Elliott West

Elliott West (born April 19, 1945) is an American historian, author and Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas.

Biography

West received an undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin before he completed master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Colorado. Early in his career, West taught at the University of Colorado Denver, the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of New Mexico. He became a faculty member at the University of Arkansas in 1979.

Historian Richard White has referred to West as "the best historian of the American West writing today." West's 1998 book, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado, was reviewed in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History and the Pacific Historical Review. The work won the 1999 Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians and shared the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Organization of American Historians that year. A 2009 book, The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story, was reviewed in The Journal of American History.

In 2009, he was a finalist for the Cherry Award for Great Teaching given by Baylor University. He has received two Western Heritage Awards. He is a past president of the Western History Association.