«Questa gente è così docile e pacifica che giuro alle Vostre Maestà che non vi è al mondo una nazione migliore.» (“So tractable, so peaceable, are these people, that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation.”) It's with this fascinating quotation from the first “discoverer” of America, Christopher Columbus, that Turinese journalist Angelo Schwarz (*1944) opens this interesting collection of photographs, taken, between 1854 and 1915, by professionals as: Vance, Watkins, Cavalho, Huffman, Sullivan, Melander, Curtis, Vroman, Jackson, Soule, Hillers, Russel, Smith, Shindler, Heller, Brady and Johnston. Each shot, briefly contextualized on a historical level, tells us about customs and traditions of the many native people of the time, and it really seems to get their ancient spirit, in close symbiosis with nature and its fruits. The book is sold in good conservation conditions, both on the inside and the outside, with only tiny signs of wear at the dust jacket's edges. Published in 1980, edited by one of the greatest Italian photojournalists, the volume surely comes an excellent source for all scholars of the dramatic conquest of the West.