This is an engrossing narrative account which shows the civil war, the indian wars, and western expansion, were all interconnected. The 1860s were truly at times, National Conflict which involve not only the more pleasant south but also the american west. Her primary Source Research involved letters and diaries, military records and oral histories and photographs and maps from that time and nestor i specifically about nine individuals who worked towards it selfdetermination and fight for control of the region. Some of these people are generally well known to us like frontier carson. Others, like wanting to a navajo late weaver who is now, their stories were lost in history until now. And noticing under their stories show the importance of individual actions even in the midst of a larger military conflict. In the book learning start reviewing Library Journals and indeed it is history that keeps the reader turning the pages. Megan cates nelson is a writer and historian living in lincoln and she has written about the civil war from u. S. Western history and American Culture several publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post and the smithsonian magazine. She and her ba in history and literature from Harvard University printed. Dawn and her phd from the university of iowa. She taught at texas tech university, cal state fullerton, harvard and brown and is also the author and trembling earth. Tonight she will talk to us about the three cornered more, tell us how it came to be measure some anecdotes about things she learned during the Research Process and read passenger to an open it up to questions to the audience. Please something of a warm welcome to megan case nelson. [applause]. Megan thank you guys. Thank you for coming out on this drizzly cold dreary night. Before we begin, i would like to acknowledge that we meet here tonight on a Traditional Land of these people. So the threequarter, also story tells the story of the civil war the far west. Most of the action takes place in mexico. It would become arizona during the war. As well as texas and colorado and california. And so this point, you may be asking yourselves, what. What more i have never heard of this. I thought it was about gettysburg. And basically virginia. So i thought the same thing myself when i first started teaching and researching Civil War History 16 years ago. Seems like a very long time. I grew up in colorado. I had never heard that there were civil war battles in new mexico or that colorados borders were really important. To the Union Victory in that theater. In a new idea that so many people were involved at all. And even in colorado, we have put in history, mining history, indian wars a little bit later. And then you know. So, i wanted to find out more about this theater of the war and i wanted to find out why i had never heard of this conflict in all before. Since the things and found out, so between 1861 and 1868, if thats correct year, usually we talk about 61 65. But in Civil War History when you expend the geography, you expand the chronology. The word becomes both broader and longer when you look at it from this place. So between 1861 and 1868, the union, and 80 people struggled to control freedom. In the Union Confederacy wanted the left is gold and its specific ports bring each of them also so part of this really important vision for the future. So that the north was envisioning this empire of labor free labor. Creative slavery, from coasttocoast in the west was pivotal in the project and the confederacy saw it, their future as empires of slavery also coasttocoast. So they thought they could secure the west and they could jump off from there actually move south. And invade mexico and this sort of hemispheric empire of slavery and caribbean and latin america. And the apache nomos been living in the southwest for hundreds of years saw this as an invasion of their territories. And by the union and confederacy saw these indigenous groups as obstacles. Obviously to their attempt to control the west and the views and region of this national future. Soy also learned that after the union, so definitely the mexico territory from confederate agency in spring of 1862, they turned to the seven enemies and hard Work Campaign against them. So with this meant is that at the same time, and the union was fighting this for to emancipate enslaved men and women in the east, providing more to discriminate or remove native people in the west. I figured all of those things out method that was a really kind of an interesting aspect of the war the people had not ever thought about. And then i figured out some things about why i never heard about this before. First thing the civil war, the feel of the civil war, really focuses on the east. On virginia and also focuses on eastern battlefield and politics. And of course their extraordinary important but what that means is that rarely do we kind of move outside of that kind of area. Im also, in the tradition in Civil War History referring to the trans mississippi west was see where we the ball of shiloh in tennessee in general and all this area around the mississippi river. Called the west. So that is a problem right. What terms of use. When we consider west of the westbury like it seems impossible. Also if you open up any kind of war history ac map in there. And you see the war, usually in this ride railed the 100th meridian in fact if you if you have the book, you can flip to the frontier wouldve included a map, this and it is the and at that one meridian. It is actually right in the middle of this twopage map. If you and then there, youre actively erasing 40 percent of the nations landmass. You are literally erasing it from the story of the civil war. So is really important to me when i was talking to schuster about the book production from ice and want to map in here first thing. That is the entire continent that you see all of the territories as the western territories and states