle there.Using diaries, journals, company and expedition r...

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for ExcellenceFinalist for the Oklahoma Book AwardA Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick“A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.... Superb.” —New York Times Book Review"WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!"In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prep...

Between 1864 and 1877, during the height of the Plains Indian wars, Pawnee Indian scouts rendered invaluable service to the United States Army. They led missions deep into contested territory, tracked resisting bands, spearheaded attacks against enemy camps, and on more than one occasion saved American troops from disaster on the field of battle. In War Party in Blue, Mark van de Logt tells the story of the Pawnee scouts from their perspective, detailing the battles in which they ...

"[This] richly documented book is the definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion of the Western frontier." —Jay P. Dolan, The New York Times Book ReviewEarly in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corrido...

Montana's history is rich, colorful, and full of excitement in this fully-illustrated volume.See how Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger blazed trails and made their names under the Big Sky. Read about the day John Colter ran naked for his life, Blackfeet Indians fast on his heels.Watch as Hugh Glass is mauled by a grizzly before being left to die alone by his 'friends.' Have a toast with rowdy Mike Fink before he shoots a tin cup of whiskey from your head. And meet James Beckwo...

• The Federal Writers’ Project named an area three miles south-southeast of Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley the Devil’s Cornfield because the arrowweed growing there resembled shocks of corn tied about the middle.• The Devil’s Golf Course got its name because it was thought that only a fiend could play golf on the rough surface of crystallized salt at the place.• Lost Cannon Creek owes its name to the local legend that a cannon left by John C. Fremont was discovered in the ...