Battles of the Red River War

Battles of the Red River War
Author: J. Brett Cruse
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2017-08-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1623491525

Battles of the Red River War unearths a long-buried record of the collision of two cultures. In 1874, U.S. forces led by Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie carried out a surprise attack on several Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa bands that had taken refuge in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas panhandle and destroyed their winter stores and horses. After this devastating loss, many of these Indians returned to their reservations and effectively brought to a close what has come to be known as the Red River War, a campaign carried out by the U.S. Army during 1874 as a result of Indian attacks on white settlers in the region. After this operation, the Southern Plains Indians would never again pose a coherent threat to whites’ expansion and settlement across their ancestral homelands. Until now, the few historians who have undertaken to tell the story of the Red River War have had to rely on the official records of the battles and a handful of extant accounts, letters, and journals of the U.S. Army participants. Starting in 1998, J. Brett Cruse, under the auspices of the Texas Historical Commission, conducted archeological investigations at six battle sites. In the artifacts they unearthed, Cruse and his teams found clues that would both correct and complete the written records and aid understanding of the Indian perspectives on this clash of cultures. Including a chapter on historiography and archival research by Martha Doty Freeman and an analysis of cartridges and bullets by Douglas D. Scott, this rigorously researched and lavishly illustrated work will commend itself to archeologists, military historians and scientists, and students and scholars of the Westward Expansion.

The Red River in Southwestern History

The Red River in Southwestern History
Author: Carl Newton Tyson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2015-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806153822

In The Red River in Southwestern History, Carl Newton Tyson traces the river’s history from the time of early Spanish and French explorers to the present day, leading his readers to a new appreciation of the river and the region. From the Staked Plains of the Texas Panhandle the river flows down to buffalo and prairie dog country and through the Cross Timbers. It continues eastward to the Great Bend and through the cypresses of Louisiana’s bayou country, joining the Mississippi River south of Natchez. Whereas the Red River was a source of water to the Spaniards as they searched for gold, at Natchitoches, French trader Louis Juchereau de St. Denis traded with the Caddo Indians. Conflicts soon developed between French traders and Spaniards in Texas as they competed for land along the Red. Years later, the Red River featured again as part of the settlement in the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty, negotiated by Spanish minister Luis de Onís y Gonzales and U.S. secretary of state John Quincy Adams, which finally brought to an end the western boundary disputes between Spain and the United States lingering since the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. In 1852 Randolph Marcy discovered the source of the Red River—a mountain rivulet cutting a deep canyon through the Staked Plains. Marcy’s testimony in the Greer County border dispute between Oklahoma and Texas was key to the U.S. Supreme Court decision favoring Oklahoma. In the decades between 1930 and 1970, dams were built along the Red by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to control floods, generate electricity, and create lakes for recreation along the Oklahoma-Texas border.

The Red River Bridge War

The Red River Bridge War
Author: Rusty Williams
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2016-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1623494052

Winner, 2017 Oklahoma Book Award, sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book Winner, 2016 Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History, sponsored by the Oklahoma Historical Society At the beginning of America’s Great Depression, Texas and Oklahoma armed up and went to war over a 75-cent toll bridge that connected their states across the Red River. It was a two-week affair marked by the presence of National Guardsmen with field artillery, Texas Rangers with itchy trigger fingers, angry mobs, Model T blockade runners, and even a costumed Native American peace delegation. Traffic backed up for miles, cutting off travel between the states. This conflict entertained newspaper readers nationwide during the summer of 1931, but the Red River Bridge War was a deadly serious affair for many rural Americans at a time when free bridges and passable roads could mean the difference between survival and starvation. The confrontation had national consequences, too: it marked an end to public acceptance of the privately owned ferries, toll bridges, and turnpikes that threatened to strangle American transportation in the automobile age. The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle documents the day-to-day skirmishes of this unlikely conflict between two sovereign states, each struggling to help citizens get goods to market at a time of reduced tax revenue and little federal assistance. It also serves as a cautionary tale, providing historical context to the current trend of re-privatizing our nation’s highway infrastructure.