that the work. They were organized, since the beginning of the work and you also see the homelands of the apaches. On this map kind of layered with three kind of different layers of the map. And it is a continental map to the pacific. Also what is interesting when i found out when i went on my Research Trip is that even though the size of the civil war and the southwest are really well preserved and everywhere because if you go to virginia and youre trying to find Better Things in important areas, usually under a parking lot. First of all. There is not a kind of intensive suburban or urbanization, and large areas of the southwest so whats happened is a lot of these sites that you will read about in the more are actually there. It is just there are very far apart. And theyre run by all different kinds of federal agencies and are not particularly will find and most, in the southwest for first culture. For its adobe architecture, ratio on colitis, they are not going for Civil War History so theres a great example of this, if you go to santa fe plaza. Right in the middle of the plazas outlet. As a memorial to the Union Soldiers fought in the war and again as it says over the confederates and the savages. As all protest around that monument where it says savages. I found really interesting that everyone ignores it. I went around and talk to people about it. You noted this. He said no. Theyll just kind of Walking Around and nursing shops all around so no real idea. Starting and calling your attention to that were history. And you actually read about it. John clark in the book, took part in the fundraising for that memorial in 1866. The positive self, is actually created as a civil war site because it was built by Union Soldiers. And when their officers put them to work, otherwise they would just start harassing around. With of officers had been built, the type of thing. You would never know that though. It is not noted. For various reasons, and through various mechanisms, the history of the war has really been sometimes erased or forgotten and sometimes just kind of not even mentioned. So doing this research, heisel found that the civil west was full of different groups. The story its this massive story, you really want to tell it in a traditionally academic way, an argument driven kind of thematically oriented way. Mr. To think about all the different ways i could possibly tell the story. At the time i was reading a lot of novels and one of those novels was game of thrones. This is very surprising, right . [laughter] that i would be reading this novel because im not usually down with the misogynist excessively violent novels. But abwas making me turn the pages. I was devouring this book and i try to figure out why so i went and looked at it and i actually kind of mapped it out i started taking notes on what he was doing and what he was using was actually a form its quite common in literature which is multiperspective narrative. If you go into the book and you look at the table of contents you will see that each of these chapters is named after a person. There are only three that are not and those are the names of battles in which multiple people come together. In each of these chapters you will follow that person kind of through space and time and then you will leave them and go to somebody else and then you will come back to them a little bit later, each person has anywhere from 2 to 3 chapters. Some of them stay for only a short time in new mexico some stay the entire time. One of them dies, i will tell you who, so that you can save it for labor. And be intrigued. I decided to try this approach to bring the reader of the the threecornered war into the civil west through the experiences of 90 for people and they are representing movements of nine different communities. And different war actions. Im not going to introduce them all to you here because that would be overwhelming and probably take to long. I just cannot talk about three of them in particular in order to give you a sense of the books reign. If you have the book with you there is an image insert in the middle if you would like to look at it. The second image here, i can hold this up to you here on the left page, this is John Robert Baylor who i sort of affectionately started referring to as crazy eyes because i think his eyes are very light blue and the photography of the time kind of washes out his eyes. He looks particularly crazed in this picture and is actually holding a sword but it makes it look like hes holding a bowie knife. When i started thinking about this project i knew i wanted to start with baylor. Because i wanted to start with the confederate invasion of new mexico territory and the summer of 1861 and baylor was at the head of that invasion. He was born in kentucky along with several of the people here were born in kentucky including kit carson thats an interesting weird connection. Baylor was born in kentucky he moved to texas in the 1840s he was lord he and his family members were lured by the promise of rich cotton land. And the right to own slaves. He actually is of the family his uncle is the one after harm Baylor University is named. This is a family with a long history in texas. He got married and started a family and over the next 15 years he worked as a farmer and he enslaved men and women with both of those adventures. He was admitted to the texas state legislature. He also became the editor of a newspaper called the white man in 1868. This is sort of the thing that i appreciate about the mid19th century racists, they are very open about it. Theyre just like, organist start the paper and we will be called abit will be called the white man in 1860 he became the editor of this newspaper and they printed a lot of lord pieces about attacks on anglos in texas and they use this to really gin up all this fear about comanches and he was kind of a prototexas ranger and would gather up people and ride out after comanche before the