Wakara's America

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Deeply researched... [a] revealing study from a forgotten theater of the war against Native America.”—Kirkus

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