American Trinity
Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West

  • 2018 Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award Winner: First Place Nonfiction
  • 2018 True West Magazine Best of the West Winner: Best Author and Best Nonfiction Book of the Year


  • by Larry Len Peterson

    published by Larry Len Peterson

    produced by Sweetgrass Books
    • American Trinity is for everyone who loves the American West and wants to learn more about the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is a sprawling story with a scholarly approach in method but accessible in manner. In this innovative examination, Dr. Larry Len Peterson explores the origins, development, and consequences of hatred and racism from the time modern humans left Africa 100,000 years ago to the forced placement of Indian children on off-reservation schools far from home in the late 1800s. Along the way, dozens of notable individuals and cultures are profiled. Many historical events turned on the lives of legendary Americans like the "Father of the West," Thomas Jefferson, and the "Son of the West," George Armstrong Custer - two strange companions who shared an unshakable sense of their own skills - as their interpretation of truths motivated them in the winning of the West.

      Dr. Peterson reveals how anti-Indian sentiments were always only obliquely about them. They were victims but not the cause. The Indian was a symbol, not a real person. The politics of hate and racism directed toward them was also experienced in prior centuries by Jews, enslaved Africans, and other Christians. Hatred and racism, when taken into the public domain, are singularly difficult to justify, which is why Europeans and Americans have always sought vindication from the highest sources of authority in their cultures. In the Middle Ages it was religion supplemented later by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In nineteenth-century Europe and America, religion and philosophy were joined by science and medicine to support Manifest Destiny, scientific racism, and social Darwinism, all of which had profound consequences on Native Americans and the Spirit of the West.



    512 pages, 6 x 9 , appendix, Softcover

    softcover
    ISBN 10: 1-159152-306-0
    ISBN 13: 9781591523062
    $26.95


      Presenting research in anthropology, archaeology, biology, history, law, medicine, religion, philosophy, and psychology, Dr. Peterson provides the latest observations that delineate why the Native American's life was destroyed. American Trinity is a stunning portrait, a view at once unique, panoramic, and intimate. It is a fascinating book that will make you think about the differences between belief and knowledge; about the self-skepticism of science and medicine; and about what aspects of the world we take on faith.
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    American Trinity
    Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West

    American Trinity align=



    Larry Len Peterson align= Larry Len Peterson is the recipient of the 2016 C. M. Russell Heritage Award, which recognizes significant contributions in interpreting and documenting the legacy, culture, life, and country of Charles M. Russell's West. He is an award winning scientist, physician, cultural historian, and author. Above all, he is a searcher. Peterson grew up in Plentywood on the Great Plains of northeastern Montana north of Fort Union and next to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

    He graduated from the Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland and completed an internal medicine internship, a residency in the visual field of dermatology, and a NIH research fellowship. He has published in numerous scientific and medical periodicals, including the prestigious The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Peterson is the recipient of The Henry W. Stelwagon Award (College of Physicians of Philadelphia) and The Sommers Research Award (OHSU) for outstanding scientific research, among many others.

    His distinguished biographies include Philip R. Goodwin: America's Sporting and Wildlife Artist; The Call of the Mountains: The Artists of Glacier National Park; L. A. Huffman: Photographer of the American West; Charles M. Russell: Photographing the Legend, A Biography in Words and Pictures; and John Fery: Artist of Glacier National Park & The American West. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, Western History Association, and Little Big Horn Associates.

    He is the recipient of two Western Heritage Awards, the Scriver Award, The High Plains Book Award, and the Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award. Stuart Rosebrook, in True West magazine, selected Dr. Peterson and his Charles M. Russell: Photographing the Legend, A Biography in Words and Pictures in his top five authors and books for 2014 and the best photographic and graphic art book. Dr. Peterson lives with his wife, LeAnne; two Vizsla dogs, Beau and Abby; and two horses, Big Sky and Sunny, on their Spirit of Winter Ranch near Sisters, Oregon, in the shadow of the Three Sisters Mountains—Faith, Hope, and Charity. The aroma of sweetgrass makes him homesick.


    FARCOUNTRY PRESS  ·  P.O. BOX 5630  ·  HELENA, MT  ·  59604  ·  1-800-821-3874  ·  406-422-1263