Fast-paced and highly absorbing. -Wall Street Journal A magisterial new history of the fierce
final chapter of the Indian Wars told through the lives of the two most legendary and
consequential American Indian leaders who led Sioux resistance and triumphed at the Battle of
Little Bighorn True West magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Winner of the Colorado
Book Award Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic their significance in American
history undeniable. Together these two Lakota chiefs one a fabled warrior and the other a
revered holy man crushed George Armstrong Custer's vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Yet their
legendary victory at the Little Big Horn has overshadowed the rest of their rich and complex
lives. Now based on years of research and drawing on a wealth of previously ignored primary
sources award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle thrillingly
told of these extraordinary Indigenous leaders. Both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were born
and grew to manhood on the High Plains of the American West in an era when vast herds of
buffalo covered the earth and when their nomadic people could move freely following the
buffalo and lording their fighting prowess over rival Indian nations. But as idyllic as this
life seemed to be neither man had known a time without whites. Fur traders and government
explorers were the first to penetrate Sioux lands but they were soon followed by a flood of
white intruders: Oregon-California Trail travelers gold seekers railroad men settlers town
builders-and Bluecoats. The buffalo population plummeted disease spread by the white man
decimated villages and conflicts with the interlopers increased. On June 25 1876 in the
valley of the Little Big Horn Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the warriors who were inspired
to follow them fought the last stand of the Sioux a fierce and proud nation that had ruled
the Great Plains for decades. It was their greatest victory but it was also the beginning of
the end for their treasured and sacred way of life. And in the years to come both Crazy Horse
and Sitting Bull defiant to the end would meet violent-and eerily similar-fates. An essential
new addition to the canon of Indigenous American history and literature of the West The Earth
Is All That Lasts is a grand saga both triumphant and tragic of two fascinating and heroic
leaders struggling to maintain the freedom of their people against impossible odds. A Denver
Post Bestseller A Spur Award Finalist Best Western Historical Nonfiction Winner of the John M.
Carroll Literary Award
