While the Eastern US frequently steals the military history limelight, it was the vast Pacific Northwest that witnessed the last confrontation between Great Britain and the United States, where Chief Joseph tried to secure independence for the Nez Perce, and where the Oregon Trail marked the first great migration route. Not to mention attacks on the mainland by the Japanese during World War II. Beginning with the earliest recorded accounts of wars among the American Indians, Nelson describes early European contact, including British trappers of the Hudson Bay Company, whose fur trading led to the Pig War, and the long bitter battles between whites and American Indians, through the little-known Mexican Punitive Expedition, World War I, and finally World War II, where the region fought Japanese submarine attacks and was harassed by balloon bombs.