Indigenous American History

In 1877, Chief Standing Bear's Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to Oklahoma - known then as Indian Territory - in what became the tribe's own Trail of Tears. "I Am a Man" chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a 600-mile walk to return the body of his only son to their traditional burial grounds.

In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."

Acclaimed historians Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green paint a moving portrait of the infamous Trail of Tears. Despite protests from statesmen like Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, a dubious 1838 treaty drove 17,000 mostly Christian Cherokee from their lush Appalachian homeland to barren plains beyond the Mississippi. For 4,000, this brutal forced march lead only to their deaths.

Acclaimed historian Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth professor of history and American Indian studies, is the series editor for The Penguin Library of American Indian History. Rich in detail and highly readable, this compelling narrative portrays the Shawnees' valiant struggle to maintain their way of life.

In 1870, a 26-year-old Paiute, Sarah Winnemucca, wrote to an army officer requesting that Paiutes be given a chance to settle and farm their ancestral land. The eloquence of her letter was such that it made its way into Harper’s Weekly. Ten years later, as her people languished in confinement as a result of the Bannock War, she convinced Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to grant the requests in her letter and free the Paiutes as well.

In the autumn of 1878, a band of Cheyenne Indians set out from Indian Territory, where they had been sent by the US government, to return to their homeland in Yellowstone country. Mari Sandoz tells the saga of their heartbreaking fifteen-hundred-mile flight.

The first people who lived on the northern plains of what today is the US called themselves "Lakota", meaning "the people", a word which provides the semantic basis for Dakota. The first European people to meet the Lakota called them "Sioux", a contraction of "Nadowessioux", a now-archaic French-Canadian word meaning "snake", or enemy.

With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Choctaw people began their journey over the Trail of Tears from their homelands in Mississippi to the new lands of the Choctaw Nation. Suffering a death rate of nearly 20 percent due to exposure, disease, mismanagement, and fraud, they limped into Indian Territory, or, as they knew it, the Land of the Dead (the route taken by the souls of Choctaw people after death on their way to the Choctaw afterlife). Their first few years in the new nation affirmed their name for the land.

Before Indian casinos sprouted up around the country, a few enterprising tribes got their start in gambling by opening bingo parlors. A group of women on the Oneida Indian Reservation just outside Green Bay, Wisconsin, introduced bingo in 1976 simply to pay a few bills. Bingo not only paid the light bill at the struggling civic center but was soon financing vital health and housing services for tribal elderly and poor.

Uncover the untold story of the Taíno, the first people of the Caribbean, in this riveting exploration of history, culture, and resilience. From their ancient migrations through South America to their thriving societies across the islands, this book brings to life the rich legacy of the Taíno people. Delve into the vibrant daily lives of the Taíno, their spiritual beliefs rooted in the natural world, and their mastery of sustainable living.

A Promise Kept explores the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely the most significant Indian law case in well over a hundred years. Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other tribes throughout the United States.

El célebre visionario y curandero de los oglalas lakotas Alce Negro (1863-1950) conoció al distinguido poeta, escritor y crítico John G. Neihardt en 1930 en la reserva de Pine Ridge, en Dakota del Sur, y le pidió que compartiera su historia con el mundo. Sus desgarradoras visiones sobre la relación entre el ser humano y la tierra han convertido este libro en un clásico que atraviesa múltiples géneros.

Searching through the annals of North American history uncovers the diverse and astounding contributions by the Natives of the Americas who formed the world we know today.

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.

After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the larger questions of its peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder’s death at the hands of four White men in 1972, Magnuson looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. Situating long-ranging repercussions within 130 years of context, he also recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird.

Hoy en día en Estados Unidos hay más de quinientas naciones indígenas reconocidas por el Gobierno federal que comprenden casi tres millones de personas, descendientes de los quince millones de nativos que habitaban esas tierras. El programa genocida que los colonos desarrollaron durante siglos ha sido omitido, en gran medida, de la historia, pero, ahora, por primera vez, la historiadora y activista Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz nos ofrece una historia de Estados Unidos contada desde la perspectiva de los pueblos indígenas.

Philip Burnham tells the life story of the remarkable Packs the Dog, a member of the Minneconjou Lakotas who was born in 1864 east of the Black Hills. His father, Yellow Knife, died when the boy was five, and the family eventually enrolled at Pine Ridge Agency with the Oglalas under an uncle's name, Three Stars. In 1879 Packs the Dog joined the first class of Indian students to be admitted to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology, Chip Colwell navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. His book reveals a dramatic process that involves negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.

For thousands of years two distinct cultures evolved unaware of one another’s existence. Separated by what one culture called The Great Sea and known to the other as the Atlantic Ocean, the course of each culture’s future changed irreversibly 400 years ago.

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.