Best of
Native-American-History

2015

The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest


David Roberts - 2015
    His adventures range across Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado, and illuminate the mysteries of the Ancestral Puebloans and their contemporary neighbors the Mogollon and Fremont, as well as of the more recent Navajo and Comanche.

My Life as an Indian (Expanded, Annotated)


James Willard Schulta - 2015
    From 1880 to 1903, Schultz lived the life of a Blackfoot Indian with Nat-ah-ki and her people. During this time, he began writing for magazines, at times running a trading post, and working as a guide in the West. He met historian, writer, and naturalist, George Bird Grinnell, who encouraged him to write this heartfelt and important memoir. As an ethnography of a people and a time it is invaluable. Though he would marry again, Schultz eventually went back to live near the Native peoples he'd come to love and is buried in the traditional ground of Nat-ah-ki's people. You won't read another memoir like it. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the migration that changed the country forever. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs


Joshua L. Reid - 2015
    Unlike most other indigenous tribes whose lives are tied to lands, the Makah people have long placed marine space at the center of their culture, finding in their own waters the physical and spiritual resources to support themselves. This book is the first to explore the history and identity of the Makahs from the arrival of maritime fur-traders in the eighteenth century through the intervening centuries and to the present day.   Joshua L. Reid discovers that the “People of the Cape” were far more involved in shaping the maritime economy of the Pacific Northwest than has been understood. He examines Makah attitudes toward borders and boundaries, their efforts to exercise control over their waters and resources as Europeans and then Americans arrived, and their embrace of modern opportunities and technology to maintain autonomy and resist assimilation. The author also addresses current environmental debates relating to the tribe’s customary whaling and fishing rights and illuminates the efforts of the Makahs to regain control over marine space, preserve their marine-oriented identity, and articulate a traditional future.

The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity


Gregory D. Smithers - 2015
    In this revealing history of Cherokee migration and resettlement, Gregory Smithers uncovers the origins of the Cherokee diaspora and explores how communities and individuals have negotiated their Cherokee identities, even when geographically removed from the Cherokee Nation headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the author transports the reader back in time to tell the poignant story of the Cherokee people migrating throughout North America, including their forced exile along the infamous Trail of Tears (1838–39). Smithers tells a remarkable story of courage, cultural innovation, and resilience, exploring the importance of migration and removal, land and tradition, culture and language in defining what it has meant to be Cherokee for a widely scattered people.

The Thunder Egg


Tim J. Myers - 2015
    

On the Frontier: The Western Career of General John Gibbon (Expanded, Annotated)


John Gibbon - 2015
    At Gettysburg in 1863, Pickett's Charge was aimed right at Gibbon's troops. In 1876, Gibbon commanded the Montana Column that was to unite with George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. Gibbon's arrival with General Terry is what saved the survivors of that disaster. Here in his own words are Gibbon's masterful narratives of his time in the west. Included are his diary from his 1860 journey to Utah, his analysis of the disaster at the Little Bighorn, his campaign against Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce in 1877, and his later friendship with that Chief. He also wrote a wonderful account of a visit to Yellowstone National Park in 1872. Gibbon never completed his memoirs of his career in the west and these articles are what we have to tell the story of one of the most important and remarkable careers in U.S. Army history. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the movement that changed the country forever. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

Hodges' Scout: A Lost Patrol of the French and Indian War


Len Travers - 2015
    Caught in a devastating ambush by French and native warriors, only a handful of colonials made it back alive. Toward the end of the French and Indian War, another group of survivors, long feared dead, returned home, having endured years of grim captivity among the native and French inhabitants of Canada.Pieced together from archival records, period correspondence, and official reports, Hodges' Scout relates the riveting tale of young colonists who were tragically caught up in a war they barely understood. Len Travers brings history to life by describing the variety of motives that led men to enlist in the campaign and the methods and means they used to do battle. He also reveals what the soldiers wore, the illnesses they experienced, the terror and confusion of combat, and the bitter hardships of captivity in alien lands. His remarkable research brings human experiences alive, giving us a rare, full-color view of the French and Indian War--the first true world war.