Wakara's America - by Max Perry Mueller (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The Native American leader Wakara (ca. 1815-1855) was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West, famed as a fierce warrior, a merciless trader of Indian slaves, and history's greatest horse thief. In Wakara's America, historian Max Perry Mueller illuminates Wakara's complex and sometimes paradoxical story, revealing a man who both helped build the settler American West and defended Native sovereignty. Wakara was baptized as a Mormon and allied with Mormon settlers against other Indians to seize large parts of modern-day Utah. Yet a pan-tribal uprising against the Mormons that now bears Wakara's name stalled and even temporarily reversed colonial expansion. Through diplomacy and through violence, Wakara oversaw the establishment of settlements, built new trade routes, and helped create the boundaries that still define the region. Drawing together deep archival research with Native oral histories, archaeology, geology, and ecology, Wakara's America offers an innovative new vision of the history of the American West with Native people at its center. It serves as a powerful testament to Wakara's legacy, which endures in his story, in his tribal descendants, and in their stewardship of their ancestral lands today"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The forgotten life and complex legacies of Wakara, the mighty, once-notorious Native leader whose battles and conquests shaped the American West

"A sobering reassessment of the history of the Great Basin and locates the disruptive and violent influences of colonialism at its center."--Ned Blackhawk, National Book Award-winning author of The Rediscovery of America

The Native American leader Wakara (ca. 1815-1855) was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West, famed as a fierce warrior, a merciless trader of Indian slaves, and history's greatest horse thief.

In Wakara's America, historian Max Perry Mueller illuminates Wakara's complex and sometimes paradoxical story, revealing a man who both helped build the settler American West and defended Native sovereignty. Wakara was baptized a Mormon and allied with Mormon settlers against other Indians to seize large parts of modern-day Utah. Yet a pan-tribal uprising against the Mormons that now bears Wakara's name stalled and even temporarily reversed colonial expansion. Through diplomacy and through violence, Wakara oversaw the establishment of settlements, built new trade routes, and helped create the boundaries that still define the region.

Drawing together deep archival research with Native oral histories, archaeology, geology, and ecology, Wakara's America offers an innovative new vision of the history of the American West with Native people at its center. It serves as a powerful testament to Wakara's legacy, which endures in his story, in his tribal descendants, and in their stewardship of their ancestral lands today.

Review Quotes

"Gripping... an eye-opening and layered new vision of the American West."--Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Deeply researched... [a] revealing study from a forgotten theater of the war against Native America."--Kirkus

"Wakara was a power to reckon with in western North America. In this eye-opening and engaging work, Max Perry Mueller demonstrates the adaptability and resourcefulness of a Native leader and his people while highlighting the incredibly harsh choices they faced."--Andrés Reséndez, author of The Other Slavery

"With attentive care, Max Perry Mueller has pieced together the chaotic and previously under-studied history of the famous Ute leader, Wakara, whose power both terrified and galvanized Native and non-Native peoples across the West. This book offers a sobering reassessment of the history of the Great Basin and locates the disruptive and violent influences of colonialism at its center."--Ned Blackhawk, National Book Award-winning author of The Rediscovery of America

"The place that is Wakara's America feels vaguely familiar--Utah and its environs--but it turns out to be a different country altogether. Fighting off generations of erasures, Max Perry Mueller blends personal reportage and tautly narrated history to reveal the complex life and legacy of the wide-ranging Ute leader who shaped unfreedom, trade, and settlement across a huge expanse of the American West. Rich in detail and subtle in analysis, Wakara's America is a classic page-turner that grabs a reader and won't let go."--Philip J. Deloria, Harvard University

"A poignant and fascinating history, Wakara's America tells how the great leader Wakara led his Ute people through good times and bad and helped to create the American West."--Kathleen DuVal, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Native Nations

About the Author

Max Perry Mueller is an associate professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is the author of the award-winning Race and the Making of the Mormon People. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the New Republic, and Slate. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.