Guns, Furs, and Gold offers a riveting narrative of the American West by exploring the interactions of the Arikaras, Crows, Cheyennes, and Arapahos 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. Larry E. Morris recounts the nineteenth-century experience of these four tribes by detailing their interactions with four legendary survivors of a fight with the Arikaras in 1823. These renowned figures include the remarkable trailblazer blazer 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 Sand Creek.
Larry E. Morris is an independent writer and historian. He is the author of numerous books, including The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition, a History Book Club selection; The Perilous West: Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail; and In the Wake of Lewis and Clark: The Expedition and the Making of Antebellum America.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue Chapter 1. "A Passage to India" From Aristotle to Magellan Chapter 2. "That Wretched Portion of Our Journey" Meriwether Lewis and the Great Divide Chapter 3. "He Draws a Line from His Heart to His Mouth" Eagle Feather, Emissary of the Arikaras Chapter 4. "Mr. Rose Came Running into Camp" The Arikara War Chapter 5. "Captain Smith Had Crossed the Mountains" The Discovery and Rediscovery of South Pass Chapter 6. "A Young Arapaho Indian Named Friday" Encounters with Fitzpatrick and the Elusive Edward Rose Chapter 7. "The Whirlwind Is Coming to Destroy My People!" Indian Nations and the White Man's Fatal Maladies Chapter 8. "Major Fitzpatrick Was a Good Man" Seeking the Road to Redemption Notes Bibliography Index
"Guns, Furs, and Gold presents a well-researched and engaging account of some of the most compelling people and events to tell the often-overlooked early history of the American West at the beginning of a major cultural change."-Clint Gilchrist, executive director of Museum of the Mountain Man "Larry Morris skillfully follows Lewis and Clark, Edward Rose, and Thomas Fitzpatrick as they encounter Indigenous peoples of the Rocky Mountains. His dramatic frontier also shows us Eagle Feather, Grey Eyes, Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, the Sublettes, and more."-Jerry Enzler, author of Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West
