This study focuses on 10 memoirs from the northern U.S. Rockies. By comparing memoirs representing states that share similar demographic and socio-economic characteristics, this historic and literary analysis reveals both commonalities and divergences among American Western memoirs.

In Understanding James Welch, Ron McFarland offers analysis and critical commentary on the works of the renowned Blackfeet-Gros Ventre writer whose first novel, Winter in the Blood, has become a classic in Native American fiction and whose book of poems, Riding the Earthboy 40, has remained in print since its initial publication in 1971. McFarland offers close readings of Welch's poems and five novels, as well as his volume of nonfiction, Killing Custer, which tells the story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn from a Native American perspective. Demonstrating how Welch wrote each of the...

'Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy'. Generations of readers have now accepted the call of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to join his heroine Evangeline in her search for Gabriel, the lover she was separated from during the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This critical history of the book-length poem describes its reception in the weeks and months that...

Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. Steptoe's escape from encirclement by 1,000 Northern Plateau Indians in 1858 is a familiar story from the Indian Wars. Yet the details of the Battle of Pine Creek (or Tohotonimme) and its aftermath remain subjects of debate. Outnumbered six to one, Steptoe's 164 troops slipped away in the night. Newspapers called it a "disaster." A few weeks later, Colonel George Wright avenged the defeat and Steptoe, who had suffered a stroke months before the battle, lived his final years in relative obscurity in his native Virginia as the Civil War erupted. This definitive...