The story of the search for and rescue of a scalp hunter's yellow-haired daughter from blood-thirsty, Quetzalcoatl-worshiping "Navajoes" almost gets lost in delirious descriptions of a lush, fantastic American West in this proto-western masterpiece.

Traffic in human scalps was part of the Colonial economy, an activity avidly pursued by Indians, French and English, in New England, New York and Canada.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.

This 2005 book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged against Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US 'special operations' in the War on Terror.