Bringing together Custer, Sherman, Grant, and other fascinating
military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as
Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, this "sweeping work of
narrative history" (San Francisco Chronicle) is the fullest account to
date of how the West was won--and lost.
After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades,
permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America.
Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly
intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to
fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier
soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and
describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized
with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic
events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre
campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant
of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host
of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native
leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and
the warriors they led.
The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles
and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they
paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.
