Anne F. Hyde signs “Born of Lakes and Plains”

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. This fresh look at the American West centers the lives of Native families of mixed descent and examines their roles in the major events that shaped the frontier, from imperial battles over the fur trade to the slow creep of American authority over the Appalachians. It also looks at how mixed-descent people, who had once occupied a middle ground, came to draw hostility from all sides in the nineteenth century. Their family names are often imprinted on the landscape, but their voices have long been muted in our histories. Anne F. Hyde’s pathbreaking history restores them in full.

Anne F. Hyde is one of the foremost scholars of the North American West and a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West 1800-1860, the winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.