Résultats de recherche de titre
Articles 61 à 80 sur 83
The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America
Par James L. Swanson. 2024
From the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt (now an Apple TV+ series) and in the tradition of Empire…
of the Summer Moon comes a spellbinding account of a forgotten chapter in American history: the deadly confrontation between natives and colonists in Massachusetts in 1704 and the tragic saga that unfolded.Once it was one of the most infamous events in early American history. Today, it has been nearly forgotten. In an obscure, two-hundred-year-old museum in a little town in western Massachusetts there stands what once was the most revered relic from the history of early New England: the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre of 1704. This impregnable barricade—known to early Americans as &“The Old Indian Door&”—constructed from double-thick planks of Massachusetts oak and studded with hand-wrought iron nails to repel the tomahawk blades wielded by several attacking Native tribes, is the sole surviving artifact from one of the most dramatic moments in colonial American history: In the leap year of 1704, on the cold, snowy night of February 29, hundreds of Indians and their French allies swept down on an isolated frontier outpost to slaughter or capture its inhabitants. The sacking of Deerfield led to one of the greatest sagas of survival, sacrifice, family, and faith ever told in North America. One hundred and twelve survivors, including their fearless minister, the Reverend John Williams, were captured and forced to march three hundred miles north into enemy territory in Canada. Any captive who faltered or became too weak to continue the journey—including Williams&’s own wife—fell under the tomahawk or war club. Survivors of the march willed themselves to live and endured captivity. Ransomed by the royal governor of Massachusetts, the captives later returned home to Deerfield, rebuilt their town and, for the rest of their lives, told the incredible tale. The memoir of Rev. Williams, The Redeemed Captive, published soon after his liberation, became one of the first bestselling books in American history and remains a literary classic. The Old Indian Door is a touchstone that conjures up one of the most dramatic and inspiring stories of colonial America—and now, at last, this legendary event is brought to vivid life by popular historian James Swanson.Colonial Mississippi: A Borrowed Land (Heritage of Mississippi Series)
Par Christian Pinnen, Charles Weeks. 2021
Colonial Mississippi: A Borrowed Land offers the first composite of histories from the entire colonial period in the land now…
called Mississippi. Christian Pinnen and Charles Weeks reveal stories spanning over three hundred years and featuring a diverse array of individuals and peoples from America, Europe, and Africa. The authors focus on the encounters among these peoples, good and bad, and the lasting impacts on the region.The eighteenth century receives much-deserved attention from Pinnen and Weeks as they focus on the trials and tribulations of Mississippi as a colony, especially along the Gulf Coast and in the Natchez country. The authors tell the story of a land borrowed from its original inhabitants and never returned. They make clear how a remarkable diversity characterized the state throughout its early history.Early encounters and initial contacts involved primarily Native Americans and Spaniards in the first half of the sixteenth century following the expeditions of Columbus and others to the large region of the Gulf of Mexico. More sustained interaction began with the arrival of the French to the region and the establishment of a French post on Biloxi Bay at the end of the seventeenth century. Such exchanges continued through the eighteenth century with the British, and then again the Spanish until the creation of the territory of Mississippi in 1798 and then two states, Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819. Though readers may know the bare bones of this history, the dates, and names, this is the first book to reveal the complexity of the story in full, to dig deep into a varied and complicated tale.The Choctaw before Removal
Par Carolyn Keller Reeves. 1985
With essays by William Brescia Jr., Robert B. Ferguson, Patricia K. Galloway, John D. W. Guice, Grayson Noley, Carolyn Keller…
Reeves, Margaret Zehmer Searcy, and Samuel J. WellsThis book focuses upon Choctaw history prior to 1830, when the tribe forfeited territorial claims and was removed from native lands in Mississippi. The included essays emphasize Choctaw anthropology, beliefs, and experience with the US government prior to the tribe's removal to Oklahoma. Attention is focused upon the ways in which European groups, frontiersmen, and state and federal officials affected the Choctaw ideology. This collection shows the relationship among the various forces that combined to erode the culture, economy, and political structure of the Choctaw.Mississippi's American Indians (Heritage of Mississippi Series)
Par James F. Barnett Jr.. 2012
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is…
home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. In Mississippi's American Indians, author James F. Barnett Jr. explores the historical forces and processes that led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state's native peoples. The book begins with a chapter on Mississippi's approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer societies through the powerful mound building civilizations encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw-French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi's pro-French tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi's remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and removal. Despite the intense pressures of European invasion, the Mississippi tribes survived by adapting and contributing to their rapidly evolving world.American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment (Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series)
Par Jason Edward Black. 2015
Jason Edward Black examines the ways the US government’s rhetoric and American Indian responses contributed to the policies of Native–US…
relations throughout the nineteenth century’s removal and allotment eras. Black shows how these discourses together constructed the perception of the US government and of American Indian communities. Such interactions—though certainly not equal—illustrated the hybrid nature of Native–US rhetoric in the nineteenth century. Both governmental, colonizing discourse and indigenous, decolonizing discourse shaped arguments, constructions of identity, and rhetoric in the colonial relationship.American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment demonstrates how American Indians decolonized dominant rhetoric through impeding removal and allotment policies. By turning around the US government’s narrative and inventing their own tactics, American Indian communities helped restyle their own identities as well as the government’s. During the first third of the twentieth century, American Indians lobbied for the successful passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and the Indian New Deal of 1934, changing the relationship once again.In the end, Native communities were granted increased rhetorical power through decolonization, though the US government retained an undeniable colonial influence through its territorial management of Natives. The Indian Citizenship Act and the Indian New Deal—as the conclusion of this book indicates—are emblematic of the prevalence of the duality of US citizenship that fused American Indians to the nation yet segregated them on reservations. This duality of inclusion and exclusion grew incrementally and persists now, as a lasting effect of nineteenth-century Native–US rhetorical relations.Contributions by Allison Margaret Bigelow, Denise I. Bossy, Alejandra Dubcovsky, Alexandre Dubé, Kathleen DuVal, Jonathan Eacott, Travis Glasson, Christopher Morris,…
Robert Olwell, Joshua Piker, and Joseph P. Ward European Empires in the American South examines the process of European expansion into a region that has come to be known as the American South. After Europeans began to cross the Atlantic with confidence, they interacted for three hundred years with one another, with the native people of the region, and with enslaved Africans in ways that made the South a significant arena of imperial ambition. As such, it was one of several similarly contested regions around the Atlantic basin. Without claiming that the South was unique during the colonial era, these essays make clear the region’s integral importance for anyone seeking to shed new light on the long-term process of global social, cultural, and economic integration. This volume includes essays on all three imperial powers, Spain, Britain, and France, and their imperial projects in the American South. While the consequences of Indian encounters with European invaders have long remained a principal feature of historical research, this volume advances and expands knowledge of Native Americans in the South amid the Atlantic World.La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley
Par Patricia K. Galloway. 1982
To most people it probably seems that La Salle and his men, permanently fixed in the pantheon of explorers of…
the North American continent, need little further introduction. The fact is that this whole early period of exploration and colonization by the French in the southeastern United States has received far less scholarly attention than the corresponding English and Spanish activities in the same area, and even the existing scholarship has failed to focus clearly upon the Indian tribes whose attitudes toward the European new comers were crucial to their very survival. In this collection of essays marking the tricentennial of René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's 1682 expedition into the Lower Mississippi Valley, thirteen scholars from a variety of disciplines assess his legacy and the significance of French colonialism in the Southeast. These scholars in the fields of French colonial history and the ethnohistory of the Indians of the Louisiana Colony deal with a diversity of topics ranging from La Salle's expedition itself and its place in the context of New World colonialism in general to the interaction of French settlers with native Indian tribes.Old Southwest to Old South: Mississippi, 1798-1840 (Heritage of Mississippi Series)
Par Mike Bunn, Clay Williams. 2023
Mississippi’s foundational epoch—in which the state literally took shape—has for too long remained overlooked and shrouded in misunderstanding. Yet the…