war. When he rode into new mexico he was wearing a belt buckle that said cfa and it was made out of silver he had melted down from a comb he had taken from a comanche warrior. So by the spring of 1861, as you can imagine, you can get the flavor of this, john baylor was really primed to join the Confederate Army in texas texas and success of slavery and secession and the right of white men to rest lands from native people. By all accounts he was extremely charismatic, he was a capable commander he was about six foot three inches which is super tall for someone in this period and an imposing strong guy he was impetuous and ambitious and resentful and all of those characteristic shapes all of those actions in the civil war west in 1851 and 62. You will meet him in chapter 1. He is quite a character. To bring you into this context of the civil war west. The next person she is the last image here when nita who don mentioned interaction actions. When nita was just a teenager when she married manwell ito who is a powerful navajo headman with a very long history of resisting spanish and mexican and american incursions in their homeland. Pretty soon after their wedding the civil war began and readers of the three cornered war will follow when nita as she and manwell ito and their band negotiate with, manipulate, and evade union forces in their homeland and are forced by impending starvation to surrender to the u. S. Army in the fall of 1866. When he does story of the long walks and incarceration at the union army reservation and a place i think we can really think of as a prison camp named bousquet redondo dominates the final part of the book. When nitas wartime experience was one of suffering but also one of persistence and survival. Of all the protagonists, she is i think the heart of the book. She is there from the beginning to the end. Her story really reveals the extent to which the civil war and the west was a three cornered war. The last person i just want to tell you about here was john clark. The picture is in here in the middle on the right hand side of the page. You will not have heard of john clark at all in your life. He was a surveyor, a lawyer, a landowner in illinois when the war began. He was too old he was in his early 40s to shoulder a rifle but he really had hoped to serve the union in other ways. President lincoln, who was a friend of his from their illinois law circuit days appointed him surveyor general of the new mexico territory in the summer of 1861. Clark left his large family in illinois in order to take up his post which he held until 1868. He also was in new mexico pretty consistently for the entirety of the book. He took a couple furloughs and went home at one point he went as he kind of fled santa fe and left and went to dc when the confederates were marching upon the city and went to go report to lincoln and Edwin Stanton and went and visited the General Land Office to whom he reported. He had a dc vacation in the midst of the most intense part of the new mexico conflict. Clark really was the voice of the Lincoln Administration in new mexico territory. A dedicated aba free secessionist and native people. Clark was responsible he not su the Reservation Committee also did a survey of the arizona gold country in 1863 after gold was discovered a little bit north of where the town of prescott is now which is north of phoenix. He went out there to confirm that the gold had actually been discovered and that it was legit mining going on and came back and reported to santa fe citizens and the army that there was gold out there and there were more than a thousand minors already in the mountains and they needed detection and also needed to clear navajos from the area because the road from albuquerque to the gold mines went through navajo territory. The letters kroc clark wrote to his superiors in washington help the Lincoln Administration and the Republican Party envision the conquest of the west. I will say that clark was my Biggest Surprise because i found his diaries, they werent hidden or anything, i just in the metadata that the archivist had put together i knew he was a surveyor general, he knew he had been in santa fe for this period of time and when i called the items it was john clark diary when you go to these Research Trips, you never know what youre gonna get. You never know what that means. Sometimes its like a teeny tiny pocket diary, has pencilings in about what they ate that day or like it rained. But when i got was this enormous box with 27 volumes of diaries in it. Meticulously written page long entries every day talking about the weather, talking about what he did every day, talking about his feelings, talking about going to scances. At night after dinner parties. Just amazing amazing content for the entirety of the war and then when i went to the National Archive all of the letters he wrote to his bosses at the General Land Office, also in super huge box because he wrote very regularly from mexico some of his original maps were there, he did a flat map of santa fe and i truly believe that i was maybe the second person to open those letters ever. They were in pristine condition with all the folds still perfectly they are very crisp, no stains, no marks wear and tear. And often with the wax seal that he had with his jc in it. He was really this kind of amazing person who one of these unusual suspects. You wouldnt really think that a surveyor general would be an important person in the history of the civil war and yet he is. I think you will be interested and intrigued coming to get to know him. Really i think overall looking at the civil war from this really unexpected place, the far west, shows us in couple important things that the civil war was a three cornered war and a couple different ways the conflict took place in the north to the south, and the west, between the union, for confederacy and native people and that these conflict involved and goes to spanos and native