The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 491

Book Reviews

counsel formed three broad strategies to win compensation from the govern-
ment. First, the Chiricahuas pressed forward with a largely unsuccessful attempt
to gain redress for their long and unjust treatment as prisoners of war. Next, the
people of Geronimo, and other Native Americans as well, found greater fortune
when they argued for compensation for the confiscation of their aboriginal
lands. Although the commission decided to award damages far under the total
value of the lost land, the Chiricahuas were able to win a substantial settlement
for the loss of what would become much of present-day Arizona and New
Mexico. Finally, the Indian Claims Commission also awarded several large settle-
ments to the Chiricahuas and other Native Americans for mismanagement of
their reservation lands during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In
the end, it would take the better part of four decades for the federal government
and the Native Americans to reach closure on most of the issues before the
Indian Claims Commission.
Ultimately, the authors are at their best when they analyze the attempts of the
Chiricahua Apaches to seek redress from the Indian Claims Commission and
when they place those struggles into the context of other Native Americans'
efforts for remuneration. Although the book sometimes drifts into an overly
detailed account of the often frustrating and bizarre history of the Indian Claims
Commission, the work is an important addition to the history of federal Indian
policy in the twentieth century.
Datatel, Inc. DANIEL E. CROWE
The American West: The Reader. Edited by Walter Nugent and Martin Ridge.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Pp. xii+335. Acknowledg-
ments, time line, map, general introduction, index. ISBN 0-253-21290-1.
$19.95, paper).
Teachers of the American West history classes at the advanced undergraduate
and graduate levels will welcome this useful and affordable new resource, a col-
lection of seventeen scholarly essays well-suited either to supplementing a stan-
dard textbook or serving as the basis for study.
Following a handy three-column time line that lists significant events in North
American and American West history, the book proper begins with a general
introduction-accompanied by a map showing the regional settlement of the
United States. The editors, who are themselves distinguished historians, empha-
size the need for students of history to attend to causes as much as effects. They
then masterfully summarize the changes in the West-from Europeans' first
contact with Native Americans to settlements, economic shifts, and urbaniza-
tion-that have transformed it into such a dominant region and therefore have
made it so worthy of attention.
The Amercan West: The Reader has four main sections: Part I: Defining the West,
Part II: The Eighteenth Century, Part III: The Nineteenth Century, and Part IV:
The Twentieth Century. Throughout the reader, Nugent and Ridge preface
each essay with an insightful overview, accompanied by key questions for further

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