The novel
A forgotten war. A river that remembers.
In the summer of 1858 the Rose-Baley wagon train, the first emigrant party on Beale's Wagon Road, reached the Colorado River crossing, and the Aha Macav warriors who guarded it. What followed was a conflict between a sovereign Indigenous nation and the United States Army, fought across a landscape so vast and brutal that the men on both sides could barely survive it.
Built from Army dispatches, emigrant journals and Mojave accounts, the novel follows the consequences of that summer across eighty years: from the silence before the first arrow to the fort on the bluff, and the boarding school where children were taught to forget the word for river.
The river side
Cairook, the war leader who guided American surveyors up his river and understood what their map lines meant before anyone else did.The road side
Emigrant families, soldiers and Washington officials who were handed a problem and told to produce an answer.
Aug 30, 1858The attack at the river camp near Beale's Crossing
600+Soldiers Hoffman marched up the river in April 1859
Apr 19, 1859Camp Colorado planted; named Fort Mojave Apr 28
June 21, 1859Cairook dies at Fort Yuma helping others escape