years between 1798, when the Mississippi Territory was created, and 1840, when the maturing state came into its own as arguably the heart of the antebellum South, was one of remarkable transformation. Beginning as a Native American homeland subject to contested claims by European colonial powers, the state became a thoroughly American entity in the span of little more than a generation. In Old Southwest to Old South: Mississippi, 1798–1840, authors Mike Bunn and Clay Williams tell the story of Mississippi’s founding era in a sweeping narrative that gives these crucial years the attention they deserve.Several key themes, addressing how and why the state developed as it did, rise to the forefront in the book’s pages. These include a veritable list of the major issues in Mississippi history: a sudden influx of American settlers, the harsh saga of Removal, the pivotal role of the institution of slavery, and the consequences of heavy reliance on cotton production. The book bears witness to Mississippi’s birth as the twentieth state in the Union, and it introduces a cast of colorful characters and events that demand further attention from those interested in the state’s past. A story of relevance to all Mississippians, Old Southwest to Old South explains how Mississippi’s early development shaped the state and continues to define it today.Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization
Par Robert A. Williams Jr.. 2012
From one of the world's leading experts on Native American law and indigenous peoples' human rights comes an original and…
striking intellectual history of the tribe and Western civilization that sheds new light on how we understand ourselves and our contemporary society. Throughout the centuries, conquest, war, and unspeakable acts of violence and dispossession have all been justified by citing civilization's opposition to these differences represented by the tribe. Robert Williams, award winning author, legal scholar, and member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe, proposes a wide-ranging reexamination of the history of the Western world, told from the perspective of civilization's war on tribalism as a way of life. Williams shows us how what we thought we knew about the rise of Western civilization over the tribe is in dire need of reappraisal.Where the Salmon Run: The Life And Legacy Of Billy Frank Jr
Par Trova Heffernan. 2012
Billy Frank Jr. was an early participant in the fight for tribal fishing rights during the 1960s. Roughed up, belittled,…
and handcuffed on the riverbank, he emerged as one of the most influential Northwest Indians in modern history. His efforts helped bring about the 1974 ruling by Federal Judge George H. Boldt affirming Northwest tribal fishing rights and allocating half the harvestable catch to them. Today, he continues to support the Indian country and people by working to protect salmon and restore the environment. Where the Salmon Run tells the life story of Billy Frank Jr., from his father's influential tales, through the difficult and contentious days of the Fish Wars, to today. Based on extensive interviews with Billy, his family, close advisors, as well as political allies and former foes, and the holdings of Washington State's cultural institutions, we learn about the man behind the legend, and the people who helped him along the way.Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration: Discovering Histories That Have Futures
Par D. Rae Gould, Holly Herbster, Heather Law Pezzarossi, Steve A. Mrozowski. 2020
Society for American Archaeology Scholarly Book AwardCollaborative archaeological projects focused on the Nipmuc people of New England that offer a…
model for research incorporating Indigenous knowledge and scholarship Highlighting the strong relationship between New England’s Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on indigenous history and culture. The stories traced in this book center around three Nipmuc archaeological sites in Massachusetts—the seventeenth century town of Magunkaquog, the Sarah Boston Farmstead in Hassanamesit Woods, and the Cisco Homestead on the Hassanamisco Reservation. The authors bring together indigenous oral histories, historical documents, and archaeological evidence to show how the Nipmuc people outlasted armed conflict and Christianization efforts instigated by European colonists. Exploring key issues of continuity, authenticity, and identity, Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration provides a model for research projects that seek to incorporate indigenous knowledge and scholarship.In the Land of the Grasshopper Song: Two Women in the Klamath River Indian Country in 1908-09, Second Edition
Par Mary Ellicott Arnold, Mabel Reed. 1957
In 1908 easterners Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed accepted appointments as field matrons in Karuk tribal communities in the…
Klamath and Salmon River country of northern California. In doing so, they joined a handful of white women in a rugged region that retained the frontier mentality of the gold rush some fifty years earlier. Hired to promote the federal government&’s assimilation of American Indians, Arnold and Reed instead found themselves adapting to the world they entered, a complex and contentious territory of Anglo miners and Karuk families. In the Land of the Grasshopper Song, Arnold and Reed&’s account of their experiences, shows their irreverence towards Victorian ideals of womanhood, recounts their respect toward and friendship with Karuks, and offers a rare portrait of women&’s western experiences in this era. Writing with self-deprecating humor, the women recall their misadventures as women &“in a white man&’s country&” and as whites in Indian country. A story about crossing cultural divides, In the Land of the Grasshopper Song also documents Karuk resilience despite seemingly insurmountable odds. New material by Susan Bernardin, André Cramblit, and Terry Supahan provides rich biographical, cultural, and historical contexts for understanding the continuing importance of this story for Karuk people and other readers.Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
Par Kathleen DuVal. 2024
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story…
