Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece

Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-The-World Comedy Tour

On the morning of January 23, 1870, troops of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry attacked a Piegan Indian village on the Marias River in Montana Territory, killing many more than the army’s count of 173, most of them women, children, and old men. The village was afflicted with smallpox. Worse, it was the wrong encampment.

Mark Twain and his friend Joseph Twichell tour Europe.