Best of
Native-Americans

2016

The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West


Peter Cozzens - 2016
    The expansion of the country and discoveries of gold drew whites to territory traditionally claimed by Indians. The Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America.The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today. Dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. As the action moves from the great Plains to Texas desert to the sheer cliffs of the Rockies and Sierra Madre, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers and indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led. The Earth Is Weeping brings them all together for the first time in the fullest account to date of how the West was won—and lost.

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873


Benjamin Madley - 2016
    . . . Others have described some of these campaigns, but never in such strong terms and with so much blame placed directly on the United States government.”—Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek   Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.    Madley describes pre-contact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1,700,000 on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials’ culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book.

Voices in the Stones: Life Lessons from the Native Way


Kent Nerburn - 2016
    Voices in the Stones is a unique collection of his encounters, experiences, and reflections during that time.He takes us inside a traditional Native feast to show us how the children are taught to respect the elders. He brings us to an isolated prairie rock outcropping where a young Native man and his father show us how the power of ceremony connects the present with the ancient voices of the past. At a dusty roadside café he introduces us to an elder who remembers the time when his ancestors could talk to animals.In these and other deeply touching stories, Nerburn reveals the spiritual awareness that animates all of Native American life, and shows us how we have much to learn from one another if only we have the heart to listen.

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary


Joe Jackson - 2016
    Adapted by the poet John Neihardt from a series of interviews, it 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, Black Elk killed his first man at Little Big Horn, 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 and instead choose the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that haunted and inspired him, even after he converted to Catholicism in his later years.In Black Elk, Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to Black Elk 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.

Crazy Horse: The Lakota Warrior’s Life & Legacy


The Edward Clown Family - 2016
    In many ways the oral history differs from what has become the standard and widely accepted biography of Crazy Horse. The family clarifies the inaccuracies and shares their story about the past, including what it means to them to be Lakota, the family genealogy, the life of Crazy Horse and his motivations, his death, and why they chose to keep quiet with their knowledge for so long before finally deciding to tell the truth as they know it.This book is a compelling addition to the body of works about Crazy Horse and the complicated and often conflicting events of that time period in American History.Floyd Clown, Doug War Eagle, and Don Red Thunder are the sole administrators and spokesmen of the Crazy Horse estate and often speak at historical gatherings and national parks about their family's history.

The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History


Paul Andrew Hutton - 2016
    His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides--the Apaches and the white invaders—blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid. In this sprawling, monumental work, Paul Hutton unfolds over two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. This is Mickey Free's story, but also the story of his contemporaries: the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands--a bleak and unforgiving world where a people would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction.

The Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-11: The First Eleven Novels


Craig Johnson - 2016
    The perfect gift for Longmire fans: a boxed set of the first eleven mysteries in the New York Times bestselling Longmire Mystery series With the hit television series Longmire capturing millions of viewers and Craig Johnson's last seven books hitting the New York Times bestseller list, Walt Longmire is a name on everyone's lips and has earned his star.As Longmire devotees eagerly await the launch of the fifth season on Netflix, they can delve into the first eleven novels in the series and keep abreast of the latest goings-on in the world of their favorite straight-talking sheriff.

The Thunder Before the Storm: The Autobiography of Clyde Bellecourt


Clyde Bellecourt - 2016
    Iconic activist and AIM co-founder Clyde Bellecourt tells “the damn truth” about the American Indian Movement as he lived it.

Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago


John N. Low - 2016
    In very public expressions of indigeneity, they have refused to hide in plain sight or assimilate. Instead, throughout the city’s history, the Pokagon Potawatomi Indians have openly and aggressively expressed their refusal to be marginalized or forgotten—and in doing so, they have contributed to the fabric and history of the city.Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago examines the ways some Pokagon Potawatomi tribal members have maintained a distinct Native identity, their rejection of assimilation into the mainstream, and their desire for inclusion in the larger contemporary society without forfeiting their “Indianness.” Mindful that contact is never a one-way street, Low also examines the ways in which experiences in Chicago have influenced the Pokagon Potawatomi. Imprints continues the recent scholarship on the urban Indian experience before as well as after World War II.

Two Trickster Tango


Mark London Williams - 2016
    It’s the story of two legendary shape-shifters and boundary-busters -- Elijah, of Jewish folk tale and Passover wine fame, and Coyote, of Native American and tail-on-fire renown -- crossing paths in Depression-Era California. There are strikes brewing, baseball teams forming, outlaws still unrectified and scofflaws newly minted. And moons to be howled at and danced under. Dancing the Two Trickster Tango. And they’d love for you to join.

Who Belongs?: Race, Resources, and Tribal Citizenship in the Native South


Mikaeela M. Adams - 2016
    Despite the economic hardships and assimilationist pressures they faced, they insisted on their political identity as citizens of tribal nations and rejected Euro-Americanefforts to reduce them to another racial minority, especially in the face of Jim Crow segregation. Drawing upon their cultural traditions, kinship patterns, and evolving needs to protect their land, resources, and identity from outsiders, southern Indians constructed tribally-specific citizenshipcriteria, in part by manipulating racial categories - like blood quantum - that were not traditional elements of indigenous cultures. Mika�la M. Adams investigates how six southern tribes-the Pamunkey Indian Tribe of Virginia, the Catawba Indian Nation of South Carolina, the Mississippi Band ofChoctaw Indians, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida-decided who belonged. By focusing on the rights and resources at stake, the effects of state and federal recognition, the influence of kinshipsystems and racial ideologies, and the process of creating official tribal rolls, Adams reveals how Indians established legal identities.Through examining the nineteenth and twentieth century histories of these Southern tribes, Who Belongs? quashes the notion of an essential Indian and showcases the constantly-evolving process of defining tribal citizenship.

Celebrate My Hopi Corn


Anita Poleahla - 2016
    I have many sister kernels on my ear of corn. We grow under the warm sun." Celebrate my Hopi Corn written in Hopi and English by Hopi language teacher Anita Poleahla is the story of how corn is planted, cultivated, harvested and prepared for use in the Hopi home. The colorful illustrations by Hopi artist Emmett Navakuku describe the changing seasons and daily activities in a Hopi village.

Women in Civil War Texas: Diversity and Dissidence in the Trans-Mississippi


Deborah M. Liles - 2016
    Winner of the Ottis Locke Best Book from the East Texas Historical Association, 2017.Women in Civil War Texas is the first book dedicated to the unique experiences of Texas women during this time. It connects Texas women’s lives to southern women’s history and shares the diversity of experiences of women in Texas during the Civil War. Contributors explore Texas women and their vocal support for secession, coping with their husbands’ wartime absences, the importance of letter-writing, and how pro-Union sentiment caused serious difficulties for women. They also analyze the effects of ethnicity, focusing on African American, German, and Tejana women’s experiences. Finally, two essays examine the problem of refugee women in east Texas and the dangers facing western frontier women.