from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today&“A feat of both scholarship and storytelling.&”—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy RepublicLong before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated.For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent&’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.Ride The Fire
Par Pamela Clare. 2013
Pamela Clare brings her expert plotting, sizzling chemistry and thrilling adventure to a sweeping historical romance, perfect for fans of…
Maya Banks, Monica McCarty and Zoe Archer.Sometimes survival isn't just about staying alive... Widowed and alone on the frontier, Elspeth Stewart will do whatever it takes to protect herself and her unborn child from the dangers of the wilderness and of men. Though her youthful beauty doesn't show it, she is broken and scarred from the way men have treated her. So when a stranger wanders onto Bethie's land, wounded and needing her aid, she takes no risks, tying him to the bed and hiding his weapons before ministering to his injuries.But Bethie's defenses cannot keep Nicholas Kenleigh from breaking down her emotional walls. The scars on his body speak of a violent past, but his gentleness, warmth, and piercing eyes arouse longings in her that she never imagined she had. As Nicholas and Bethie reveal to each other both their hidden desires and their tortured secrets, they discover that riding the flames of their passion might be the key to burning away the nightmare of their pasts.Be swept away by the Pamela Clare's sexy MacKinnon's Rangers in Surrender, Untamed and Defiant. Or take a wildly romantic ride with her I-Team: Extreme Exposure, Hard Evidence, Unlawful Contact, Naked Edge, Breaking Point, Striking Distance, Seduction Game.How Britain Worked
Par Guy Martin. 2012
It is a largely forgotten fact that Britain was the first industrialized country in the world, but Guy Martin -…
the cult motorcycle racer and mechanic - is about to remind us how the industrial revolution helped make Britain great. Guy shows how the discoveries made in the late 18th-19th centuries are to thank for the ease of our every day lives: in order to cook a bacon and egg sandwich in Industrial-era conditions, Guy has to restore a steam locomotive and railway to have the components delivered to the local shop; he has to bring a saw mill back into working order to be able to make a bicycle; he has to revamp a Victorian fishing trawler so he can cook himself some fish and chips, and when he decides to mow the lawn, he restores a Victorian botanical garden. After all that, he's in need of a holiday - so he sets to work restoring a Victorian holiday resort. Illustrated throughout with specially commissioned photography as well as historical images, Guy will take us through each project; his passion, enthusiasm and sheer inventiveness bringing a completely new perspective to the Industrial Revolution. He invites us to live it with him, to enjoy the nostalgia, marvel in the mechanics and learn from its legacy.Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory
Par Rose Miron. 2024
Who has the right to represent Native history? The past several decades have seen a massive shift in debates…
over who owns and has the right to tell Native American history and stories. For centuries, non-Native actors have collected, stolen, sequestered, and gained value from Native stories and documents, human remains, and sacred objects. However, thanks to the work of Native activists, Native history is now increasingly being repatriated back to the control of tribes and communities. Indigenous Archival Activism takes readers into the heart of these debates by tracing one tribe&’s fifty-year fight to recover and rewrite their history. Rose Miron tells the story of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation and their Historical Committee, a group of mostly Mohican women who have been collecting and reorganizing historical materials since 1968. She shows how their work is exemplary of how tribal archives can be used strategically to shift how Native history is accessed, represented, written and, most importantly, controlled. Based on a more than decade-long reciprocal relationship with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, Miron&’s research and writing is shaped primarily by materials found in the tribal archive and ongoing conversations and input from the Stockbridge-Munsee Historical Committee. As a non-Mohican, Miron is careful to consider her own positionality and reflects on what it means for non-Native researchers and institutions to build reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations in the context of academia and public history, offering a model both for tribes undertaking their own reclamation projects and for scholars looking to work with tribes in ethical ways.Sun Bear: The Path of Power
Par Sunbear, Wabun, Barry Weinstock. 1992
In The Path of Power, Sun Bear's life and lessons are told subtly through stories of his experiences—through his teachings,…
readers can discover how to accomplish their goals, survive this time of earth cleansing, and follow their own path of power in life. From a childhood spent in the forest of the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, Sun Bear went on to become one of the most groundbreaking and inspiring spiritual teachers of the late twentieth century. Far ahead of his time, he founded an interracial medicine society of teachers dedicated to sharing with others those lessons of earth harmony which they had learned through their own experience. His vision of the medicine wheel became a worldwide phenomenon that inspired many people to learn more about the earth and all their relations upon her. Almost two decades after his death, Sun Bear's lessons are even more necessary today than ever.Selling Vero Beach: Settler Myths in the Land of the Aís and Seminole (Florida in Focus)
