The forgotten life and complex legacies of Wakara, the mighty, once-notorious Native leader whose battles and conquests shaped the American West

“A sobering reassessment of the history of the Great Basin and locates the disruptive and violent influences of colonialism at its center.”—Ned Blackhawk, National Book Award–winning author of The Rediscovery of America

The Native American leader Wakara (ca. 1815–1855) was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West, famed as a fierce warrior, a merciless trader of Indian slaves, and history’s greatest horse thief.

In Wakara's America, historian Max Perry Mueller illuminates Wakara’s complex and sometimes paradoxical story, revealing a man who both helped build the settler American West and defended Native sovereignty. Wakara was baptized a Mormon and allied with Mormon settlers against other Indians to seize large parts of modern-day Utah. Yet a pan-tribal uprising against the Mormons that now bears Wakara’s name stalled and even temporarily reversed colonial expansion. Through diplomacy and through violence, Wakara oversaw the establishment of settlements, built new trade routes, and helped create the boundaries that still define the region. 

Drawing together deep archival research with Native oral histories, archaeology, geology, and ecology, Wakara's America offers an innovative new vision of the history of the American West with Native people at its center. It serves as a powerful testament to Wakara’s legacy, which endures in his story, in his tribal descendants, and in their stewardship of their ancestral lands today. 

Finalist for the 2026 Spur Awards • Shortlisted for the 2026 Plutarch Award