Author: Sam W. Haynes
“Unsettled Land” by Sam W. Haynes has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West.
As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule.
Unsettled Land reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth. Haynes shows how the lives of ordinary people — white Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and those of African descent — were upended by extraordinary events over twenty-five years.
After the battle of San Jacinto, racial lines snapped taut as the Lone Star state sought to expel Indians, marginalize Mexicans, and tighten its grip on the enslaved.
