A collection of over 150 vignettes from the journals and diaries of people who lived or traveled in the Old West, these accounts begin with the sixteenth-century collisions between the Spaniards and the Indians and conclude with Black Elk's mournful description of the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. Storytellers include explorers, missionaries, India leaders, a poet, an artist, and a future president.

Cowboy and drifter Frank Clifford lived a lot of lives—and raised a lot of hell—in the first quarter of his life. The number of times he changed his name—Clifford being just one of them—suggests that he often traveled just steps ahead of the law. During the 1870s and 1880s his restless spirit led him all over the Southwest, crossing the paths of many of the era’s most notorious characters, most notably Clay Allison and Billy the Kid. More than just an entertaining and informative narrative of his Wild West adventures, Clifford’s memoir also paints a picture of how ranchers and ordinary folk lived, worked, and stayed alive during those tumultuous years. Written in 1940 and edited and annotated by Frederick Nolan, Deep Trails in the Old West is likely one of the last eyewitness histories of the old West ever to be discovered. As Frank Clifford, the author rode with outlaw Clay Allison’s Colfax County vigilantes, traveled with Charlie Siringo, cowboyed on the Bell Ranch, contended with Apaches, and mined for gold in Hillsboro. In 1880 he was one of the Panhandle cowboys sent into New Mexico to recover cattle stolen by Billy the Kid and his compañeros—and in the process he got to know the Kid dangerously well. In unveiling this work, Nolan faithfully preserves Clifford’s own words, providing helpful annotation without censoring either the author’s strong opinions or his racial biases. For all its roughness, Deep Trails in the Old West is a rich resource of frontier lore, customs, and manners, told by a man who saw the Old West at its wildest—and lived to tell the tale.

Black women were always part of America's westward expansion. Some escaped slavery to live with the Native Americans, while others traveled west after the Civil War to settle the new lands. They came as servants and as independent pioneers struggling to make a life in the wilderness. Brief text and extraordinary photos record many of the black women who went West to find a new life for themselves and their families.

Accounts by eyewitnesses and the outlaws themselves.

Drawing on diaries, private letters, memoirs, and reportage, David Colbert's acclaimed Eyewitness books offer extraordinary first-hand views of history's pivotal moments. Eyewitness to Wall Street's combination of remarkable perspectives and a subject of exceptional current interest results in the richest and most illuminating Eyewitness book yet.From our first IPO -- the European fund-raising that launched America's colonization -- through today's mass obsession with the Dow and Nasdaq, Eyewitness to Wall Street brims with accounts from people who saw it happen -- poets and speculators, patriots and criminals, politicians and reporters -- including Daniel Defoe, Mark Twain, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warren Buffet, and Michael Lewis. It reveals how Wall Street traders saved the Continental Army from bankruptcy and helped finance the Union during the Civil War; how Americans were suckered by the bull market of early 1929 and struggled through the rebuilding of modern Wall Street. More than halfthe book is devoted to the contemporary era, defined by the "greed is good" 1980s, the bull market 1990s, and the dot-com millionaires and infla

In this collection of letters, diaries, interviews, and public writings from people who were "in the right place at the right time," David Colbert gives us a history of the American West, "but not the one we usually encounter and expect" (Dallas Morning News).Spanning 500 years from the Aztecs' first encounter with Spanish conquistadors to the explosion of technology in Silicon Valley today, vivid episodes swirl together, revealing patterns that link early Kentuckians and Asian immigrants, Mormons and black "Buffalo Soldiers," the first Los Angeles smog and an 1811 earthquake that reversed the Mississippi's flow, the Trail of Tears and the Summer of Love, Georgia O'Keefe at Taos, the origin of Levi's, and the eruption of culture in the contemporary Northwest. David Colbert's kaleidoscope of the American experience invites readers to delve into any moment in the history of the West, offering clear themes that will satisfy history buffs, and enough entertaining surprises to delight the casual reader.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses—men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story. When the Civil War ended, black men left the Old South in large numbers to seek a living in the Old West—industrious men resolved to carve out a life for themselves on the wild, roaming plains. Some had experience working cattle from their time as slaves; others simply sought a freedom they had never known before. The lucky travelled on horseback; the rest, by foot. Over dirt roads they went from Alabama and South Carolina to present-day Texas and California up north through Kansas to Montana. The Old West was a land of opportunity for these adventurous wranglers and future rodeo champions. A long overdue testament to the courage and skill of black cowboys, Black Cowboys of the Old West finally gives these courageous men their rightful place in history. Praise for an earlier book by the same author: “Whether you are a history enthusiast or a lover of adventure stories, African American Women of the Old Westpresents the reader with fascinating accounts of ten extraordinary, generally unrecognized, African Americans. Tricia Martineau Wagner takes these remarkable women from the footnotes of history and brings them to life.” —Ed Diaz, President of the Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation