A vivid account of the rivalry between William Henry Harrison and Tecumseh, and the Native American alliance that, in the early 19th century, struggled to prevent the United States from expanding westward and taking over the continent from the New York Times bestselling author of Astoria.

The conquest of the American West through violence and corrupt treaties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed the global balance of power. It was an upheaval on a grand scale, but acclaimed author Peter Stark shows us its fundamental conflicts through the clash between two men—Shawnee chief and warrior Tecumseh and Indiana governor William Henry Harrison.

Harrison, the son of a prominent member of Virginia's founding generation, set out into the western territories with an eye fixed on Indiana statehood. He passed legislation that encouraged individual farmers to move west and compelled Native leaders to enter treaties, often signing away their land. Tecumseh was a warrior and accomplished speaker who for the first time in North American history, inspired Indigenous nations to join a confederacy based on their shared identity as Native Americans in opposition to a common enemy. Eager to stop U.S. expansion, the British backed Tecumseh’s confederacy against the U.S. on the now-forgotten western front of the War of 1812. Leading two powerful forces, Harrison and Tecumseh faced each other in tense diplomatic meetings over Harrison's illegal claims to land and in battles that would determine the future of the North American continent.

Tecumseh, by all accounts, is one of the 19th century's greatest leaders, and his stand against the United States was the last real opportunity to prevent the upstart nation from expanding across the continent and becoming a world power. In this fast-paced narrative, Peter Stark brings this story—with its bloody battles, high-stakes diplomacy, and sharply drawn characters—to life.