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Hampton Sides' Old West is not the mythical place of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies, of Bonanza and Gunsmoke reruns, or of stagecoaches, saloons, cowboys, cattle drives and gunfighters.
It is much more thrilling.
In Blood and Thunder, his follow-up to the acclaimed World War II history Ghost Soldiers, Sides offers a beautifully written, mesmerizing account of the greatest American story between the Revolution and the Civil War: the quarter-century-long quest to explore the Western lands and build an American empire that would span sea to shining sea.
The core of the story unfolds between 1825 and 1850, but Sides carries it through a coda of the Civil War and concludes in 1868, the year his central character, Christopher "Kit" Carson, departs the scene.
Sides conquers a sprawling saga that would defeat the narrative powers of a less gifted writer. Like Shelby Foote, he has mastered the grand, sweeping style without sacrificing the well-chosen characters, events and minutiae that bring history to life. (Blood and Thunder's grandeur has captured the eye of Steven Spielberg, who just optioned the book for DreamWorks.)
Quickly dismissing the generic stereotype of "Indians," Sides explores the diverse cultures of the Navajo, Arapaho, Comanche, Ute, Kiowa and more, revealing the brutal warfare between enemy tribes in which Native Americans tortured and killed one another as avidly as they did the white invaders.
He captures the hope, exhilaration and fear of the harrowing overland journey, under continuous threat of attack from the climate or natives.
The U.S. Army had to adapt to a new style of fluid warfare involving raids and a game of hide-and-seek played across thousands of square miles in what are now the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and California.
Carson, who personified each stage of Western history, drives the narrative. His multiple lives of hunter, trapper, scout, explorer, Indian fighter and army officer spanned the era from exploration to settlement and made him a symbol of American individualism, savvy and self-reliance.
The paradox? He did not hate Indians, but he was a great killer of them; he adored his Arapaho wife, Singing Grass, but was pivotal in crushing the Navajos and damning them to a soul-killing reservation. Indeed, he blamed the Indian troubles on "aggressions on the part of whites." Sides calls Carson a kind of 19th-century "action figure hero."
Carson shares the stage with unforgettable characters: Stephen Watts Kearny, valiant commander of the Army of the West; President James K. Polk, who lusted for Mexican lands and started a war to seize them; Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, salesman-in-chief for America's Manifest Destiny; John C. Fremont, talented but unscrupulous army officer and explorer; Narbona, legendary Navajo leader; and Susan Magoffin, incomparable teenage pioneer and diarist.
In a great irony, by 1849 Carson had made the West attractive -- and accessible -- to its despoilers. He came to regret the price of the American Empire. By 1868, the Old West of his youth had vanished, giving way to railroads, settlers and speculators.
Carson's plainspoken epitaph for the Indians is heartbreaking: "They once owned all this country yes, Plains and Mountains, buffalo and everything. But now they own next door to nuthin, and will soon be gone." Civilization, Carson mourned, had "encircled them." It could have been his epitaph.
Bedridden, weak and swathed in buffalo robes, Carson knew the end was near. On his last day, he devoured a big buffalo steak, savoring memories of the Old West that, like him, had passed away.
James L. Swanson is the author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer.
Blood and Thunder: An Epic
of the American West
By Hampton Sides
Doubleday, 402 pp., $26.95
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