The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado - Brossura

West, Elliott

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0700610294 ISBN 13: 9780700610297

Casa editrice: Univ Pr of Kansas, 1998

Riassunto

The Contested Plains recounts the rise of the Native American horse culture, white Americans' discovery and pursuit of gold in the Rocky Mountains, and the wrenching changes and bitter conflicts that ensued. After centuries of many peoples fashioning their own cultures on the plains, the Cheyenne and other tribes found in the horse the power to create a heroic way of life that dominated one of the world's great grasslands. Then the discovery of gold challenged that way of life and led finally to the infamous massacre at Sand Creek and the Indian Wars of the late 1860s.
Illuminating both the ancient and more recent history of the plains and eastern Rocky Mountains, West creates a tapestry interlaced with environmental, social, and military history. He treats the "frontier" not as a morally loaded term, either in the traditional celebratory sense or the more recent critical judgment, but as a powerfully unsettling process that shattered an old world. He shows how Indians, goldseekers, haulers, merchants, ranchers, and farmers all contributed to and in turn were consumed by this process, even as the plains themselves were utterly transformed by the clash of cultures and competing visions.

Su questo libro

L'autore

Elliott West is professor of history at the University of Arkansas.

Product Description

Although many books have been written about the Colorado gold rush, this one concentrates on assessing the cataclysmic changes that it brought to the Great Plains. In addition, rather than casting the story in the usual terms of heartless aggressors and hapless victims, it supplies a large and insightful interpretation that at once softens and increases our understanding of the Anglo disruption of Plains Indian cultures. The book's lucid writing and extensive research give meaning to the frontier concept that has been lambasted for 30 years or more. West's story is a story of cultural revisions - and thus the imaginations and aspirations of many people.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Univ Pr of Kansas
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0700610294
• ISBN 13: 9780700610297
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 422