Red River

Red River
Author: Lalita Tademy
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2006-10-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759571341

Hailed as "powerful," "accomplished," and "spellbinding," Lalita Tademy's first novel Cane River was a New York Times bestseller and the 2001 Oprah Book Club Summer Selection. Now with her evocative, luminous style and painstaking research, she takes her family's story even further, back to a little-chronicled, deliberately-forgotten time...and the struggle of three extraordinary generations of African-American men to forge brutal injustice and shattered promise into a limitless future for their children... For the newly-freed black residents of Colfax, Louisiana, the beginning of Reconstruction promised them the right to vote, own property-and at last control their own lives. Tademy saw a chance to start a school for his children and neighbors. His friend Israel Smith was determined to start a community business and gain economic freedom. But in the space of a day, marauding whites would "take back" Colfax in one of the deadliest cases of racial violence in the South. In the bitter aftermath, Sam and Israel's fight to recover and build their dreams will draw on the best they and their families have to give-and the worst they couldn't have foreseen. Sam's hidden resilience will make him an unexpected leader, even as it puts his conscience and life on the line. Israel finds ironic success-and the bitterest of betrayals. And their greatest challenge will be to pass on to their sons and grandsons a proud heritage never forgotten-and the strength to meet the demands of the past and future in their own unique ways. An unforgettable achievement, a history brought to vibrant life through one of the most memorable families in fiction, Red River is about fathers and sons, husbands and wives-and the hopeful, heartbreaking choices we all must make to claim the legacy that is ours.

The Red River Trails

The Red River Trails
Author: Rhoda R. Gilman
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society
Total Pages: 124
Release: 1979
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780873511339

The many difficulties and occasional rewards of early travel and transportation in Minnesota are highlighted in this book, along with the state's relations with what became western Canada and insights into the development of business in Minnesota. The meeting of Indian and European cultures is vividly manifested by the mixed-blood Mtis who became the mainstay of the Red River trade.

Murder on the Red River

Murder on the Red River
Author: Marcie R. Rendon
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1641293772

One Book, One Minnesota Selection for Summer 2021 Introducing Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman whose visions and grit help solve a brutal murder in this award-winning debut. 1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota: Renee “Cash” Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, who helped her out of the broken foster care system. One Saturday morning, Sheriff Wheaton is called to investigate a pile of rags in a field and finds the body of an Indian man. When Cash dreams about the dead man’s weathered house on the Red Lake Reservation, she knows that’s the place to start looking for answers. Together, Cash and Wheaton work to solve a murder that stretches across cultures in a rural community traumatized by racism, genocide, and oppression.

Southern Counterpart to Lewis & Clark

Southern Counterpart to Lewis & Clark
Author: Dan Louie Flores
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806119410

In 1806 President Thomas Jefferson sent cartographer Thomas Freeman and botanist Peter Custis to explore the southen Louisiana Purchase westward to the Rocky Moutnains. Stopped by a Spanish army in what is today extreme southern Oklahoma, they did not complete their mission. President Jefferson minimized their failure by focusing instead on the success of their northern counterparts Lewis and Clark. Hence the fame of Lewis and Clark and the virtual anonymity of Freeman and Custis-until now, thanks to editor Dan L. Flores. Dan Flores presents the primary documents created by Freeman and Custis during their ill-fated attempt to explore the Louisiana territory and areas west of the Mississippi in 1806.

Red River Reunion

Red River Reunion
Author: John Layne
Publisher: Labrador Publishing, LLC
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780999879672

Red River Reunion is a classic Western Fiction novel set in 1877. Rich in period details about life in the Old West, the story traces the lives of U.S. Deputy Marshal Luxton Danner and Texas Ranger Wes Payne where they risk everything to defend the meek, uphold frontier law, and satisfy their pursuit of doing what no other men can.

The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor

The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor
Author: Theresa A. Case
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2010-02-23
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1603441700

Focusing on a story largely untold until now, Theresa A. Case studies the "Great Southwest Strike of 1886," which pitted entrepreneurial freedom against the freedom of employees to have a collective voice in their workplace. This series of local actions involved a historic labor agreement followed by the most massive sympathy strike the nation had ever seen. It attracted western railroaders across lines of race and skill, contributed to the rise and decline of the first mass industrial union in U.S. history (the Knights of Labor), and brought new levels of federal intervention in railway strikes. Case takes a fresh look at the labor unrest that shook Jay Gould's railroad empire in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois. In Texas towns and cities like Marshall, Dallas, Fort Worth, Palestine, Texarkana, Denison, and Sherman, union recognition was the crucial issue of the day. Case also powerfully portrays the human facets of this strike, reconstructing the story of Martin Irons, a Scottish immigrant who came to adopt the union cause as his own. Irons committed himself wholly to the failed strike of 1886, continuing to urge violence even as courts handed down injunctions protecting the railroads, national union leaders publicly chastised him, the press demonized him, and former strikers began returning to work. Irons’s individual saga is set against the backdrop of social, political, and economic changes that transformed the region in the post–Civil War era. Students, scholars, and general readers interested in railroad, labor, social, or industrial history will not want to be without The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor.