Ebook: Empire of shadows: the epic story of Yellowstone

Prologue: The view from Mount Washburn -- Pathfinders: "A knowledge of these people" 1805-1806 ; The terrible Pahkees 1806 ; All for a beaver hat 1807-1810 ; The Big Knives 1811-1840 ; Bridger's Fort 1840-1850 ; Fakelore 1851 ; Man Picking Up Stones Running 1853-1858 ; Terra incognita 1850-1860 -- Civilizers: Savagery, barbarism, civilization 1860-1862 ; Roads paved with gold 1863 ; A noose pendant 1863-1864 ; Tales of the chief guide 1864-1867 ; The leading men 1865-1867 ; Mission in the snow 1865 ; Call to arms 1866-1867 -- Soldiers: Paths of glory 1860-1868 ; The lost tribes of the Second Cavalry May-July 1869 ; The fort at the end of the world July 1869 ; A death in the family July-August 1869 ; The world of letters and the world of arms September-October 1869 ; Forty-four below December 1869-January 1870 ; A case of mistaken identity December 1869-January 1870 ; Heroes of the hour January-March 1870 -- Explorers: The spoils of war May-August 1870 ; Grand, gloomy, and terrible August 22-29, 1870 ; Nine nights without sleep August 29-September 3, 1870 ; The deep woods September 4-17, 1870 ; Lost and found September-October 1870 ; The professionals 1871 ; The final frontier 1872 ; Northern Pacific 1872 -- Tourists: Temple of the living God 1872-1877 ; The nerve to execute 1874-1876 ; Chief of scouts July-August 1877 ; Full circle August-October 1877 -- Epilogue: The man who invented Wonderland.;In a radical reinterpretation of the 19th-century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history: the passion for exploration, the violence of the Indian Wars, and the "civilizing" of the frontier. Yellowstone, Wyoming, was landscape uninhabited, inaccessible, and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. Black charts its course through the lives of those who sought to lay bare its mysteries: Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman known as "the man who invented Wonderland"; the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero and architect of the Indian Wars, who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the U.S. Cavalry. The exploration of Yellowstone is a quintessentially American story of terrible things done in the name of high ideals and of high ideals realized by dubious means.