The Terrible Indian Wars of the West: A History From the Whitman Massacre to Wounded Knee, 1846–1890, by Jerry Keenan

Mescalero Apaches at Fort Stanton

(Wild West) Give Wild West contributor Jerry Keenan credit for this ambitious undertaking: a 492-page, single-volume narrative history of the trans-Mississippi Indian wars. Eliminating intertribal wars and focusing on white-Indian conflicts beginning in 1846—although he touches on the 1823 Arikara war and several skirmishes before Texas’ annexation into the Union—Keenan relies on secondary (and scattered primary) sources to chronicle “how these wars became part of the terrible legacy of our westward expansion.” Continued