In the first week of June 1863, the American nation was as divided as it has ever been.

That division featured two axes, north from south and east from west.

The southern states were divided from southern states in a very literal way.

The Civil War was in its second full year and it showed no signs of stopping or even slowing

down.

It had been tearing apart the southern states where most of the fighting happened.

But that summer, the summer of 1863, the war was creeping north.

Just one month from now, the largest battle ever fought in the western hemisphere, would

rage across fields, ridges and hills outside a small town in southern Pennsylvania called

Gettysburg.

Two thousand miles west of Gettysburg, there was a different type of division.

East and west were divided in a more figurative cultural sense.

The war dominated all aspects of life from about the state of Kansas to the east coast.

But west of Kansas, fighting was minimal and sporadic.

Times were focused on farming or digging for gold.

They were more worried about traversing the seemingly endless miles of wide open space

of the Great Plains region.

And that migration westward, whether it was for farming or gold or religious reasons,

brought white settlers into direct conflict with Native American tribes whose names are

now legendary.

Sue, Cheyenne, Crow, Arapaho, Shishone, Pawnee, Kayawa, Kamanchi, Apache and Nez Perse.

Of the biggest tribes in the west, the Nez Perse were the most isolated.

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