Native American Biographies

1921, Oklahoma. Dépossédés de leurs terres, les Indiens Osages ont été parqués dans une réserve aride. Mais sous leurs pieds coule un océan de pétrole. De quoi rameuter, en quelques mois, les vautours blancs assoiffés d'or noir. Bientôt, les membres les plus riches de la tribu disparaissent, l'un après l'autre. Balle dans la tête, empoisonnement, incendie...

In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame - and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.

This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.

John Greystone is a twenty year old who lands a summer job as a wildfire spotter in Sequoia National Park. A helicopter pilot drops him off on a remote mountain top with a promise to return an hour later with supplies. The next day the pilot has not returned and John is out of water.

John C. Cremony was the first White man to become fluent in the Apache language. He worked for the US government, translating for military personnel across treacherous parts of the country. It was then that he first came in contact with the Apache people and went on to learn about their ways firsthand for nine years. He was personal friends with Chiefs Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, and he wrote of his adventures in dealing with the US Military and the Indian tribes of the Southwest.

Chief Joseph wanted peace for his people. But the US Army had different ideas. As the headman and spokesperson for the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph tried to do what was best for his people. Join him as he leads his people over vast plains and rugged mountains on the run from the US Army.

Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict - involving not just the North and South, but also the West.

This book restores a little-known advocate of Indian rights to her place in history. In June 1889 a widowed Brooklyn artist named Catherine Weldon traveled to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to help Sitting Bull hold on to land that the government was trying to wrest from his people. Her efforts were counterproductive; she was ordered to leave the reservation, and the Standing Rock Sioux were bullied into signing away their land. But she returned with her teenage son, settling at Sitting Bull's camp on the Grand River.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean and discovered America. Right? WRONG! Columbus never actually set foot in what is now the United States. His voyages took him to islands in the Caribbean and along the coast of South America. The truth is, when Columbus first arrived, Indigenous peoples, including the Taino, had been living there for thousands of years, raising their families, running their societies, and trading with their neighbors. He didn’t “discover” the lands at all! And his name? Not even really Christopher Columbus!

In 1976, the body of Anna Mae Aquash, an American Indian luminary, was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota—or so the FBI said. After a suspicious autopsy and a rushed burial, friends had Aquash exhumed and found a .32-caliber bullet in her skull. Using this scandal as a point of departure, The Unquiet Grave opens a tunnel into the dark side of the FBI and its subversion of American Indian activists. But the book also discovers things the Indians would prefer to keep buried. What unfolds is a sinuous tale of conspiracy, murder, and cover-up.

The story is set in the American West and follows the life of a young Native American girl named Running Eagle. Running Eagle is a fierce and determined warrior who is determined to prove herself to her tribe and become a respected member of her community. She faces many challenges along the way, including the disapproval of her father and the prejudice of those who underestimate her because of her gender. As Running Eagle grows and matures, she becomes a symbol of strength and resilience for her people.

A tribute to the courageous chiefs and warriors who fought to protect their people and preserve the Native way of life in the face of European expansion across North America, including: Sequoyah, a Cherokee who invented a system of writing for his people; Sitting Bull, the powerful warrior and spiritual leader of the Lakota Sioux who doggedly fought white incursions on Sioux land; Chief Joseph, who led the Nez Perce on a heroic and doomed flight to freedom; and more.

Throughout history, there have been men of war and men of peace, but few have actually had a war named after them. When it comes to Pontiac, a few facts are certain. For one thing, he certainly led the first major attack of Pontiac's War in May 1763, when he and 300 of his men attacked Fort Detroit in what is now the city of the same name. Unfortunately for his cause, Pontiac failed to gauge just how strong the British presence was, and his attack was quickly repelled. On the other hand, he was not a man who easily gave up.

Colin Calloway uses the prism of George Washington's life to bring focus to the great Native leaders of his time and the tribes they represented: the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware; in the process, he returns them to their rightful place in the story of America's founding. The Indian World of George Washington spans decades of Native American leaders' interactions with Washington, from his early days as surveyor of Indian lands to his military career against both the French and the British to his presidency.

Known as the Thanksgiving Address, this Native American good morning message is based on the belief that the natural world is a precious and rare gift - from the moon and the stars to the tiniest blade of grass.

Here is one of the most extraordinary and invaluable documents in the annals of Native American history: the authentic testament of a remarkable "war shaman" who, for several years, held off both Mexico and the United States in fierce defense of Apache lands. During 1905 and 1906, Geronimo, the legendary Apache warrior and honorary war chief, dictated his story through a native interpreter to S. M. Barrett.

Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers an unforgettable memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. In this rare firsthand account, Fortunate Eagle lives up to his reputation as a "contrary warrior" by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike. Although Fortunate Eagle recognizes Pipestone's shortcomings, he describes his time there as nothing less than "a little bit of heaven."

When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football", they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work.

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.

This is the true story of Shannen Koostachin and the people of Attawapiskat, a Cree community in Northern Ontario, who have been fighting for a new school since the late 1970s when a fuel leak contaminated their original school building.