John G. Neihardt

The second volume of A Cycle of the West, dealing with the tragic defeat of the Plains Indians, includes The Song of the Indian Wars (1925) and The Song of the Messiah (1935). The former tells of "the period of migration and the last great fight for the bison pastures between the invading white race and the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Arapahoe," while the latter concerns "the conquered people and the worldly end of the last great dream." It closes with the battle of Wounded Knee, ending Indian resistance on the Plains.

Regarded by many as Dr. Neihardt's masterwork, the cycle as a whole "celebrates the great mood of courage that was developed west of the Missouri River in the nineteenth-century." The first volume in this two-volume edition of A Cycle of the West includes The Song of Three Friends (1919), which received the National Prize of the Poetry Society of America, The Song of Jed Smith (1941). The first two songs, in the poet's words, "deal with the ascent of the river and characteristic adventures of Ashley-Henry men in the country of the upper Missouri and the Yellowstone. The Song of Jed Smith follows the first band of Americans through South Pass to the Great Salt Lake, the first band of Americans to reach Spanish California by an overland trail."

With the publication of The Splendid Wayfaring in 1920, John G. Neihardt sought to restore the reputation of a mountain man who went far in opening up the American West. The exciting narrative begins in 1822, when Smith ascended the Missouri River in the first fur-trading expedition of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, and ends in 1831, when he was killed by Comanche Indians on the Cimarron River. In the intervening years Smith became the first explorer to recognize South Pass as the gateway to the Far West, the first overlander to reach California and travel up the coast to the Columbia River, and the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin from west to east. The Splendid Wayfaring follows in novelistic detail the history-making adventures of Smith and his companions.