Best of
Native-American-History

2009

Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre


Heather Cox Richardson - 2009
    As acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson shows in Wounded Knee, the massacre grew out of a set of political forces all too familiar to us today: fierce partisanship, heated political rhetoric, and an irresponsible, profit-driven media.Richardson tells a dramatically new story about the Wounded Knee massacre, revealing that its origins lay not in the West but in the corridors of political power back East. Politicians in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike, sought to set the stage for mass murder by exploiting an age-old political tool—fear.Assiduously researched and beautifully written, Wounded Knee will be the definitive account of an epochal American tragedy.

Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy


Ernie LaPointe - 2009
    In many ways the oral history differs from what has become the standard and widely accepted biography of Sitting Bull. LaPointe explains the discrepancies, how they occurred, and why he wants to tell his story of Tatanka Iyotake.Ernie LaPointe, a great-grandson of Sitting Bull, was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He is a Sundancer and lives the traditional way of the Lakota and follows the rules of the sacred pipe. He lives in South Dakota.

Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South


Robbie Ethridge - 2009
    The editors of this volume, Robbie Ethridge and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall, argue that such a period and region of instability and regrouping constituted a “shatter zone.” In this anthology, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists analyze the shatter zone created in the colonial South by examining the interactions of American Indians and European colonists. The forces that destabilized the region included especially the frenzied commercial traffic in Indian slaves conducted by both Europeans and Indians, which decimated several southern Native communities; the inherently fluid political and social organization of precontact Mississippian chiefdoms; and the widespread epidemics that spread across the South. Using examples from a range of Indian communities—Muskogee, Catawba, Iroquois, Alabama, Coushatta, Shawnee, Choctaw, Westo, and Natchez—the contributors assess the shatter zone region as a whole, and the varied ways in which Native peoples wrestled with an increasingly unstable world and worked to reestablish order.

At the Font of the Marvelous: Exploring Oral Narrative and Mythic Imagery of the Iroquois and Their Neighbors


Anthony Wonderley - 2009
    Mostly recorded around 1900, these oral narratives preserve the voice and something of the outlook of autochthonous Americans from a bygone age, when storytelling was an important facet of daily life. Inspired by these wondrous tales, Anthony Wonderley explores their significance to the Iroquois and Algonquian religion and worldview.Grouping the stories around common themes and motifs, Wonderley analyzes topics ranging from cannibal giants to cultural heroes, and from legends of local places to myths of human origin. Approached comparatively and historically, these stories can enrich our understanding of archaeological remains, ethnic boundaries, and past cultural interchanges among Iroquois and Algonquian peoples.

Open Wounds: A Native American Heritage


Aleksandra Ziółkowska-Boehm - 2009
    Resulting from 10 years of research and visits to Indian lands, the book was inspired by the writer s great uncle Korczak Ziolkowski , sculptor of the Crazy Horse mountain carving in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The author provides a broad spectrum of Indian history, culture, traditions, subjugation, suffering, reservation poverty, failed government policies, education, emergence and the portent of a future of well-deserved dignity, respect and beginning signs of success. Personal interviews with members of the Apache, Chickasaw, Kiowa and Northern Cheyenne Nations add a potent insight into Indian feelings and opinions. Clearly evident throughout the book is Ziolkowska-Boehm s admiration and esteem for American Indians, particularly for the pride they exhibit after suffering a heritage of open wounds over many years.