The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation

by Mark Lee Gardner

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"A magisterial dual biography of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, revealing in groundbreaking new detail the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders, who triumphed at the Battle of Little Big Horn and led Sioux resistance in the fierce final chapter of the "Indian Wars. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic, their significance in American history undeniable. Together, these two Lakota chiefs, one a fabled warrior and the other a revered holy man, crushed show more George Armstrong Custer's vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Yet their legendary victory at the Little Big Horn has overshadowed the rest of their rich and complex lives. Now, based on years of research and drawing on a wealth of previously ignored primary sources, award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle, thrillingly told, of these extraordinary Indigenous leaders. Both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were born and grew to manhood on the High Plains of the American West, in an era when vast herds of buffalo covered the earth, and when their nomadic people could move freely, following the buffalo and lording their fighting prowess over rival Indian nations. But as idyllic as this life seemed to be, neither man had known a time without whites. Fur traders and government explorers were the first to penetrate Sioux lands, but they were soon followed by a flood of white intruders: Oregon-California Trail travelers, gold seekers, railroad men, settlers, town builders--and Bluecoats. The buffalo population plummeted, disease spread by the white man decimated villages, and conflicts with the interlopers increased. On June 25, 1876, in the valley of the Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and the warriors who were inspired to follow them, fought the last stand of the Sioux, a fierce and proud nation that had ruled the Great Plains for decades. It was their greatest victory, but it was also the beginning of the end for their treasured and sacred way of life. And in the years to come, both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, defiant to the end, would meet violent--and eerily similar--fates. An essential new addition to the canon of Indigenous American history and literature of the West, The Earth Is All That Lasts is a grand saga, both triumphant and tragic, of two fascinating and heroic leaders struggling to maintain the freedom of their people against impossible odds."--Book jacket. show less

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P. 48, items left along wagon trail. P. 393 Euro-Americans, who displaced the Plai. Indians held themselves up as “civilized.”

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20+ Works 982 Members
Mark Lee Gardner is the award-winning author of Rough Riders, To Hell on a Fast Horse, and Shot All to Hell.

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Genres
History, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir
DDC/MDS
978.0049752History & geographyHistory of North AmericaWestern United StatesEthnic And National GroupsGreat Plains TribesDakota, Lakota, And Nakota
LCC
E83.876 .G355History of the United StatesAmericaIndians of North AmericaIndian wars
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