Civil War and the Indian Wars - Softcover

"With several other books to his credit on related Kansas and Western topics, Roy Bird is an excellent fit for Pelican's series of concise, popular histories of the Civil War. His focus is the war in the West during the early 1860s, while the nation's attentions were transfixed on the East. Bird's narrative takes us throughout the trans-Mississippi West to capture some of the most telling incidents of Civil War-era combat and atrocities. Civil War and the Indian Wars is a well-written chronicle that should appeal to a popular audience more familiar with the classic warfare between the Blue and the Gray back East."
--Virgil Dean, editor, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

"Bird brings us an absorbing but often ignored piece of history, one inextricably intertwined with both the saga of the American Indians and the Civil War itself. His account of the Indians' struggle against the encroachment and cruelty of the whites portrays a complex mix of factors, with some tribes siding with the North or South, some seeing the white man's war as an opportunity to attack. Bird has considerable sympathy with the plight of the Indians, doesn't flinch from reporting the savagery on both sides, and writes a worthwhile account."
--Jerri Garretson, publisher, Ravenstone Press

While many know of the major events of the Civil War, few realize that there were also Indian wars fought during that period of strife. This fascinating brief account covers those conflicts, from a prewar incident that sparked an Apache war in Arizona, to the Navajo war in New Mexico, the Sioux uprising in Minnesota, the Indian troops from Indian Territory, and the struggle of the Plains Indians in Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Divided by chapters into the five years of the Civil War, this book reveals how it was a war that impacted everyone in America, including Indians on the frontier.

Roy Bird began his writing career in his senior year in college and has continued for three decades. He writes about the Civil War, the American West, and his beloved native Kansas. He is the author of Pelican's Civil War in Kansas, another popular title in this series. Civil War and the Indian Wars is his fifteenth published book. He lives on a farm south of Topeka, Kansas.