Acknowledgments: Adventures in the land of the dead -- Introduction: The geography of Empire in 1804. St. Louis ; Michilimackinac ; Santa Fe ; The Pacific Coast ; Family stories ; "Died single" ; Why fur and why families? ; Sources and definitions ; Maps and signposts -- pt. 1. Replacing a state: the continental web of family trade. Families and fur: the personal world of the early American West. The Chouteau family and the Missouri River world ; "Middle ground" or "Native ground" ; "Tough love" and family loyalty ; on the trail of wealth and opportunity ; The Sublette brothers and their family business ; Chasing fortune and family ; Americans in Mexico, Californios in America ; Dangerous places -- Fort Vancouver's families: the custom of the country. Cogs in the fur trade ; The local and global communities of the Columbia ; The Métis world of John McLoughlin ; The tentacles of international trade ; The McLoughlins and the Company ; Life and work on the Columbia ; Global ambitions ; The fine mesh of the family network ; Immigrants, nations, and the loss of a family empire ; Murder at Fort Stikine and suicide in California -- Three Western places: regional communities and Vecinidad. William Bent's border world ; Bent's Fort and its neighborhood ; Omens and weddings ; Norteños and Yanquis in Alta California ; Captain Sutter's New Helvetia ; Dinner and diplomacy in northern California ; Portents of change ; Stephen Austin's border world ; Planting colonies in Texas ; Austin's fractious neighborhood -- pt. 2. Americans all: the mixed world of Indian Country. The early West: the many faces of Indian Country. Cherokee, Shawnee, and Osage ; The view from Fort Osage ; The view from St. Louis ; Change, loss, and warfare on the Missouri ; The Arikara War ; Métis and half-breed in an Anglo-west -- Empires in transition: Indian Country at midcentury, 1825-1860. Counting Indians ; Expanding power ; The Santa Fe Trail ; Native nations and Texas Revolution ; Retrenchment and resistance ; The Osages and accommodation on the Arkansas ; Good Fathers and the fur trade ; Captivity tales and epidemic disease -- pt. 3. From nations to nation: imposing a state 1840-1865. Unintended consequences: families, nations, and the Mexican War. What if Guadalupe Boggs married Teresina Carson? ; Questions of citizenship and identity ; Joseph Smith and the origins of Mormonism ; Mexican revolutions ; Continental rumor factories ; The Bent family and the vagaries of war ; Bent's choice ; Brigham Young and the choices of war ; Hard choices in California ; The McLoughlins' choice -- Border wars: disorder and disaster in the 1850s. The evolving fur trade world ; Postwar family and business on the Arkansas ; Indian wars in the Pacific northwest ; Oregon's bloody legacy ; The failure of warfare and Washington's Native Nations ; Nation building in the southwest ; Raising families and fighting wars -- The state and its handmaidens: imposing order. Civil threats and the Mormons ; The personal politics of polygamy and theocracy ; The almost war and the massacre in Utah ; Conquest and chaos in California ; A nation of squatters ; While Kansas bled and native people fled ; The pesky details of popular sovereignty ; A national horror show ; The Minnesota uprising of 1862 -- Sand Creek and the Bent family nightmare -- Epilogue: How it all turned out. Sonoma ; Los Angeles ; Taos ; The Arkansas River ; Oregon ; St. Louis ; Kawsmouth.