soldiers. Those are my three by three element which was very pleasing to me. The three cornered war complicates our notion of the unions war as a just war and it has us understand the war as a continental conflicts. A truly national war that involved all regions and all People Living within sometimes across its borders. I will stop there so that we have more time for questions. Should you have any about the topic or about the Research Process or the writing process, the three athe threecornered war. [applause] picking up on clark, are you inclined to doing more with him about him . Is anybody ever done a whole a the question is about john clark and my tempted to pursue him a little bit more may be right a longer biography of him . I know more about him. I know where he went, he actually left new mexico and was a surveyor general very briefly of utah. He was actually in salt lake when the transcontinental when the golden spike was hammered in. I cant document that he is actually that he was actually at the ceremony but he was nearby. He was obsessed with railroad so i would be surprised if he was there but then he went east and ended up working for a Kansas Railroad company as a lansurveyor and unfortunately died of cancer but when he was older and had this very long and fulfilling career. I think ive done enough of the good biographical work here to scratch that itch and help you get to know him. And those fullscale biographies are a little hard he sort of you want the person and he office he does he has catches a lot of different points. Like when he leaves, spoiler alert, when he leaves in 1868 to go back to dc, he decides hes going to go home but hes gonna drop by dc first so he can attend the impeachment trial of andrew johnson. He is like okay yeah thats gonna be interesting. I dont think i will write a whole different book about him but theres certainly more to learn and certainly more i think that other writers and historians can do with people like this you think of like a government functionary but they actually a really fascinating and have a lot of different roles to play that can be really surprising. Every question based on that, how did you select the a ain your narrative you mustve had a large group should chosen from. Im curious to know how we made that. It was a question about how i chose the nine. So my new he basically singlehandedly decides to invade new mexico territory without orders. He is the one who gets it done. He successfully occupies the a aand forces the surrender of unit troops at abthats in the space of like three or four days. I knew he needed to be in it. Plus once i started reading about him and started read his letters which are at the university of texas i knew i had to write about him because he was just a really complicated deck guy. He loved his wife so much he wrote her love poetry which unfortunately i did not find i sent a plea for the people of texas to check their addicts to see if these still exist is always more interesting to write about really complicated people. I knew i needed people who werent really important moments. Bill davidson who was a texas soldier i figured out he was in every single moment of the sibley campaign. He marched from san antonio to el paso he went up north and fought and build valverde and was at the head of the troops marching northward after that victory foraging because he was assigned to be the lead forger. He was in albuquerque when i took it, he was in santa fe when they took it, he fought in both Apache Canyon and glorieta which were the bigger battles at the end of this campaign. He came back to santa fe and was lurched by louisa camby who was another one of the protagonists. I knew i wanted louisa camby because she was this fascinating viewpoint on the civilian experience of the war. She was an army wife so i thought that was interesting because she went with her husband to almost every single post he held was a professional military man he did, for 20 years she was with him. That enabled me to give back what the army was much before the war and what life was like a neutron tiered errors simply because she was in california in 1850 when it first came in as a state she was in utah during the utah war and in fact one of Brigham Youngs wife wrote a poem and published it in the desert news and it was addressed to basically louisa camby and two other women in the army. The challenge with louisa camby was i only had one letter in her own voice and it was for later in the war. This is one of the ways you choose who to write about, you dont necessarily need to have everything but you need to have something. Because she was married to a pretty senior officer in the u. S. Army, i could track her. I knew where she was. Other soldiers talked about her selected kind of find her in the documents and because she led this effort after the battle glorieta to nurse the soldiers, they wrote about her, they called her the angel of santa fe. The santa fe newspaper printed a piece on her although they were a little skeptical because she was helping the enemy. It was a little dicey. The only problem with louisa was that she seemed too nice. She seems like too nice to be true. I kept trying to figure out angles on her that would give her a little more texture she was also one of the attendees at the scances. She was very interested in contacting the spirits. Which gave her some good context. Really it was a combination of who could i think about in their context that would give me enough sources so i could build their lives for you on the page. But who would also allow me to talk about the Larger Community and their role in it. Great stuff megan, i want to ask the second of the trios you ended with the three by three mentioned anglo indigenous and hispano, can you say a little bit more about the last one in this talk as much about that side. One of the reasons the theater of the war is interesting, theres a lot of different reasons, one is that it had