Bozeman Magazine

Andrew Graybill, Professor and Chair of the William P. Clements Department of History and Co-director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, will talk about his book, "The Red and The White: A Family Saga of the American West." A book signing will follow the lecture. This event is free and open to the public.

In his book, which won the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award, Graybill traces the family history of Montana fur trader Malcolm Clarke and his Piegan Blackfeet bride, Coth-co-co-na, from the mid-nineteenth century, when such mixed marriages proliferated, to the first half of the twentieth century, when Clarke's children and grandchildren often encountered virulent prejudice. At the center of Graybill's history is the virtually unexamined 1870 Marias Massacre, on a par with the more infamous slaughters at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, an episode set in motion by the murder of Malcolm Clarke and in which Clarke's two sons rode with the Second U.S. Cavalry to kill their own blood relatives.

Graybill is a historian of the North American West, with particular interest in expansion, borders, race, violence and the environment, and has written extensively about the history of the Great Plains and Montana. His first book, "Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875-1910," is a comparative study of the two most famous constabularies in the world.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History and Philosophy and the Museum of the Rockies.