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By Hampton Sides. "Sides, an Outside magazine editor-at-large and bestselling author (Ghost Soldiers),
eloquently paints the landscape and history of the 19th-century
Southwest, combining Larry McMurtry's lyricism with the historian's
attachment to facts. Inevitably, Sides's main focus is the virtual
decimation of the Navajo nation from the 1820s to the late 1860s. Sides
depicts the complex role of whites in the subjugation of the Navajos
through his portrait of Kit Carson—an illiterate trapper, soldier and
scout who knew the Native Americans intimately, married two of them
and, without blinking, participated in the Indians' slaughter. Books
about Carson have been numerous, but Sides is better than most Carson
biographers in setting his exploits against a larger backdrop: the
unstoppable idea of manifest destiny. Of course, as counterpoint to the
progress of Carson and other whites, Sides details the fierce but
doomed defense mounted by the Navajos over long decades. This
culminated in their final, desperate "stand" during 1863 at Canyon de
Chelly, more than a decade after a contingent of federal
troops—operating under a commander whose last name of "Washington"
seems ironic in this context—killed their great leader, Narbona." -- Publishers Weekly.
Softcover
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