Par Kristalyn Marie Shefveland. 2024
Separating “Old Florida” myths from realities in a tourist haven with a deep Indigenous past Themes of unspoiled paradise tamed…
by progress can be seen in stories about pioneer history across the United States, especially in Florida. Selling Vero Beach explores how settlers from northern states created myths about the Indian River area on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, importing ideas about the region’s Indigenous peoples and marketing the land as an idyllic, fertile place of possibilities. In this book, Kristalyn Shefveland describes how in the Gilded Age, Indian River Farms Company and other boosters painted the region as a wild frontier, conveniently accessible by train via Henry Flagler’s East Coast Railway. Shefveland provides an overview of local Aís and Seminole histories that were rewritten by salespeople, illustrates how agricultural companies used Native peoples as motifs on their fruit products, and includes never-before-published letters between Vero Beach entrepreneur Waldo Sexton and writer Zora Neale Hurston that highlight Sexton’s interest in story-spinning and sales. Selling Vero Beach unpacks real and fabricated pasts, showing how the settler memory of Florida distorted or erased the fascinating actual history of the region. With a wide variety of stories invented to lure investors and tourists, many of which circulate to this day in a place that remains a top vacation destination, Vero Beach is an intriguing example of why and how certain pasts were concocted to sell Florida land and products. A volume in the series Florida in Focus, edited by Andrew K. FrankPretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows
Par Frank B. Linderman. 1932
A rare, documented account of the life of a Crow medicine woman, drawn from interviews conducted by legendary writer and…
ethnographer Frank Bird Linderman and told in her own words.In the spring of 1931, Pretty-shield, a grandmother and medicine healer in the Crow tribe, met Frank Linderman for a series of interviews. When Linderman asked Pretty-shield about her life, the old woman relaxed and laughed. “We shall be here until we die.”In this rich account, Linderman, using sign language and an interpreter, pieces together the story of Pretty-shield’s extraordinary life, from her youth migrating across the High Plains with her people to their forced settlement on the reservation, to how she became a medicine woman. Pretty-shield vividly recalls the centuries-long traditions of the Crow people, bringing into focus the many complex facets of Crow womanhood and the ways in which Indigenous communities care for each other.Pretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows reveals the everyday concerns and deep-rooted customs of tribal life for a new generation coming to terms with the violence and racism of America’s past, and offers a fascinating and authentic portrait of the Crow, their customs and traditions, their relationship to nature and healing, and the timeless insights of their lived experiences. As Pretty-shield reminds us, “Listen to the old ones. . . keep their wisdom within your heart, and understand that wisdom in your mind.”An essential contribution to the American experience, Pretty-shield illuminates a segment of our society which has for too long been relegated to the shadows of history, and celebrates Crow life and its contributions to our rich culture.Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West
Par Michael Punke. 2009
The dramatic history of the extermination and resurrection of the American buffalo, by #1 bestselling author of The Revenant Michael Punke's…
The Last Stand tells the epic story of the American West through the lens of the American bison and the man who saved these icons of the Western landscape.Over the last three decades of the nineteenth century, an American buffalo herd once numbering 30 million animals was reduced to twelve. It was the era of Manifest Destiny, a Gilded Age that treated the West as nothing more than a treasure chest of resources to be dug up or shot down. The buffalo in this world was a commodity, hounded by legions of swashbucklers and unemployed veterans seeking to make their fortunes. Supporting these hide hunters, even buying their ammunition, was the U.S. Army, which considered the eradication of the buffalo essential to victory in its ongoing war on Native Americans.Into that maelstrom rode young George Bird Grinnell. A scientist and a journalist, a hunter and a conservationist, Grinnell would lead the battle to save the buffalo from extinction. Fighting in the pages of magazines, in Washington's halls of power, and in the frozen valleys of Yellowstone, Grinnell and his allies sought to preserve an icon from the grinding appetite of Robber Baron America.Grinnell shared his adventures with some of the greatest and most infamous characters of the American West—from John James Audubon and Buffalo Bill to George Armstrong Custer and Theodore Roosevelt (Grinnell's friend and ally). A strikingly contemporary story, the saga of Grinnell and the buffalo was the first national battle over the environment. Last Stand is the story of the death of the old West and the birth of the new as well as an examination of how the West was really won—through the birth of the conservation movement. It is also the definitive history of the American buffalo, written by a master storyteller of the West.