Indigenous America

Dennis Banks, an American Indian of the Ojibwa Tribe and a founder of the American Indian Movement, is one of the most influential Indian leaders of our time. In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the first time and also traces the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

The author of 18 spellbinding detective novels set on the Navajo Nation, Tony Hillerman simultaneously transformed a traditional genre and unlocked the mysteries of the Navajo culture to an audience of millions. His best-selling novels added Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee to the pantheon of American fictional detectives.

The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man."

Cochise, a Chiricahua, was said to be the most resourceful, most brutal, most feared Apache. He and his warriors raided in both Mexico and the United States, crossing the border both ways to obtain sanctuary after raids for cattle, horses, and other livestock. Once, only he was captured and imprisoned; on the day he was freed he vowed never to be taken again. From that day, he gave no quarter and asked none.

Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were, for centuries, at the center of the North American universe. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science.

In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people - families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day - who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and US social and cultural history generally.

At the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb, the charismatic basketball coach of tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, began dreaming. Like so many others, he wanted a reason to have hope. Traveling from farm to farm, he recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals. Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices faced by their families, the women followed Babb and his dream.

Baffled by the stereotypes presented by Hollywood and much historical fiction, many other Americans find the contemporary American Indian an enigma. Compounding their confusion is the highly publicized struggle of the contemporary Indian for self-determination, lost land, cultural preservation, and fundamental human rights - a struggle dramatized both by public acts of protest and by precedent-setting legal actions. American Indians, American Justice explores the complexities of the present Indian situation, particularly with regard to legal and political rights.

David Roberts describes the culture of the Anasazi - the name means "enemy ancestors" in Navajo - who once inhabited the Colorado Plateau and whose modern descendants are the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism.

The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions and a call for environmentalists to learn from the indigenous community’s rich history of activism.

Kateri Tekakwitha lost all reasons to smile when an epidemic of smallpox in her village made her an orphan. But instead of giving up, she persevered to live on. Kateri was a pious girl who defied tradition by choosing to convert to Christianity. She was the first North American aboriginal person to become a saint.

When most people think of “ancient American civilizations,” the Aztec, Maya, or Inca cultures probably come to mind immediately, because the societies in Mesoamerica have left behind permanent structures for millions of visitors from around the world to see each year. At the same time, however, from about 1000-1500 CE, an equally complex culture formed along the banks of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers.

A creature of myth and magic emerging from the mist-shrouded forests of the Northwest, Coyote appears as a creator, messenger, hero, trickster, fool, or shapeshifter. Always on the lookout for fun, mischief, or the opportunity to help humans, Coyote’s encounters with gods, demons and the supernatural bring to life the rich cultural traditions of the Northwest peoples.

In March 1621, when Plymouth’s survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth’s governor, John Carver, declared their people’s friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the 'First Thanksgiving'. The treaty remained operative until King Philip’s War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.

On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two White fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. This act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America. Leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period.

Most histories of the Cherokee nation focus on its encounters with Europeans, its conflicts with the U.S. government, and its expulsion from its lands during the Trail of Tears. This work, however, traces the origins of the Cherokee people to the third century B.C.E. and follows their migrations through the Americas to their homeland in the lower Appalachian Mountains.

Since its publication in 1932, Black Elk Speaks has moved countless readers to appreciate the American Indian world that it described. John Neihardt’s popular narrative addressed the youth and early adulthood of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux religious elder. Michael F. Steltenkamp now provides the first full interpretive biography of Black Elk, distilling in one volume what is known of this American Indian wisdom keeper whose life has helped guide others. Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic shows that the holy-man was not the dispirited traditionalist commonly depicted in literature....

On a hot summer day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the most famous defeat in U.S. military history. Outnumbered and exhausted, the Seventh Cavalry lost more than half of its 400 men, and every soldier under Custer's direct command was killed. It's easy to understand why this tremendous defeat shocked the American public at the time. But with Custerology, Michael A. Elliott tackles the far more complicated question of why the battle still haunts the American imagination today.

Capture the beauty, power, and wisdom of the Native American oral tradition with this superlative collection of readings taken from the writings and speeches of people from many different tribes. The collection offers insights into Native American ways of living, learning, and dying, and helps us to feel a reconnection with the land and ourselves. The words of Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Ohiyesa, Black Elk, and others create a powerful listening experience.

At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, Canada and the United States had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had made an expansive international border that restricted movement.