America was not the only place in the world where Western and indigenous peoples were coming into conflict in the late nineteenth century. Little Bighorn–like battles had been or were about to be fought in India, the Middle East, and Africa—most spectacularly, perhaps, at Isandlwana in 1879, when twenty-four thousand Zulus annihilated a British force of more than thirteen hundred men. And yet, there is something different about the American version of colonialism.
