"White Poison," like "Little Big Man," is a history of the American West as told by an old man who has lived through it all and thinks he knows everything about the good and evil of the civilization he has helped create in far Northern California -- until two events in 1911 change his mind and prompt him to write his memoirs. First, he learns he has a brain tumor and will soon lose his mental capacity and probably die. Second, Ishi, "the last wild Indian in California," wanders out of the woods, possibly knowing the answer to a mystery Wells has pondered ever since Tyee Bob, a Shasta Indian who used to work on Wells' ranch, told him about it on his deathbed in 1908. According to Bob, as many as 3,000 members of his tribe were fed poisoned beef and bread at a treaty-signing feast in 1851 -- a death toll 10 times that of Wounded Knee, which everyone knows about. But nobody seems to know about this greater massacre -- not Wells, who arrived in Siskiyou County a year later, nor other white people, who have left no written record of it. Until now....