An account of one woman's life in the West during the second half of the nineteenth century from growing up on the Montana mining frontier to her ascent to young womanhood on a farm in southern California.
This wonderful collection--based on oral testimony, diaries, journals, and newspaper accounts--presents an eerie history of the state's legendary mining towns.
An “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe’s long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world.
Vigilante victims, murdered miners, and gunfight ghosts figure prominently in this collection of eerie tales from the Treasure State. From the windswept prairies in the east to the towering mountains of Glacier National Park come a variety of stories and legends, including a phantom cowboy who continues to ride his ghost horse up the staircase of a Fort Benton hotel, figures from a hundred years ago and more who roam the streets of ghost towns Virginia City and Bannack all hours of the night, and long-gone regulars who continue to visit their favorite bars.
Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for twenty-seven creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences in Montana.
Tales of intrigue in this book include unusual unsolved crimes, unidentified flying objects, spine-tingling ghost stories, well-documented sea creature sightings, and more. Based on historic accounts from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Montana Myths and Legends recounts several myths and mysteries from the Big Sky State's past, verifying some tales from multiple accounts and exposing some stories for what may have really occurred. From a haunted prison in Red Lodge to persistent rumors of bigfoot appearances, from whispered descriptions of the "tommyknockers" who help miners in trouble to a famous union organizer found lynched from a bridge in Butte, this selection of fourteen stories from Montana's past explores some of the Treasure State's most compelling mysteries and debunks some of its most famous myths.
"Montana Moments offers historical vignettes on topics ranging from axolotls, archaeology, and epitaphs to tourism and time zones"--Provided by publisher.
Until the early twentieth century, printed invitations to executions issued by lawmen were a vital part of the ritual of death concluding a criminal proceeding in the United States. In this study, Gordon Morris Bakken invites readers to an understanding of the death penalty in America with a collection of essays that trace the history and politics of this highly charged moral, legal, and cultural issue. Bakken has solicited essays from historians, political scientists, and lawyers to ensure a broad treatment of the evolution of American cultural attitudes about crime and capital punishment. Part one of this extensive analysis focuses on politics, legal history, multicultural issues, and the international aspects of the death penalty. Part two offers a regional analysis with essays that put death penalty issues into a geographic and cultural context. Part three focuses on specific states with emphasis on the need to understand capital punishment in terms of state law development, particularly because states determine on whom the death penalty will be imposed. Part four examines the various means of death, from hanging to lethal injection, in state law case studies. And finally, part five focuses on the portrayal of capital punishment in popular culture.