Crazy Horse, war chief of the Oglala Sioux said: "We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home...gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here. You are taking my land from me. You are killing off our game...Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting...We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did..."

Wagon trains of settlers looking for a better life: men, women, children, livestock—flowed into the western plains of the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Native Americans watched and even helped this first trickle of whites, fought brief skirmishes with the next, then, as the flow became a flood, the skirmishes became an all-out fight for Indian survival, a fight destined to be lost.

Here is the story of those unhappy years, told by a master story-teller and historian. There are the struggles of the Cheyenne, the Sioux and the Nez Perce of the plains: Custer, Fetterman, Sherman, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and all the others. And the story of the desert wilderness battles with the Apaches, such as Cochise and Geronimo, whose knowledge of survival in the hostile terrain in the end wasn't enough. This is a story of courage and heroism, stupidity and cowardice, a story of desperation and bitterness for both Indians and Cavalry.

From the dust jacket