Blood and Thunder An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides

Between 1846, when President James K. Polk declared war on Mexico, and 1865, when the South was defeated in the civil war, the United States invaded and conquered the West, creating a mighty nation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. How this was accomplished is an epic tale of both shame and glory. Before the West could be settled American armies had to not only defeat the Mexican forces that held territory from Texas to California, but also subdue the dozens of Native American tribes that stood in the way. BLOOD AND THUNDER tells the story of how “Manifest Destiny” was forcibly carried out. No tribe resisted more fiercely than the nomadic Navajo who lorded over huge swaths of desert in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. Their great chieftain Narbona saw the ultimate futility of resisting “The New Men,” as he called the Americans, but he was stupidly killed by an American trooper in an argument over a stolen horse, and the chance for peace was lost. The Navajo were then led by a ferocious warrior named Manuelito, who had witnessed Narbona’s murder and swore vengeance. For twenty years the Americans battled the Navajo, finally defeating them in a brutal siege at Canyon de Chelly and forcing them on a migration known as “The Long Walk.” No novelist could have invented the historic figures in these pages. Kit Carson, the legendary trapper, scout and soldier celebrated in early Western dime-novels (called (Blood and Thunders), stands at the center of Sides’s tale. Carson had a deep respect and affinity for Native Americans (his first wife was Arapaho), yet he saw himself foremost as a patriot, and he ultimately played a critical role in defeating the Navajo nation.