Although there is little new in this volume Sides has done an admirable job of illustrating the broad landscape of the 19th-century Southwest. His prose convincingly portrays the historian's concern for accuracy with a pleasing presentation of a huge topic, Western expansion and Manifest Destiny. Sides's main aim is to demonstrate the almost complete decimation of the Navajo nation from the 1820s to the late 1860s. Sides focuses on Kit Carson—an illiterate trapper, soldier and scout who knew the Native Americans first hand, and who married two natives, yet, ultimately collaborated in the Indians' slaughter. The final draw was the doomed defense mounted by the Navajos in 1863 at Canyon de Chelly.
The description of the great Navaho headman, Narbona, should not be missed.
This work will find its rightful place next to Bernard De Voto's magisterial The Year of Decision 1846, the work Sides most closely resembles.
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