The American West - Dee Brown

Another 3 week book just nearing the end - The American West by Dee Brown
As well as filling my head with facts and stories of Texas, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana it
has a fantastic bibliography - titles referenced include
Triggernometry
Davy Crockett - American Comic Legend
Helldorado
Hot Irons - Heraldry of the Range
Marquis de Mores at War in the Bad Lands
The works of Sitting Bull
Lead and Likker
Let 'er Buck - a story of the passing of the old west
Last of the Bad men - Tom Horn
The Ghost-Dance religion
A Lone star bo peep and other tales of texan ranch life
And of course a number of biographiies including Billy the Kid by Pat Garrett and the book on Wyatt Earp by Stuart Lake. Then the autobiographies such as Them was the days by Owen P White and
Gun Smoke by Sarah Grace Bakarich - published in Tombstone in 1947

wouldnt it be great browse them all.

particularly poignant were the chapters on the Sioux and Cheyenne wars. The book is full of detailed maps of the battles leading up to little big horn, the river crossings and movement of the tribes as the buffalo were slaughtered. Two weeks ago it was the tribal leaders - Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Crazy in the Lodge, Red Cloud, Swift Bear, Spotted Tail. Dull Knife, Captain Jack of the Modocs and the great Joseph of the Nez Perces. LAst week it was the Goodnight-Loving ranchers in Texas, setting up the giant cattle empires and spreading northwards. culminating in the Billy the Kid Legend in 1881. Today i read about the Blizzard Winter in Montana at the end of 1886. Montana Ranchers had already evolved into Stuart's Stranglers, a vigilante group set up in 1884. Then after the devastation of the herds in the winter the feuding between Cattle ranchers and rustling homesteaders that culminated in the Johnson County War

So only about 40 pages to go including the life of Geronimo. - who died only in 1909. Wyatt Earp survived him until 1929. So much evocative history sprawling across the landscape of the States from 1850 to 1900.
Hope others can follow and try this ramble across the wild west with me