Winter of the Metal People: The Untold Story of America's First Indian War

This historical novel adds for the first time the Indian point of view to the Spanish chronicles about Coronado's expedition in America's first named Indian war.  Coronado's Spaniards and Mexican Indian allies fought the Tiguex War against the Pueblo Indians between present-day Albuquerque and Santa Fe in 1540-42.

The novel follows a young Pueblo warrior who reluctantly takes leadership of his people in a time of crisis, overcoming self-doubt to lead Puebloans in guerilla warfare against the Spaniards.

Praise for Winter of the Metal People and author Dennis Herrick

• "A riveting historical novel of immense scholarship and insight. Dennis Herrick makes the story of the first American Indians in the West to face the military might of European forces as vivid and real as if Coronado's expedition had ridden out of Mexico yesterday. Winter of the Metal People will forever influence your perception of the stunning landscapes and rich culture of the Southwest."--Margaret Coel, author of Killing Custer

• "In Winter of the Metal People Dennis Herrick, journalist and award-winning writer of fiction, offers us a consummately humane novel of the first encounters between Pueblo peoples of the Southwest and a European, African, and Native American expedition led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in the early 1540s. Herrick skillfully brings the Native side of those encounters into vivid focus. We are brought to imagine the complexity and variety of Pueblo reactions as they struggle to come to grips with the foreign presence and how it violently impacts their lives and traditions."--Richard Flint, Historian, author of No Settlement, No Conquest: A History of the Coronado Entrada

• "A vivid historical novel that brings to life the epic winter of 1540-41 as Spanish and Pueblo Indian worlds first collided. Herrick's narrative--driven by extant annals of the Coronado expedition, recent archaeological research, and Pueblo accounts--is the closest we will ever get to standing on a hill above an ancient Pueblo community and witnessing the gritty reality of history. It is a masterful eye opener."--David E. Stuart, Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, author of Prehistoric New Mexico, Anasazi America, and The Ancient Southwest