the first multiracial fighting force in the field and this is also big we dont take about when we focus so much on eastern sphere we focus on emancipation proclamation, focused on African Americans soldiering and those biracial armies in the east and native scouts and spies were joining anglo volunteers some of them from colorado, gold miners who been recruited and u. S. Army regulars the professional soldiers that had been there in the west and elected to stay with the union and not leave with the confederacy. This army was really interesting. This is a small army in comparison to the armies of the east, was kind of the fighting forces between 3540 500 on any given day. They were actually very much like the fighting forces of the east and not many of them had any experience doing any of this. But the hispano soldiers were defending their homeland. This is also why its interesting its one of these theories of the war in the spirit with the confederates or the invading force so you see a union force as defensive and they were quite willing to pick up arms and fight for the union not necessarily because they supported the federal government because hispano new mexicans they had only been american citizens for 12 to 13 years. They had it abbut more than anyone, they hated texans. In 1841 texas had invaded new mexico because they believe santa fe was a part of texas. The long legacy of long map reading. They decided to march into new mexico and try to take santa fe and that ended disastrously. They were actually taken prisoner and marched to mexico city and most of them died. New mexicans remember that moment and they were very resentful and leery of any texans trying to march into their territory again. This is actually one of the best judgments that henry sibley made he was in kind of came after baylor with much errors larger force. He assumed the hispano new mexicans would be on his side and the mormons too and he was wrong on both counts. That led to disaster for them, he was counting on them to provide food for his army on march. Hispano soldiers and officers participated in all of the fights not only with the confederacy but also with apaches and navajos. They were reorganized into two groups of the first in mexico and then put in the first california as well to fight apaches in the south and navajos in mescalero apaches and north. Its a really interesting army to study and some militaries historians have done so but theres definitely more work that needs to be done there. The reason kit carson comes into play is that he is the commander in charge of that regiment. I just read the first few chapters and there is an incident where some soldiers are marching and basically they are defeated by dehydration and landscape. Im wondering how much the landscape sort of becomes another character or another factor in all the fighting. Absolutely. Thats a great question. In the desert i think abwas talking to a broadcaster who said he thought it was really the towns protagonist in the book. I think that is true in many ways. If any of you have been to the southwest, if you fly there especially from here, its shocking. You get off the plane its very high elevation, its extremely dry in the distance these soldiers were traveling, even on horseback, they were spending two months or three months out of the road. In west texas the water sources once you got past the pecos river were very few and far between. So there was that army marching and another army marching under James Carlson who is another protagonist from california through the desert from los angeles to tucson also water sources few and far between. Seeing how those armies dealt with that logistically, one of the ways they did it which is interesting as they staggered their companies. So you would only be Going Forward 100 men as a time rather than all 3000 at one time. So if you did get to a waterhole or spring they wouldnt just suck it dry like all at one time, they had to give it time to replenish. Thats one of the things they tried to do to help army survive on the road, carlton, who you will meet, he also has very lightcolored side and a little crazy in this picture too but he was a meticulous type a commander and he oversaw everything about everything his soldiers were doing he made them train and carry all their packs with them. Carry the water with them and he did not lose a Single Person in that march except in an engagement with confederates, a brief one at picacho peak. Simply on the other hand, by the end of that campaign lost 30 of his men. Most of his exposure because they started marching in the fall i think a lot of people a aif you havent been to the desert, it does snow there. It gets very cold at night during the winter. A lot of these you will hear from davidson a lot how wet and cold they are, after that there in a part of the desert with trees they cant start fires. Because how do you . [laughter] the soldiers in this theater are really more vulnerable to the elements then i think in any other theater of the war. There also more reliant on their wagon trains coming with them and this is part of the reason the confederacy lost against ab spoiler alert, in march 1862 the union forces actually commanded by a guy named john slough who was a denver lawyer he had no experience whatsoever he thought a flanking maneuver might work they destroyed the wagon train which was 80 wagons and killed some of their animals and then just also let some of them go. If you dont have a wagon train and you dont have animals to move it either your bodies or some of the rest of the stuff you have left to the desert during this period you are basically dead man walking. They were treated all the way back to san antonio and they did that retreat in the spring of the summer. In fact, jumped off from the rio grande back to san antonio in june and july of 1862. That was the environmental aspects of this theater are really extreme. You see literature and climate