America's Longest War

 

Afghanistan was not America’s longest war, it was the United States' ongoing battles with Native American’s, particularly after the Civil War.  The US government’s war with the western tribes, from the end of the Civil War until the 1890s, was the time and place of our most protracted armed struggles.

The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West by Peter Cozzen does a generally useful job explaining the conflicts.  Both the tribes and the government are painted in shades of gray. I can’t help but think the suffering of the Indians are not highlighted nearly enough here – after all they were on the losing end of a multigenerational genocidal campaign.  Still, to paint them as passive victims would be wrong as well.  They were (and are) human beings with complex motivations.