Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek A Tragic Clash Between White & Native America

The riveting story of a dramatic confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers, a compelling conflict that unfolded in the newly created Washington Territory from 1853 to 1857.

When appointed Washingtons first governor, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, an ambitious military man turned politician, had one goal: to persuade (peacefully if possible) the Indians of the Puget Sound region to turn over their ancestral lands to the federal government. In return, they were to be consigned to reservations unsuitable for hunting, fishing, or grazing, their traditional means of sustaining life. The result was an outbreak of violence and rebellion, a tragic episode of frontier oppression and injustice.

With his trademark empathy and scholarly acuity, Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Kluger recounts the impact of Stevenss program on the Nisqually tribe, whose chief, Leschi, sparked the native resistance movement. Stevens was determined to succeed at any cost: his hasty treaty negotiations with the Indians, marked by deceit, threat, and misrepresentation, inflamed his opponents. Leschi, resolved to save more than a few patches of his peoples lush homelands, unwittingly turned his tribe—and himself most of all—into victims of the governors relentless wrath. The conflict between these two complicated and driven men—and their supporters—explosively and enormously at odds with each other, was to have echoes far into the future.

Closely considered and eloquently written, The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek is a bold and long-overdue clarification of the historical record of an American tragedy, presenting, through the experiences of one tribe, the history of Native American suffering and injustice.

From Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Kluger, the riveting story of a brutal confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers, a harrowing drama that unfolded in the new, idyllic Washington Territory in 1853.

Washington’s first governor, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, had one goal: to persuade (peacefully if possible) the Indians of the Puget Sound region to turn over their ancestral lands to the government. In return, they were to be consigned to reservations suitable for neither hunting and fishing nor their traditional way of life.

With empathy and scholarly acuity, Kluger recounts the impact of Stevens’s program on the Nisqually tribe, whose chief, Leschi, sparked the native resistance movement. Kluger describes the brief but bloody guerrilla war that ensued and its dire consequences: Leschi became the object of the governor’s vendetta and was eventually condemned to death, a skewing of justice that would threaten the very existence of the Nisqually people.

Closely considered and eloquently written, The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek is a bold and long-overdue clarification of the historical record on an American tragedy that presents, through the experiences of one tribe, the history of Native American suffering and injustice.

Richard Kluger is the author of Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, which won the Pulitzer Prize. His Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality and The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune both were finalists for the National Book Award. He is the author or coauthor of eight novels as well. He lives in Northern California.

www.richardkluger.com