Indigenous Peoples Display: Non-Fiction

In this lavishly illustrated volume, Larry McMurtry, the greatest chronicler of the American West, tackles for the first time one of the paramount figures of Western and American history. On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry attacked a large Lakota Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. He lost not only the battle but his life--and the lives of his entire cavalry. "Custer's Last Stand" was a spectacular defeat that shocked the country and grew quickly into a legend that has reverberated in our national consciousness to this day. Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry has long been fascinated by the "Boy General" and his rightful place in history.

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. Elliott means the historical interpretation and commemoration of Custer and the Indian Wars in which he fought not only by those who honor Custer but by those who celebrate the Native American resistance that defeated him. The purpose of this book is to show how Custer and the Little Bighorn can be and have been commemorated for such contradictory purposes.

A rousing and meticulously researched account of the notorious Battle of Little Big Horn and its unforgettable cast of characters from Sitting Bull to Custer himself. In June of 1876, on a desolate hill above a winding river called "the Little Bighorn," George Armstrong Custer and all 210 men under his direct command were annihilated by almost 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne. The news of this devastating loss caused a public uproar, and those in positions of power promptly began to point fingers in order to avoid responsibility. Custer, who was conveniently dead, took the brunt of the blame. The truth, however, was far more complex. A Terrible Glory is the first book to relate the entire story of this endlessly fascinating battle, and the first to call upon all the significant research and findings of the past twenty-five years -- which have changed significantly how this controversial event is perceived. Furthermore, it is the first book to bring to light the details of the U.S. Army cover-up -- and unravel one of the greatest mysteries in U.S. military history. Scrupulously researched, A Teribble Glory will stand as a landmark work. Brimming with authentic detail and an unforgettable cast of characters -- from Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to Ulysses Grant and Custer himself -- this is history with the sweep of a great novel.

Beginning with the tribes' devastating loss of land and the forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools, he shows how the period of greatest adversity also helped to incubate a unifying Native identity. He traces how conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of their self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is an essential, intimate history - and counter-narrative - of a resilient people in a transformative era.

Walk with the indigenous people who settled North America —and with their descendants, whose more than 500 tribes range from the Arctic Circle across the Great Plains and to the Eastern Seaboard. Lakota, Cherokee, Navajo, Haida: these groups and many others are profiled in engaging entries and portrayed in magnificent images and maps that authentically evoke each tribe's history and character. Organized into eight geographical regions, this encyclopedic reference gives fascinating details about key tribes within each area: their beliefs, sustenance, shelter, alliances, interaction with nature, historic events, and more. Learn about the spiritual and cultural traditions of Native Americans across the continent...investigate how and when each tribe came into contact with Europeans, and how their lives changed. This is the definitive, insightful reference on Native Americans —captivating and informative for all who appreciate history, diverse cultures, stunning images, and the artistry of maps.

“Roll, scroll, flute and fringe your way to an exquisite design....Quill enchanting miniature plants and flowers, dangling earrings....Paper filigree makes excellent deco-rations for gift bags and cards....Simply overflowing with ideas!—Crafts. “The craft of paper quilling...is recaptured in a series of more than 70 projects.”—Booklist.

In this biography, David Edmunds examines the life of legendary Shawnee leader Tecumesh and his pivotal role in defending the Native American way of life. Since his death as an avowed warrior at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, the details of Tecumseh’s life have passed into the realm of legend, myth and drama. In this new edition, David Edmunds considers the man who acted as a diplomat – a charismatic strategist who attempted to smooth cultural divisions between tribes and collectively oppose the seizure of their land.

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." So began six weeks of intense conflict along the Minnesota frontier as the Dakotas clashed with settlers and federal troops, all the while searching for allies in their struggle. Once the uprising was smashed and the Dakotas captured, a military commission was convened, which quickly found more than three hundred Indians guilty of murder. President Lincoln, embroiled in the most devastating period of the Civil War, personally intervened in order to spare the lives of 265 of the condemned men, but the toll on the Dakota nation was still staggering: a way of life destroyed, a tribe forcibly relocated to barren and unfamiliar territory, and 38 Dakota warriors hanged--the largest government-sanctioned execution in American history.

The little known story of the unlikely friendship of two famous figures of the American West--Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull--told through their time in Cody's Wild West show in the 1880s. Blood Brothers tells the story of these two iconic figures through their brief but important collaboration. Blood Brothers flashes back to 1876, when the Lakota wiped out Custer's 7th Cavalry unit at the Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull did not participate in the "last stand," but was nearby--and blamed for killing Custer. The book also flashes forward to 1890, when Sitting Bull was assassinated. Hours before, Cody rushed to Sitting Bull's cabin at Standing Rock, dispatched by the army to avert a disaster. Deanne Stillman unearths little told details about the two men and their tumultuous times. Their alliance was eased by none other than Annie Oakley. An iconic friendship tale like no other, Blood Brothers is truly a timeless story of people from different cultures who crossed barriers to engage each other as human beings. And it foretells today's battle on the Great Plains.

In Indian Voices, Alison Owings takes readers on a fresh journey across America, east to west, north to south, and around again. Owings's most recent oral history--engagingly written in a style that entertains and informs--documents what Native Americans say about themselves, their daily lives, and the world around them. Young and old from many tribal nations speak with candor, insight, and (unknown to many non-Natives) humor about what it is like to be a Native American in the twenty-first century. Through intimate interviews many also express their thoughts about the sometimes staggeringly ignorant, if often well-meaning, non-Natives they encounter--some who do not realize Native Americans still exist, much less that they speak English, have cell phones, use the Internet, and might attend powwows and power lunches. Indian Voices, an inspiring and important contribution to the literature about the original Americans, will make every reader rethink the past--and present--of the United States.

