In a Barren Land: The American Indian Quest for Cultural Survival, 1607 to the Present - Paperback

by Paula M. Marks (Author)

Award-winning historian Paula Mitchell Marks reconfirms her status as one of the foremost contemporary chroniclers of the American West with this often appalling, yet always engrossing, account of American Indian cultures under siege from 1607 to the present. In a dazzling synthesis of the latest research with masterful storytelling, Marks portrays the systematic dispossession of America's original inhabitants over centuries of broken promises and bloody persecutions. Well-known events and personalities -- the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Trail of Tears, Geronimo, to name a few -- are juxtaposed with lesser-known but equally pivotal episodes such as the Navajos' Long Walk, the Snake Indian resistance, and more.

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With In a Barren Land, award-winning historian Paula Mitchell Marks reconfirms her status as one of the foremost contemporary chronicles of America and the American West. Following her And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight ("should come to be regarded as definitive" -- Booklist) and Precious Dust ("far and away our best social history of the gold rush experience" -- The Washington Post Book World), she now tells the often appalling yet always engrossing story of American Indian cultures under siege from 1607 to the present.

Marks dramatically illustrates how, across the nation over the course of nearly four centuries, America's original inhabitants were stripped of both their land and their way of life by a series of broken promises and bloody persecutions. Here are such well-known events as the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Trail of Tears, and the massacre at Wounded Knee. And here, too, are such equally well-known personalities as Chief Joseph, Geronimo, Cochise, and Andrew Jackson, a president whose perfidies to the Indians still retain the power to shock and dismay.

In a Barren Land is an enduring contribution to the endlessly fascinating and controversial story of the settling of America.