Native American Indian History

Stories define us. They tell us who we are or, at least, who we think we are. The American story of westward expansion draws upon heroic tales of courage and perseverance and the "pioneer spirit". But settlers and their descendants also spread false narratives about Indians in order to justify ruinous private and public acts. The stories we heard and the tales we hear even now give people cover to behave abominably. And this abominable behavior has economic effect.

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.

One of the most groundbreaking and highly acclaimed titles that Heyday has published, The Ohlone Way describes the culture of the Indian people who inhabited the Bay Area prior to the arrival of Europeans. Recently included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Top 100 Western Non-Fiction” list, The Ohlone Way has been described by critic Pat Holt as a “mini-classic”.

An original, insightful recounting of an Indian boyhood with specific descriptions of the life, practices, nomadic movements, killings, warfare with other tribes, courtship, coming of age, and more. The best insight into true and accurate 19th-century Indian life from an insider, of a boy and young brave coming of age.

Charles Eastman, otherwise known as Hakadah, was a full-blooded Sioux who learned the manners and stoical ways of patience and bravery expected of every Indian boy. This book is a first-hand account of his life until the age of 15.

Indian Creek Massacre and Captivity of Hall Girls was written by Charles Martin Scanlan in 1915. The Indian Creek Massacre arose in 1832 at LaSalle County, Illinois, after a dispute about a settler-constructed dam that blocked fish from reaching a Native American village downstream. It’s a unique historical snapshot of early America centered around Sylvia and Rachel Hall, sisters who were the only survivors of the massacre and were abducted, as well as the story of Chief Shabona who was a member of the Ottowa and Potawatomi.

Author grew up as an Indian, went to work in the White man's world as a doctor, and wrote extensively about Indian history, culture, values, honor, and being pushed off the land to Indian Reservations.

What if the history of America's largest Indian nation is actually a polite modern fiction, one invented by "anthropologists and other friends"? In this sweeping revisionist study of the Cherokee Indians, a scholar trained in classical philology and the new science of genetics discloses the inside story of his tribe. The narrative starts in the third century BCE and concludes with the Cherokees' removal to Indian Territory in the 19th century, when all standard histories just begin.

The remarkable story of the author of Indian Boyhood's growth into the White world at his father's recommendation because he says the Indian's world is over; how Charles learns and adapts to it; and what he learns along the way.

Through much of the 20th century, federal policy toward Indians sought to extinguish all remnants of native life and culture. That policy was dramatically confronted in the late 1960s when a loose coalition of hippies, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers and other Christians, celebrities, and others joined with Red Power activists to fight for Indian rights. In Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power, Sherry Smith offers the first full account of this remarkable story.

The Apache of the American Southwest have achieved almost legendary status for their fierceness and their tenacity in fighting the US Army. Names like Nana, Cochise, and Geronimo are synonymous with bravery and daring, and the tribe had that reputation long before the Americans arrived. Indeed, among all the Native American tribes, the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans learned the hard way that the warriors of the Apache were perhaps the fiercest in North America. Based in the Southwest, the Apache fought all three in Mexico and the American Southwest.

Indian lore of the Cuyamaca Mountains and surrounding region in San Diego County, California, abounds in myths and legends handed down from generation to generation by tribal song and squaw-tale. Yet so swiftly has the hand of civilization wiped out the old traditions and customs, that but few Indians remain who remember them, and fewer still are those willing to divulge them. Only when one comes into intimate contact with them is one accorded the privilege and honor of hearing the tales of their ancestors.

A treasury of imaginative tales including: the Algonquin story of how Glooskap conquered the Great Bull-Frog; "The Meeting of the Wild Animals", a Tsimshian myth; "The Bear Man", a Cherokee legend; and more.

A thriving fur trade post between 1830 and 1860, Fort Clark, in what is today western North Dakota, also served as a way station for artists, scientists, missionaries, soldiers, and other western chroniclers traveling along the Upper Missouri River. The written and visual legacies of these visitors have long been the primary sources of information on the cultures of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, the peoples who met the first fur traders in the area. This book is the first account of the fur trade at Fort Clark to integrate new archaeological evidence into the history.

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was raised among the Sioux and decided to become a doctor in order to be of the greatest service to his people. He also became a distinguished writer and an interpreter of Native American life and customs. The Soul of the Indian is a rare eye-witness account of native religion with its ceremonial and symbolic worship, oral scriptures and view of the spirit world.

On the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led 700 militiamen in a surprise attack against Cheyenne leader Black Kettle's camp at Sand Creek. Chivington was a fire and brimstone Methodist minister who had publicly advocated indiscriminately killing Native American children because "nits makes lice."

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux. He became one of the best known Indians of his time, receiving a bachelor of science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later.

The most astute and sensitive observer of Indian life, as told by himself as insider later brought into the White world by his father.

Insightful, telling, ironic, and moving, 14 Native-American legends reflect a nomadic non-property-owning culture, with a reverence for all things natural.

Arguably the last Indians living in Central Florida in 1883 were all massacred because the chief's favorite squaw loved White Man Cow. John asked the President of the United States to send soldiers to remove the Indians. John didn't think his request was out of line; after all the government had earlier been moving Indians to the "Indians Territory" (now Oklahoma) for years. But the President wouldn't do it. So John had to do it. He killed every man, woman and child. This is the story of why he did it.