Now, with the help of celebrated historian Joseph Marshall, we finally have the opportunity to know Crazy Horse as his fellow Lakota Indians knew him.Drawing on extensive research and a rich oral tradition that it rarely shared outside Native American circles, Marshall - himself a descendent of the Lakota community that raised Crazy Horse - creates a vibrant portrait of the man, his times, and his legacy. From the powerful vision that spurred him into battle to the woman he loved but lost to duty and circumstance, this is a compelling celebration of a culture, an enduring way of life, and the unforgettable hero who remains a legend among legends.Marshall's gloriously poetic and sweeping chronicle ushers in a new genre of American history...A tour de force. - Peter Nabakov, author of Native American TestimonyA remarkable portrait of a remarkable man. - Colin G. Calloway, professor of history and Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies, Dartmouth College

    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 authors present an insider’s understanding of AIM protest events—the Trail of Broken Treaties march to Washington, D.C.; the resulting takeover of the BIA building; the riot at Custer, South Dakota; and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee. Enhancing the narrative are dramatic photographs, most taken by Richard Erdoes, depicting key people and events.

    Created as sets of consecutive images, the works portray racial mixing among the main groups that inhabited the colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ilona Katzew places casta paintings in their social and historical context, showing for the first time the ways in which the meanings of the paintings changed along with shifting colonial politics. The book examines how casta painting developed art historically, why race became the subject of a pictorial genre that spanned an entire century, who commissioned and collected the works, and what meanings the works held for contemporary audiences. Drawing on a range of previously unpublished archival and visual material, Katzew sheds new light on racial dynamics of eighteenth-century Mexico and on the construction of identity and self-image in the colonial world.

    Seventh Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer attacked a Southern Cheyenne village along the Washita River in present-day western Oklahoma. The subsequent U.S. victory signaled the end of the Cheyennes’ traditional way of life and resulted in the death of Black Kettle, their most prominent peace chief.In this remarkably balanced history, Jerome A. Greene describes the causes, conduct, and consequences of the event even as he addresses the multiple controversies surrounding the conflict. As Greene explains, the engagement brought both praise and condemnation for Custer and carried long-range implications for his stunning defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn eight years later.

    Raised as a Cheyenne but educated in white schools, George Bent fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, became a Cheyenne warrior and survived the horrific 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, rode and killed for revenge with the ferocious Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, and later became a prominent interpreter and negotiator for whites and adviser to tribal leaders. He hobnobbed with frontier legends Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, and George Custer, and fought side-by-side with great Indian leaders. After a lifetime of adventures and misfortunes, accomplishments and failures, George Bent made a lasting contribution to the memory of his people by sharing with historians the story of the fighting Cheyennes.

    Art of the Osage, the first comprehensive presentation of the art of the Osage people, explores the interconnections among their material culture, social organization, cosmology, aesthetics, and rituals.This volume draws together over two centuries' worth of Osage art, tracing the patterns of Osage life and culture as they existed from contact to the present. The Osage people thrived in the central Mississippi Valley fur trade from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries, were forcibly relocated into northern Oklahoma in the nineteenth century, and prospered again from mineral and oil wealth in the twentieth century.As with other civilizations that have balanced abundance with hardship, the Osage experience yielded a highly refined artistic tradition, rich in meaning and complex in its commitment to utility. Cradle boards, headdresses, riding quirts and war clubs, beadwork and ribbon work, blankets, peyote fans, rattles, wedding garments, and dance costumes display the range and beauty of Osage material culture. In contrast to many other Native American artistic traditions, Osage art has never been commercialized: artisans have typically made items only for members of their families or other members of the Osage community.Although contemporary Osage art shows direct continuity in decorative motifs and basic forms with early historic Osage art, it is still a dynamic and evolving artistic tradition. Uninfluenced by external market forces, it represents one of a declining number of true indigenous living artistic traditions. The works illustrated here reveal the bold yet subtle aesthetic of Osage art, one of the most distinctive and significant Native artistic traditions in the United States.

    

    In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the “neutrality” policy—defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718—for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South. Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a “traditional” kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions of the region’s three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions persisted, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context, the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.