impacting them in ways that may be more reminiscent of recent conflicts where soldiers have been fighting in the middle east having those kinds of challenges. They have much more helpful transportation now than wagons and animals. One of the only other interesting tidbits about that is that when sibley first came he had this huge wagon train which they nicknamed mexico because they had mexican drivers, which is one of these sort of weird things. There like wheres mexico coming up . They had these amade out of wood from east texas. Once they started getting into higher areas and drier areas, the wood started to shrink and spit out nails and so there wagons were literally falling apart on the road. And where are they going to get more wagons with a Hostile Group of people who would not help them at all. The environment is working in interesting and challenging ways. Not from both sides but mostly the confederate since they were the invaders. They were mold ron albro of the two armies. This is great. I guess if the environment is the 10th protagonist, my question would be about the potential 11. Was there somebody who broke your heart in the sense that you couldnt include that person or you just didnt have enough. I think that would speak really nicely to these hard choices that historians make all the time when you wish you had something more but didnt work either for methods or the narrative. There are multiple people who could have included. That were on my original list, cochise who was absoninlaw was a major player in this conflict also. I decided to go with Magnus Colorados because he is the more intensive experience with the union army. His interaction with them actually catapults the chair cowers into fullscale war with the union army. Cochise was with him and most of those locations and you will hear about him quite a bit. Hes almost like a best supporting actor kind of role. Youll hear about him but he doesnt become the focus. I wish i could have included more hispanic protagonists. Kit carson because he was the head of the first new mexico was in all of these places and narrating all of these actions and a lot of his officers and many of his soldiers were his panel. We know a fair bit about of them, but with kind of the demands of the storytelling i think it wouldve created a little bit of repetition ab whenever i have the chance. Also used kit carson to talk about because he was married into the hispanic community, his wife prosecco was from a very prominent family from new mexico. Also because of his work as commander of the first new mexico i could bring in all those stories about those soldiers and their experiences and their burrell hood where they were fighting, their motivations. And of course i always wish for more women who are their writing diaries like wheres my john clark about a woman who sort of here and unfortunately, i think we all run into situations where there is a dearth of sources and in this particular period there just wasnt that much material being generated and i would get intriguing little elements work attract people in santa fe they were circulating in this world i would hear about them in john clarks diary or in other places. But i just couldnt put enough of their stories together. They didnt have the advantage of abwhos married to mama lito. She was with him the whole time so i could check her through the entire continent but it was more challenging for other women yet for me to include other women in their but i kept going to the archive and hoping for that kind of eureka moment where you find someone and youre like, yes, yes. This is the person. There are definitely more stories to tell of this region though. I think there are caches of sources. We might not know about now or sort of in our archives but not fully brought in or embedded david and assigned them so we havent found them yet. Thats why really hoping and hoping people will read read the the threecornered war and come away with a better understanding of the wild west and finish it thinking it was a good read. It also i hope that they read it thinking, i wonder what else is out there. Because this is the story primarily of the southwest of the gateway to the larger west but there are so many other communities that are engaged in the war during this time and we need to know more about them. For sure. That was my question about bonita. What forces did you uncover that helped you fill in her story and find her voice . For we need a story i was extremely lucky to have the research of a navajo historian who is one of juanitas defendants. Shes written a book about juanita and matt will lito and has written several articles also about her and her role also there are several navajo historians and oral historians also who have collected stories and stories in particular of women in their roles. I was able, theres a great book about navajo women basically in 19th and 20th Century Society but about living traditionally so i felt like that book, it was by rick rose soul and i felt like that source could give me some good context for her in knowing what would her life be like, domestic tasks which he had been in charge of. Also we need we know was a weaver. Theres a lot of good work out there on nova navajo textiles because they were currency in the southwest. They were very well known for being extremely wellmade, they were watertight so they sold this was one of the trade items for navajos along with enslaved people, interestingly, theres a whole discussion of slavery in new mexico which took a different shape than slavery in east but i was able to talk about that also with we needed because there are stories that, given her name, we need a car she also had a navajo name but she was known as bonita there were stories and suspicions that he may have been a spanish captive who had been enslaved some sort of raid or some sort of rating warfare that and brought into the navajo tribe and absorbed so that allowed me to talk