Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press During the decades from 1820 to 1870, the American frontier expanded two thousand miles across the trans-Mississippi West. In Texas the frontier line expanded only about two hundred miles. The supposedly irresistible European force met nearly immovable Native American resistance, sparking a brutal struggle for possession of Texas’s hills and prairies that continued for decades. During the 1860s, however, the bloodiest decade in the western Indian wars, there were no large-scale battles in Texas between the army and the Indians. Instead, the targets of the Comanches, the Kiowas, and the Apaches were generally the homesteaders out on the Texas frontier, that is, precisely those who should have been on the sidelines. Ironically, it was these noncombatants who bore the brunt of the warfare, suffering far greater losses than the soldiers supposedly there to protect them. It is this story that The Settlers’ War tells for the first time.

At dawn on September 22, 1711, more than 500 Tuscarora, Core, Neuse, Pamlico, Weetock, Machapunga, and Bear River Indian warriors swept down on the unsuspecting European settlers living along the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers of North Carolina. Over the following days, they destroyed hundreds of farms, killed at least 140 men, women, and children, and took about 40 captives. So began the Tuscarora War, North Carolina's bloodiest colonial war and surely one of its most brutal. In his gripping account, David La Vere examines the war through the lens of key players in the conflict, reveals the events that led to it, and traces its far-reaching consequences. La Vere details the innovative fortifications produced by the Tuscaroras, chronicles the colony's new practice of enslaving all captives and selling them out of country, and shows how both sides drew support from forces far outside the colony's borders. In these ways and others, La Vere concludes, this merciless war pointed a new direction in the development of the future state of North Carolina.

On June 3, 1513, ships commanded by Juan Ponce de Leon were attacked by a group of Calusa Indians in one of the first hostile encounters recorded between Europeans and American Indians. Over the next four centuries, fundamental differences would cause these two disparate cultures to clash numerous times with untold loss of life and property. From the 1500s through 1901, this comprehensive reference book details individual armed conflicts between Native Americans and Europeans. Chronologically arranged entries include information such as origin of the European party, Indian tribe involved (if known), location of the skirmish and number of casualties. The establishments of various forts are also given within the chronology. An appendix provides a brief summary of related events after 1901.

The first thorough analysis of Scandinavian Americans, examining citizenship, settler colonialism and whiteness in the Civil War era.

This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the Nez Perce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers' invasion to provoke this most accomodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across 1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles--and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen, officers, politicians, and--at the center of it all--the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, "true people"). The book sheds light on the war's legacy, including the near sainthood that was bestowed upon Chief Joseph, whose speech of surrender, "I will fight no more forever," became as celebrated as the Gettysburg Address. Based on a rich cache of historical documents, from government and military records to contemporary interviews and newspaper reports, The Last Indian War offers a searing portrait of a moment when the American identity--who was and who was not a citizen--was being forged.

From the acclaimed author of Compulsion comes the saga of a Jewish family that flees Russia to become settlers of the nascent state of Israel. Proclaimed “most significant American Jewish writer of his time” by Los Angeles Times, Meyer Levinturns his journalistic eye for character and detail to an epic tale of the founding of Israel. At the turn of the twentieth century, Feigel and Yankel Chaimovitch are among the many Russian Jews caught up in the burgeoning revolution. To escape the pogroms, they flee with their children to their ancient homeland, Eretz Yisroel. Though Eretz Yisroel is a place of unparalleled beauty, these pioneers face innumerable hardships: poverty, disease, grueling physical labor, and violent tensions with their Arab neighbors. There are even conflicts within their own ranks, especially between new arrivals and established settlers. And as World War I escalates, each family member—from second-oldest son Gidon, who struggles through the disastrous Gallipoi campaign, to Leah, who awaits the return of her fickle Moshe—struggles to build their future.