by H. W. Brands
2 “We owe the United States nothing”: Niles National Register, Nov. 22, 1845.
3 Perpetual Emigrating Fund: Also called the Perpetual Emigration Fund. On the fund, and for the fullest account of the handcart emigration, see David Roberts, Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy (2008).
4 “Take good hickory”: Will Bagley, “‘One Long Funeral March’: A Revisionist’s View of the Mormon Handcart Disasters,” Journal of Mormon History, Dec. 2009, 58–71.
5 “There were 30 children”: Roberts, Devil’s Gate, 103–104.
6 “And thus has been”: Bagley, “‘One Long Funeral March,’” 76.
7 “They expect to get cold”: Bagley, “‘One Long Funeral March,’” 76–84, 89, 92, 111.
8 “those twin relics”: Republican party platform, June 18, 1856, Papers of the Presidents.
9 “despotism of Brigham Young”: Arrington, Brigham Young, 230.
10 “If the government dare”: Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1991 ed.), 138–139.
11 The decision to massacre the emigrants: The best recent account is Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2008).
CHAPTER 37: ONCE WE WERE HAPPY
1 “I am a Lakota”: Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told through John G. Neihardt (Flaming Arrow) by Nicholas Black Elk (2000 ed.), 6–9. This edition addresses the controversy surrounding Black Elk’s famous memoir, including matters of translation and interpretation. Similar questions touch most memoirs. The present author judges the book no less reliable than many of those.
2 The biggest game included mammoths: A recent argument for climate change as the principal cause of the mammoth extinction is Eske Willerslev, John Davison, Mari Moora, Martin Zobel, Eric Coissac, Mary E. Edwards, Eline D. Lorenzen, et al., “Fifty Thousand Years of Arctic Vegetation and Megafaunal Diet,” Nature 506 (Feb. 6, 2014): 47–51. The case for human causation is in Lewis J. Bartlett, David R. Williams, Graham W. Prescott, Andrew Balmford, Rhys E. Green, Anders Eriksson, Paul J. Valdes, Joy S. Singarayer, and Andrea Manica, “Robustness Despite Uncertainty: Regional Climate Data Reveal the Dominant Role of Humans in Explaining Global Extinctions of Late Quaternary Megafauna,” Ecography 39, no. 2 (2015): 152–161.
3 Whether hunting or changing climate: On the extinction of American horses (and mammoths), see Andrew R. Solow, David L. Roberts, and Karen M. Robbirt, “On the Pleistocene Extinctions of Alaskan Mammoths and Horses,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, no. 19 (May 9, 2006): 7351–7353.
4 The first horses acquired: On the spread of horses, Francis Haines, “Where Did the Plains Indians Get Their Horses?” American Anthropologist, n.s., 40, no. 1 (Jan.–Mar. 1938): 112–117.
5 “If you have horses”: Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (2003), 307.
6 “The Sioux tribes are those who hunt most”: Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of American History 65 (1978): 322.
7 the Sioux population quintupled: White, “Winning of the West,” 329–330.
8 “The day is not far off”: Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1837–1838 (1838), 69.
9 “These lands once belonged”: Mike Sajna, Crazy Horse: The Life Behind the Legend (2000), 77.
10 “What shall I do”: Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970), 79.
11 “Kill all the Indians”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 83, 90.
12 “I saw five squaws”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 89–90.
13 “I did not see a body”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 89–90.
14 “The white men have crowded”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 130.
15 “A single company of regulars”: Sajna, Crazy Horse, 196.
16 “One morning the crier”: Black Elk Speaks, 40–45.
CHAPTER 38: THERE WOULD BE NO SOLDIERS LEFT
1 “pure beggars and poor devils”: Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (1993 ed.), 596.
2 “We must act”: Bain, Empire Express, 311–312.
3 “If you don’t choose”: Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (1895), 1:210–211.
4 “Go ahead in your own way”: Stephen Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (1975), 281.
5 “The only good Indians”: Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (1999 ed.), 180. Sheridan later denied having made the statement.
6 “I looked and saw… under the mother sheo’s”: Black Elk Speaks, 18–29.
7 “When he went into a fight”: Black Elk Speaks, 65–66.
8 “abominable compact”: Sajna, Crazy Horse, 251.
9 “STRUCK IT AT LAST”: Donald Jackson, Custer’s Gold: The United States Cavalry Expedition of 1874 (1972 ed.), 89.
10 “If anything happens… and got his scalp”: Black Elk Speaks, 82–85.
11 “Hoka hey,” the war chief cried: Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, 401.
12 “We could not see much… into his forehead”: Black Elk Speaks, 95–96.
CHAPTER 39: ADOBE WALLS
1 “I regard Custer’s massacre”: New York Herald, Sept. 2, 1876.
2 “anyone who wants to fight me” Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (1952), 4.
