In Chapter 7 "The Massacre," Buchanan renegotiates the Treaty of Ft. Laramy (so called) and then Frank Skimmerhorn declares martial law, demanding that natives surrender at various points in the region within twenty days, and proceeds to shoot those who did come to surrender, including the Pasquinels, in the back. This is one of the lowest points of American history IMO.

In the conclusion of Chapter 7, in what one of the "Notes to US editors," Michener –writing from the perspective of the journalist– muses about logical disjunctions and iridescence without illumination, and then allows a nice little tidbit of metafiction wherein he criticizes himself twice (once for the character, and once for the author animating the character) for doing the very thing the character was just complaining about.

Chapter 8 becomes a heist story as Poteet assembles a dozen men, about a hundred horses, and a shitton of cattle to make their way through dangerous territory of TX up CO. They bring some 2800 cattle along 1300mi of the most punishing parts of the country and it rules. There's a scene or two which directly mirror the accounts of buffalo hunting from Butcher's Crossing – from having to make their own bullets, to water-cooling their rifles, to picking off the head buffalo in such a way as not to cause a frenzy in the herd.

Michener does not shy away from the uglier parts of the story, including race ranking Mexicans and native Americans as sources of labor, only for them to be discarded by Americans:

Colorado will never merit statehood until we exterminate these vermin

Also a hilarious attitude received by the Zendt's upon returning to PA to visit family and being awestruck by their kinfolk telling God what to do which explains why there was so much violence in Colorado: God was busy tending to all the asinine dictates of the Mennonites on easy street back home.

Tarahumara were conscripted into the silver mines in Chihuahua, Mexico, and when they went on strike a guy called Salcedo went into town to drum up some local Mexicans to form a firing squad so that there would be "community buy-in" in quashing the strike. This resulted in Salcedo having to shoot many of the strikers in the face because none of the civilians wanted to fire upon a woman, which further inflamed Salcedo's ire, causing many of the men to flee Chihuahua for fear of being shot themselves for sympathizing with the striking "thieves."

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