Product Description

Deftly retracing a pivotal chapter in one of America's most dramatic stories, Elliott West chronicles the struggles, triumphs, and defeats of both Indians and whites as they pursued their clashing dreams of greatness in the heart of the continent.

The Contested Plains recounts the rise of the Native American horse culture, white Americans' discovery and pursuit of gold in the Rocky Mountains, and the wrenching changes and bitter conflicts that ensued. After centuries of many peoples fashioning many cultures on the plains, the Cheyennes and other tribes found in the horse the power to create a heroic way of life that dominated one of the world's great grasslands. Then the discovery of gold challenged that way of life and led finally to the infamous massacre at Sand Creek and the Indian Wars of the late 1860s.

Illuminating both the ancient and more recent history of the plains and eastern Rocky Mountains, West weaves together a brilliant tapestry interlaced with environmental, social, and military history. He treats the "frontier" not as a morally loaded term--either in the traditional celebratory sense or the more recent critical sense--but as a powerfully unsettling process that shattered an old world. He shows how Indians, goldseekers, haulers, merchants, ranchers, and farmers all contributed to and in turn were consumed by this process, even as the plains themselves were uttlerly transformed by the clash of cultures and competing visions.

Exciting and enormously engaging, The Contested Plains is the first book to examine the Colorado gold rush as the key event in the modern transformation of the central great plains. It also exemplifies a kind of history that respects more fully our rich and ambiguous past--a past in which there are many actors but no simple lessons.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59674 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 422 pages

From The Washington Post
"West has harnessed, to powerful effect, the diverse and complex story lines that form the history of the Great Plains. His fusion of ecology and history is remarkable."

Review
"An interpretive masterpiece. West tells a colorful story incredibly well, bringing individual actors to life and giving a sense of the sweep of larger cultural events. This is lively, literate, and at times humorous reading, paired with thoughtful historical interpretations." -- Environmental History

"In a way, Elliot West tells a familiar tale: that of Indians, goldseekers, and the ensuing conflict. But in this case, West is the first to assess the cataclysmic changes that the Colorado gold rush brought to the Great Plains. In addition, rather than casting the story in the usual terms of heartless aggressors and hapless victims, West supplies a large and insightful interpretation that at once softens and increases our understanding of the Anglo disruption of Plains Indian cultures. To understand where western history is now, and is likely to go in the future, one must read this book." -- Glenda Riley, American Historical Review

"Many books have been written about the Colorado gold rush. This one is different. The virtue of the book, besides its lucid writing, splendid design, extensive research, and the meaning it gives to the frontier concept that has been lambasted for thirty years or more, is the fact that it never scolds or trashes any culture. West's story is a story of cultural revisions--and thus the imaginations and aspirations of many people." -- William H. Goetzmann, Journal of American History

"This book will change the way the history of the West is taught and understood forever." -- Publishers Weekly

From the Back Cover
Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, the Pen Center West Award, the Ray Allen Billington Prize, the Caughey Western History Prize, the Western Writers of America Spur Award, and the Caroline Bancroft Prize

"An interpretive triumph, full of fresh insights into well-worn topics. For all-round excellence in the full sweep of the western story, West occupies the pinnacle. A truly fine book."--Robert M. Utley, author of The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull

"In Elliott West's company, the exploration of history becomes an adventure, a journey with surprises and unexpected insights sufficient to shake the most comfortable and settled of assumptions."--Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of Legacy of Conquest

"A haunting history and a wonderful piece of storytelling. Rarely have historical figures been so deeply human, so funny and tragic, as they are in this stunning, clear-eyed and yet deeply empathetic book."--Richard White, author of It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own

Customer Reviews

Over the Rivers and Through the Woods...
This is a truly outstanding work. In a microcosmic study, West has written a new synthesis of Western American history.

Beginning with the the High Plains environment and the resources it provided, West begins with the story of the American Indian tribes who migrated to this area and how the Plains environment affected their society and lifestyle. Then, focusing on the Gold Rush years of 1858 and 1859, he discusses how the mineral resources of the territory attracted the hordes of white settlers to the plains, as well as the nature of the people who came here and the cultural expectations they carried with them.

Finally, he discusses how the Native American and white American cultures clashed with each other and the role the environment played in that conflict. West details the power struggle that took place on the Plains and the reasons for the eventual white triumph.

This book is an important work in the history of the Overland experience of the 19th century. Alongside works such as John Unruh's "The Plains Across" (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), it fills in some important pieces of the puzzle for one of the most crucial periods in the history of American nationbuilding.

Balanced treatment of cultural clashes in Western settlement
Professor West's outstanding book finally brings some balance to the discussion of conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers in the 19th Century American West. Using the Colorado Gold Rush as a singularly transforming event, West has documented both camps' accomplishments and depredations in interesting and impeccable detail. His analysis of the detrimental environmental impacts of Indians and settlers alike on the High Plains' limited resources is brilliant. As a native Coloradoan, I believe that Contested Plains should be mandatory reading for all students of Colorado history. His settings, characters, conflicts and outcomes are more compelling than any fictional account of Western settlement. Contested Plains is an important reminder that Colorado's history was played out in its sparse plains and not in the mountains for which it is best known. Elliot West's book is a triumph and must reading for students of the history of the American West.

Compelling history

Elliott West is an intriguing author and this expansive history of the Plains Indians and the Colorado gold rush is fascinating. He begins by relating the story of the peopling of the central High Plains, how the Spanish-introduced horses thrived on the grasses found there and how the Indians, especially the Cheyenne, made the horses the central aspect of their way of life. He describes next the earliest contacts with Europeans, the early fur trappers and traders along the Santa Fe and other trails. Then he reaches what will be the main thrust of his book: the discovery of gold along Cherry and Dry Creeks near today's Denver by a group of Georgian prospectors in the summer of 1858. Word of their finds reached Kansas City by late August, the rest of the eastern United States by September, and California by October (via the Isthmus of Panama). The rush was on. He tells of the three main river routes open to the gold seekers: the Platte (northern), the Arkansas (southern), and the Smoky Hill (central), the riskiest route because of a shortage of water and deadly weather storms. He explains how the Front Range prospered quickly and towns grew. And he traces how all of this activity devastated the way of life for the Indians, resulting, if not exactly ending, most disgracefully at Sand Creek. The field covered by West's book has been mined often, but rarely with the flair and style he brings to his study. The book combines scholarship and anecdotal reports magnificently, and is a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.