The Lakota were among the most powerful Native American tribes, and the Black Hills represented their spiritual center. By the 1870s, the United States argued that they had never lived there at all. During the last millennium, the Lakota Indians made their home in the majestic Black Hills' mountain range, drawing on the Hills' endless bounty for sustenance and mounting its trails to hunt, fish, and undertake vision quests. Yet the arrival of white settlers brought the Lakotas into inexorable conflict with the changing world, at a time when their tribe would produce some of the most famous and important Native Americans in history, including Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and the legendary Crazy Horse. Jeffrey Ostler's powerful history of the Lakotas' struggle captures the heart of the people whose deep relationship with their homeland would compel them to fight for it against overwhelming odds, on battlefields as varied as the Little Bighorn and the United States Supreme Court.
