Death on the Prairie

Death on the Prairie is a sweeping narrative history of the Indian wars on the western plains that never loses sight of the individual participants. Beginning with the Minnesota Sioux Uprising in 1862, Wellman shifts to conflicts in present-day states Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and the Texas Panhandle, involving, most spectacularly, the Sioux, but also the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Comanches, Kiowas, Utes, and Nez Perces―all being forced out of their hunting grounds by the white settlers with the help of the United States Army. There is never a quiet page as Wellman describes the Sand Creek Massacre (1864), the Fetterman Massacre (1866), the Battle of the Washita (1868), the Battle of Adobe Walls (1874), the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876), the Nez Perce War (1877), the Meeker Massacre (1879), and the tragedy at wounded Knee (1890) that ended the fighting on the plains.