The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America [B1363]

2012 PB in nice clean condition. Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Kluger brings to life a bloody clash between Native Americans and white settlers in the 1850s Pacific Northwest. After he was appointed the first governor of the state of Washington, Isaac Ingalls Stevens had one goal: to persuade the Indians of the Puget Sound region to leave their ancestral lands for inhospitable reservations. But Stevens's program--marked by threat and misrepresentation--outraged the Nisqually tribe and its chief, Leschi, sparking the native resistance movement. Tragically, Leschi's resistance unwittingly turned his tribe and himself into victims of the governor's relentless wrath. The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek is a riveting chronicle of how violence and rebellion grew out of frontier oppression and injustice.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Loved this. Great insight into Washingtons early history. Wasn't expecting the deep dive on Gov Stevens, which was very informative."; ""I've read a couple of books regarding the Indian Wars in the southern Puget Sound region, and none has even come within ten miles of this book! The author has delved into every little bit of potential source material, and tells a complete story from all sides without any noticeable bias. All of the main characters in the history, whether Indian or white settler, politician or soldier, is fleshed out with good and bad aspects, and their possible motivations for dong what they did explored as much as the evidence will allow."; "Excellent history of the Nisqually tribe here in Washington state. While the general storyline is quite well known--white pioneers take over ancestral land, claiming it as their own, push out the tribes after a hardly-legal proceeding, and though they get angry and protest in various ways - nothing really changes and the land and the wealth stays in white hands. It turns out I have an additional, personal link to the Nisqually tribe: I was born on land that was theirs. Fort Lewis was part of the original land granted to the Nisqually in the crappy (to put it mildly) treaty of Medicine Creek. But when the U.S. government wanted--NEEDED--that land in WWII to train their troops, some renegotiations began and the land was 'purchased'/seized. Among other things, Madigan Hospital was built, and that's where I was born. An unexpected personal connection, and one I am glad to know."; "This history of Leschi and Governor Stevens only covers the ten years around when Washington first became a territory in the early 1850's. Despite the short window of history this is an excellent job of both writing and research. It is easily the best history book centered on Washington - territory or state - that I have read."