about that aspect of navajo culture and her breathing allowed me to talk about sheep raising and yard weaving and or spinning and then weaving and blankets and dresses and the work that women do to clothe their family and keep it warm along with all the work they do in agriculture and cooking at storytelling also, women are the storytellers of the navajo tribe. So we had some of that, i went to the Navajo Nation museum i saw some area aearly period blankets in the style in which she would have made them. And baskets and other items they wouldve had with them. Also whats interesting about juanita, she along with kit carson, which is ironic, are the most photographed people in this book. The reason for that is that she went with mama lito to washington dc as part of the navajo delegation in 1874. The photograph is from the photograph in here is from that trip although she was also photographed several times at bousquet redondo. I have a lot of these wonderful images with her a lot of them with weaving. You can see the dress shes wearing so i could describe that as well. That i think really and building juanitas story that was the most interdisciplinary of all the biography building because i was using material culture, visual culture, military records to track her and mama lito and oral histories. That had been collected not only by defendants but also the community. Any other questions . One of the things you mentioned is that you hope people come away as this is a good read. I was thinking about how most of us are introduced to the civil war, which is through history textbooks which this phrase has never been said that its a good read. So much of the reason why many of us dont pursue history and to me this idea of bringing people in through multiperspective narratives that can almost read like fiction and be engaging in that way seems like this really radical way to disrupt how traditional history is taught. And how we think of history. I dont know that i have a question except have you thought about the potential for this type of narrative to be a way to bring new students into history or openness filled up to people who dont want to read about dates and this and this but will follow a person . Exactly. Thats my hope, what ive always advocated for but never really got a chance to try until this book, writing about history differently. What are the different ways we can experiment with it because it tends to be so argument driven thematically structured every book looks at it the same even though the arguments are very different. I would love to see any boundary pushing along those lines. But if you think about a project that you want to do in history and how you might write about it i used to do a project with an exercise with my students call the five by five where they had to think about, heres my project, how would i structure it five decoys with five different sections in the first three are pretty easy sort of like ill do it thematically, youll do it chronologically and maybe i will do it like one other way. The fourth and fifth get really interesting. Mike how i might write this backwards or how i might write this is a series of letters to historical actors or how might i do this . This will looks compelling to read about because we have so much fiction thats written in so many different ways. If we look at, i hear a lot from people that if they really do love the civil war, one of things that brought them into it was the ken burns documentary. One of the reasons that so successful not only because its got photographs that he used in a completely innovative way, now they are just like normal, he is named after him. The ken burns effect. Its actually what its called. The reason it was so compelling is that it was about people. He picked out individuals who they followed through the war in those segments of documentary and read their words aloud as if they were speaking to you. One of the things i try to do here is with the quotations a hello with all the diary entries and all the stuff, instead of using that as evidence, which is how we would usually do it as a story and to compile them into evidence and Say Something like, the december was uniquely cold that year and youd have three soldiers saying how cold it was. Instead of that, i have davidson using that quote double quote from his diary but telling someone else. Or actively writing in his diary and saying how horrible it is but depicting it as dialogue instead of just a paragraph full of compiled evidence. I would love to see more history written in different interesting ways. I think we have a lot of really good narrative history think you can write narrative history in different ways and it would just be really cool to see how people could experiment with that. Of course within academic history that would require departments allowing such things for tenure which its like yes, thats can be hard. I do hope that this is assignable for students because one of the things that it is not is exert double. Except for maybe the prologue on the first chapter you cant really take a chapter from the middle and photocopy it for your students and have them read it, it will make no sense. It would be like taking a chapter from the novel in the middle and saying, here, read this. Its like youre in the middle of the action. Youve already learned things about the people, you already know whats happening if you read from beginning. I will be interested to see from my colleagues of mine who are High School Teachers if they are able to assign this book to students in a way where they can read it from beginning to end. I think thats one of our challenges is if people are reading it for class, how do you divvy it up. How do you work it into the syllabus, may be more workable chunks but hopefully for people just reading it at night on their bedstand reading along really hoping that they can devour it like they would a novel. Thank you all so much for coming. [applause]