The landmark, bestselling account of the crimes against American Indians during the 19th century, now on its 50th Anniversary. First published in 1970,Bury My Heart at Wounded Kneeis Dee Brown's eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of American Indians during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown introduces readers to great chiefs and warrors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes, revealing in heartwrenching detail the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that methodically stripped them of freedom. A forceful narrative still discussed today as revelatory and controversial,Bury My Heart at Wounded Kneepermanently altered our understanding of how the American West came to be defined.

The epic life story of the Native American holy man who has inspired millions around the world Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions of readers around the world from his 1932 testimonial Black Elk Speaks. Adapted by the poet John G. Neihardt from a series of interviews with Black Elk and other elders at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Black Elk Speaks is one of the most widely read and admired works of American Indian literature. Cryptic and deeply personal, it has been read as a spiritual guide, a philosophical manifesto, and a text to be deconstructed--while the historical Black Elk has faded from view. In this sweeping book, Joe Jackson provides the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence between the Sioux, white settlers, and U.S. government troops, Black Elk killed his first man at the Little Bighorn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the Massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior, instead accepting the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that he struggled to understand. Although Black Elk embraced Catholicism in his later years, he continued to practice the old ways clandestinely and never refrained from seeking meaning in the visions that both haunted and inspired him. In Black Elk, Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to its subject the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of permanent crisis on the Great Plains.

A great writer's journey of exploration in an American place that is both strange and deeply familiar. In Ian Frazier's bestselling Great Plains, he described meeting a man in New York City named Le War Lance, "an Oglala Sioux Indian from Oglala, South Dakota." In On the Rez, Frazier returns to the plains and focuses on a place at their center-the Pine Ridge Reservation in the prairie and badlands of South Dakota, home of the Oglala Sioux. Frazier drives around "the rez" with Le War Lance and other Oglalas as they tell stories, visit relatives, go to powwows and rodeos and package stores, and try to find parts to fix one or another of their on-the-verge-of-working cars. On the Rez considers Indian ideas of freedom and community and equality that are basic to how we view ourselves. Most of all, he examines the Indian idea of heroism-its suffering and its pulse-quickening, public-spirited glory. On the Rez portrays the survival, through toughness and humor, of a great people whose culture has shaped our American identity.

How a lone man’s epic obsession led to one of America’s greatest cultural treasures: Prizewinning writer Timothy Egan tells the riveting, cinematic story behind the most famous photographs in Native American history — and the driven, brilliant man who made them.   Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared. An Indiana Jones with a camera, Curtis spent the next three decades traveling from the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Acoma on a high mesa in New Mexico to the Salish in the rugged Northwest rain forest, documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. It took tremendous perseverance — ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him into their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Eventually Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs, preserved 10,000 audio recordings, and is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian. His most powerful backer was Theodore Roosevelt, and his patron was J. P. Morgan. Despite the friends in high places, he was always broke and often disparaged as an upstart in pursuit of an impossible dream. He completed his masterwork in 1930, when he published the last of the twenty volumes. A nation in the grips of the Depression ignored it. But today rare Curtis photogravures bring high prices at auction, and he is hailed as a visionary. In the end he fulfilled his promise: He made the Indians live forever.

Documents the forced removal in 1838 of the Cherokee Nation from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma. Shows the suffering endured by the Cherokees as they lost their land and the difficult conditions they endured on the trail. Describes how thousands of Cherokees died during the Trail of Tears, nearly a quarter of the nation, including most of their children and elders.

Brimming with quotes from original source documents, this young adult series explores the complex relations between Native Americans and non-Indians from the arrival of Columbus to the present day. All titles make clear the importance of Native Americans to this country's past and its present. Dramatic Narratives Compose a Compelling Reference By weaving passages from original documents into dramatic narratives, each title in the series creates a remarkably vivid portrait of specific aspects of American Indian heritage and history. The series provides the kind of valuable information too frequently left out of textbooks and general histories. Each practical reference is enhanced by carefully chosen historical drawings, photographs, and maps; an up-to-date bibliography and further reading list; and a complete index. A Wealth of Learning Aids and Features Enriches the Study of Native American History -- Lively narrative and lucid visuals explore Native Americans' roles in the country's development and history. -- Special boxed features highlight crucial topics and the roles of significant individuals. -- Coverage of twentieth-century issues and events reveals that Native American culture is as much a part of America's present as the past. -- A must for the study of American history: the in-depth coverage fosters an appreciation for cultural diversity. "Children cry and many men cry, and all look sad like when friends die, but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on go west." This vivid, disturbing account is one of the many compelling descriptions found in this history of the Cherokee Trail of Tears. An abundance of excerpts from original source documentsand first-person narratives reveal the thoughts, actions, and feelings of both those of the Cherokee Nation and of the U.S. government during the forced exile of the Cherokee from their homeland.

Ehle tells the searing story of the betrayal and brutal dispossession of the Cherokee Nation. The book covers the entire sweep of Cherokee history, from the coming of the white man to the infamous Trail of Tears. 32 photos.

This sweeping American epic reveals the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States. Dramatic, far-reaching, and unforgettable, this book paints a portrait of these two inspirational leaders who worked together to lift their people to the height of culture and learning as the most civilized tribe in the nation, and then drop them to the depths of ruin and despair as they turned against each other. Theirs is a story of land, pride, honour, and loss that forms much of the country's mythic past today.