Guns, Furs, & Gold

$34.95

Guns, Furs, & Gold – Am American West History of Indigenous Peoples and Explorers

Guns, Furs, and Gold offers a riveting narrative of the American West by exploring the interactions of the Arikara’s, Crow’s, Cheyenne’s, and Arapaho’s with each other and with Euro-American traders, explorers, and settlers from 1804, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on their voyage of discovery, to 1864, when the U.S. Army attacked both Confederate forces in the South and Native nations in the West.

Description

Guns, Furs, & Gold – Am American West History of Indigenous Peoples and Explorers

Larry E. Morris accounts the nineteenth century experience of four different tribes. The Arikara, Crows, Cheyenne’s, and Arapahos. He details their interactions with four legendary survivors of a fight with the Arikara’s in 1823. These renowned figures include the remarkable trailblazer Jedediah Smith, the unparalleled interpreter Edward Rose, the premier guide and Indian agent Thomas Fitzpatrick, and the grizzly-bear-mauling survivor Hugh Glass. Their careers illuminate the fate of four Indian nations, revealing how — despite the best efforts of several explorers to treat the Indigenous peoples respectfully — the guns, furs, disease, and gold rushes of the interlopers put the Indians’ way of life, their lands, and their very lives at grave risk. The sixty-year period comes to a close when more than 150 Plains Indians, most of them women, children, and elderly, were ambushed and slaughtered by Colonel John Chivington’s Third Colorado Cavalry on the banks of the Sand Creek.

ISBN – 978-1-4962-3761-3
297 Pages
Hardback
6 1/2″ x 9 1/4″

The University of Nebraska Press, 2025