On that day, Narbona was nearing 90, but barely a dozen years before he had led his warriors in the ambush of a large force of Mexican troops as they marched through a narrow canyon, killing perhaps hundreds of the Mexicans.
But now, overlooking the American camp at Santa Fe -- the capital abandoned by the Mexicans barely a month before -- Narbona, writes Sides, realized there was "no point in fighting them, there was nothing to be won." So, "he would make his way back to Navajo country and advocate a permanent peace with the Americans."
That would not come easily . Narbona himself would be killed just three years later when negotiations with an American military-diplomatic expedition turned into a scuffle over horse stealing.
There is much bloodshed and thunder rolling in Sides' account -- the title comes from the dime novels that glorified the exploits of Kit Carson , who is a constant presence, even when off stage.
Born in 1809 in eastern Kentucky, Carson was heading west on the Santa Fe trail by the time he was 16.
By his mid-30s, living and wandering through the West as a fur trapper, as a scout and explorer, writes Sides, Carson "had done everything there was to do in the western wilds." He was "present at the creation," witnessing "the dawn of the American West in all its vividness and brutality."
Sides enlarges his account with fascinating side tracks, such as the discovery , by members of one military expedition, of the magnificent ruins of the vanished Anasazi civilization in Chaco Canyon. Over three days allowed them before the expedition moved on, its surveyor and its artist "worked in a fast fury -- taking measurements, drawing sketches, collecting artifacts." They were, writes Sides, like "boys romping through an enchanted world."
But the story keeps coming back to the Navajo.
They were the most American of the western tribes, writes Sides, "mobile and restless, preferring to spread out as far as possible from one another over large swatches of country."