3 “He makes but an awkward figure”: Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 47–49.
4 Quanah Parker: The most gripping account of Quanah Parker is S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (2010). Another good one is Bill Neely, The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker (1995). On the Comanches generally, see T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People (1974), and Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706–1875 (1996).
5 “When I told them”: Seth Hathaway, “The Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter,” Frontier Times, Dec. 1931, reprinted in Randolph B. Campbell, ed., Texas History Documents (1997), 2:8–12.
6 “Nothing of interest occurred”: Hathaway, “Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter.”
7 The buffalo had been under pressure: The best account is Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (2000). But see also Dan Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850,” Journal of American History 73, no. 2 (Sept. 1991): 465–485.
8 “Those white men can’t shoot you”: Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Bad Medicine and Good: Tales of the Kiowas (1962), 179.
9 “We charged pretty fast”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 266.
10 “It was each man for himself… of their medicine”: Hathaway, “Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter.”
11 “The buffalo hunters were too much”: W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (1969 ed.), 191.
12 “All the boys went out”: Hathaway, “Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter.”
CHAPTER 40: LOST RIVER
1 “General, we can make peace quick”: Jeff C. Riddle, The Indian History of the Modoc War (1914), 64–67. This memoir draws on Jeff Riddle’s memories, those of his mother and father, and some official documents. Whether the conversations he quotes verbatim, forty years after the fact, are precisely accurate is open to question. But no more so than is the case with many memoirs. And they doubtless capture the essence of what was said.
2 “I for one”: Riddle, Indian History of the Modoc War, 69–72.
3 “Do not go”: A. B. Meacham, Wigwam and War-Path (1875), 467–470.
4 “If you kill all these soldiers… The soldiers are coming”: Riddle, Indian History of the Modoc War, 90–97; Meacham, Wigwam and War-Path, 482–500.
5 “All the Modocs are involved”: E
yewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865–1890: The Army and the Indian, edited by Peter Cozzens (2005), 113; Perry D. Jamieson, Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865–1899 (1994), 32.
CHAPTER 41: THE PRIDE OF YOUNG JOSEPH
1 “The Nez Percé comes into history”: New York Times, Oct. 15, 1877.
2 “There was no stain”: Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs,” North American Review 128, no. 269 (Apr. 1879): 415–429.
3 “They stole a great many horses”: Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs.”
4 “Why do you sit here”: Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs.”
5 “It is cold”: Elliott West, The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story (2011), 282–292. This book, the most thorough account of the Nez Perce war and its context, raises questions about the verbatim authenticity of the surrender speech. But the gist of Joseph’s remarks is certainly accurate, and this version was the one that was repeated in newspapers all around the country. The most recent account of the Nez Perce war is Daniel J. Sharfstein, Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War (2017).
CHAPTER 42: ABILENE
1 No image in American history: An intriguing explanation of the power of the cowboy image is in Larry McMurtry, “Take My Saddle from the Wall,” Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 1, 1968.
2 “In short, it was to establish… toward completion”: Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest (1874), 40–51.
3 “The ordinary trail-herd… over the prairie”: “The Old Cattle Trails,” in Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States (1904), 1:532–534.
4 “Corn bread, mast-fed bacon… and death”: McCoy, Historic Sketches, 10–13, 138.
5 The most famous of all the gunfights: Paula Mitchell Marks, And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight (1989). On the nature and incidence of gunfights, an encyclopedist of the form has concluded, perhaps ruefully, “If showdown duels were the only legitimate gunfights, this would be a very short book.” Bill O’Neal, Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters (1979), 3.
6 “At frontier towns where are centered… and tenderest memory”: McCoy, Historic Sketches, 120–121, 138–141.
CHAPTER 43: HARD LESSON
1 “Dear Brother”: James S. Brisbin, The Beef Bonanza, or How to Get Rich on the Plains (1881), 59–70.
2 “Sixteenth Street”: Ernest Staples Osgood, The Day of the Cattleman (1929), 96.
3 “Cowboys don’t have as soft a time”: Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, 229.
CHAPTER 44: INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN
1 “Long ago, there was a great”: Report of J. W. Powell: Exploration of the Colorado River of the West (1875), 7. The classic account of the life and feats of Powell is Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (1954). More recent is Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (2001).
2 “The good people of Green River City”: Report of J. W. Powell, 8–25.
3 “We start up a gulch”: Report of J. W. Powell, 33–34.
4 “We pass through a region”: Report of J. W. Powell, 46, 58, 76–100.
5 “We glide rapidly along the foot”: Report of J. W. Powell, 100–102.
CHAPTER 45: THE ARID REGION
1 “The redemption”: J. W. Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region (1879 ed.), vii–31.
