"Fast-paced and highly absorbing." --Wall Street Journal
A magisterial new history of the fierce final chapter of the "Indian
Wars," told through the lives of the two most legendary and
consequential American Indian leaders, who led Sioux resistance and
triumphed at the Battle of Little Bighorn
True West magazine's "Best Nonfiction Book of the Year"
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic, their significance
in American history undeniable. Together, these two Lakota chiefs, one a
fabled warrior and the other a revered holy man, crushed George
Armstrong Custer's vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Yet their legendary victory
at the Little Big Horn has overshadowed the rest of their rich and
complex lives. Now, based on years of research and drawing on a wealth
of previously ignored primary sources, award-winning author Mark Lee
Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle, thrillingly told, of these
extraordinary Indigenous leaders.
Both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were born and grew to manhood on the
High Plains of the American West, in an era when vast herds of buffalo
covered the earth, and when their nomadic people could move freely,
following the buffalo and lording their fighting prowess over rival
Indian nations. But as idyllic as this life seemed to be, neither man
had known a time without whites. Fur traders and government explorers
were the first to penetrate Sioux lands, but they were soon followed by
a flood of white intruders: Oregon-California Trail travelers, gold
seekers, railroad men, settlers, town builders--and Bluecoats. The
buffalo population plummeted, disease spread by the white man decimated
villages, and conflicts with the interlopers increased.
On June 25, 1876, in the valley of the Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse and
Sitting Bull, and the warriors who were inspired to follow them, fought
the last stand of the Sioux, a fierce and proud nation that had ruled
the Great Plains for decades. It was their greatest victory, but it was
also the beginning of the end for their treasured and sacred way of
life. And in the years to come, both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull,
defiant to the end, would meet violent--and eerily similar--fates.
An essential new addition to the canon of Indigenous American history
and literature of the West, The Earth Is All That Lasts is a grand
saga, both triumphant and tragic, of two fascinating and heroic leaders
struggling to maintain the freedom of their people against impossible
odds.
A Denver Post Bestseller
A Spur Award Finalist, Best Western Historical Nonfiction
