The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America

From Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Kluger, the riveting story of a brutal confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers, a harrowing...more

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.   less