2 “The landscapes of the Santa Clara Valley… the magnificent dome-head”: John Muir, The Yosemite (1912), 4, 8–9, 21–22, 65–66, 77–78, 87, 131–132.
3 “public use, resort, and recreation”: Act of June 30, 1864 (13 Stat., 325).
4 “The intelligent American”: “The Wonders of the West II—More About the Yellowstone,” Scribners’ Monthly, Feb. 1872, 388–396.
5 “The entire area”: Remarks by Congressman Dunnell on H.R. 764, in Preliminary Report of the United States Geological Survey of Montana and Portions of Adjacent Territories, by F. V. Hayden (1872), 163–164.
6 “It is important to do something”: Jay Cooke, in Richard A. Bartlett, Nature’s Yellowstone (1989 ed.), 207–208.
7 “The effect of this measure… in the world”: Aubrey L. Haines, Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment (1974), 127–128.
CHAPTER 46: MORE LIKE US
1 Geronimo, the last of the holdouts: Robert M. Utley tells the Geronimo story in Geronimo (2012).
2 “We destroyed everything”: Recollection by Jacob Wilks, in Frank N. Schubert, Voices of the Buffalo Soldiers (2003), 42.
3 “The officers say”: Frances M. A. Roe, Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871–1888 (1981 ed.), 65.
4 “This is the best arranged… to enlist”: “The Comanches and the Peace Policy,” The Nation, Oct. 30, 1873. An alternative, or complementary, explanation for the label “buffalo soldiers” is given by William H. Leckie, who contends that it connoted respect—the same kind of respect the Plains Indians felt for the buffalo. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (1967), 26.
5 “I immediately attacked”: Stance to B. M. Custer, May 26, 1870, in Schubert, Voices of the Buffalo Soldiers, 36–37.
6 “domestic dependent nations”: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Peters) 1 (1831).
7 “If they remain”: Jackson’s annual message, Dec. 8, 1829, Papers of the Presidents.
8 Dawes Severalty Act: Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887–1934 (1991), 1–18; Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (2005), 257–290.
9 “The preparations for the settlement… have just begun”: William Willard Howard, “The Rush to Oklahoma,” Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1889.
CHAPTER 47: IT GREW VERY COLD
1 “I was frightened”: Black Elk Speaks, 108.
2 “There were more people… dance with them”: Black Elk Speaks, 178–183.
3 “They would not stop… to run away”: Black Elk Speaks, 191–201.
CHAPTER 48: LESS CORN AND MORE HELL
1 “Stand at Cumberland Gap”: Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of Frontier in American History,” in Turner, The Frontier in American History (1921), 12, 37–38.
2 “The hot winds burned up”: The Populist Mind, edited by Norman Pollack (1967), 34–35.
3 “Take a man”: The Populist Mind, 3–4.
4 “Wall Street owns the country”: John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party (1931), 160.
5 “What’s the matter with Kansas?”: William Allen White, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” in The Autobiography of William Allen White (1946), 280–283.
6 “Having behind us”: William Jennings Bryan, Selections, edited by Ray Ginger (1967), 46.
CHAPTER 49: BONANZA
1 “When the river crosses”: William Allen White, “The Business of a Wheat Farm,” Scribner’s Magazine, Nov. 1897, 531–548.
CHAPTER 50: ROUGH RIDING
1 “Have you and Theodore”: Brands, TR, 327.
2 “He had served in General Miles’s… unmoved equanimity”: Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1899), 7–31.
3 “The men can go in… ever was in battle”: Brands, TR, 342–343.
4 “Yesterday we struck… like a guidon”: Brands, TR, 349, 356.
5 “The Mauser bullets”: Roosevelt, Rough Riders, 120.
6 “The man in command… great day of my life”: Brands, TR, 357.
CHAPTER 51: WEST TAKES EAST
1 “If Colonel Roosevelt is nominated”: Brands, TR, 364, 397.
2 “That damned cowboy”: H. H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents (1923), 101.
CHAPTER 52: CASHING IN
1 “Some of these pages… hero without wings”: Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902), vi–ix, 4.
2 “the Cowmen and boys”: Andy Adams, The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days (1903), dedication page, 381–382.
3 “No gift”: Roosevelt, Rough Riders, 318, 320.
4 Harper’s called him… “Cowboys are cash with me”: Peggy and Harold Samuels, Remington: The Complete Prints (1990), 33.
CHAPTER 53: JOHN MUIR’S LAST STAND
1 “Forest protection”: Roosevelt, annual message, Dec. 3, 1901, Papers of the Presidents.
2 “I do not want anyone”: Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (2003 ed.), 290.
3 “John Muir met me”: Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (1913), 347–349.
4 “These temple destroyers”: Muir, The Yosemite, 261–262.
CHAPTER 54: THE LONG, LONG TRAIL
1 “A people’s dream died there”: Black Elk Speaks, 207.