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Land & People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey--Origins & Settlement Patterns by Peter O. Wacker
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Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
Nicole Eustace - 2021
Though virtually forgotten today, this act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America.In Covered with Night, leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period. As she shows, the murder of the Indigenous man set the entire mid-Atlantic on edge, with many believing war was imminent. Isolated killings often flared into colonial wars in North America, and colonists now anticipated a vengeful Indigenous uprising. Frantic efforts to resolve the case ignited a dramatic, far-reaching debate between Native American forms of justice—centered on community, forgiveness, and reparations—and an ideology of harsh reprisal, unique to the colonies and based on British law, which called for the killers’ swift execution.In charting the far-reaching ramifications of the murder, Covered with Night—a phrase from Iroquois mourning practices—overturns persistent assumptions about “civilized” Europeans and “savage” Native Americans. As Eustace powerfully contends, the colonial obsession with “civility” belied the reality that the Iroquois, far from being the barbarians of the white imagination, acted under a mantle of sophistication and humanity as they tried to make the land- and power-hungry colonials understand their ways. In truth, Eustace reveals, the Iroquois—the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee, as they are known today—saw the killing as an opportunity to forge stronger bonds with the colonists. They argued for restorative justice and for reconciliation between the two sides, even as they mourned the deceased.An absorbing chronicle built around an extraordinary group of characters—from the slain man’s resilient widow to the Indigenous diplomat known as “Captain Civility” to the scheming governor of Pennsylvania—Covered with Night transforms a single event into an unforgettable portrait of early America. A necessary work of historical reclamation, it ultimately revives a lost vision of crime and punishment that reverberates down into our own time.
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754 - 1766
Fred Anderson - 2000
Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain’s empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution.Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountry involving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville, Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to world conflagration. Weaving together the military, economic, and political motives of the participants with unforgettable portraits of Washington, William Pitt, Montcalm, and many others, Anderson brings a fresh perspective to one of America’s most important wars, demonstrating how the forces unleashed there would irrevocably change the politics of empire in North America.
Captivity of the Oatman Girls (Classics of the Old West)
Royal B. Stratton - 1857
The Oatman's, led by their patriarch Royce, were a family of nine. Members of the Mormon faith, they had become dissenters of Brigham Young's leadership and allying themselves with James Brewster and his 'Brewsterites' resolved to move to California in 1850. The original substantial wagon-train they had formed for security split as a result of disagreements within the party and the group to which the Oatman's belonged further fragmented until the family were left travelling alone, against all advice, in hostile Indian territory. On the banks of the Gila River (in present day Arizona) the family were attacked by Indians and all were slaughtered with the exception of two girls, aged 13 and 7 years, who were abducted and a brother. Their brother Lorenzo was felled by a club blow, presumed dead by the assailants, and left among the corpses of his mother, father and siblings, but he regained consciousness and eventually found his way to safety. The girl's captors, Tolkepayas or Yavapais, kept the girls in slavery for a period then sold them to Mohave Apaches. The story of the ordeals of the Oatman girls has inspired fiction and works of history alike. Olive Oatman's face, with its distinctive tattoo has all but become a western icon. Written during the 1850s this book became a bestseller of its day. This Leonaur edition is available in in softcover and hardback with dustjacket or collectors.
A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes
Helen Hunt Jackson - 1881
government’s flawed Indian policy and the unfair and cruel treatment afforded North American Indians by expansionist Americans. Jackson wrote the book as a polemic to "appeal to the hearts and conscience of the American people," who she hoped would demand legislative reform from Congress and redeem the country’s name from the stain of a "century of dishonor." Her efforts, which constitute a landmark in Indian reform, helped begin the long process of public awareness for Indian rights that continues to the present day.Beginning with a legal brief on the original Indian right of occupancy, A Century of Dishonor continues with Jackson’s analysis of how irresponsibility, dishonesty, and perfidy on the part of Americans and the U.S. government devastated the Delaware, Cheyenne, Nez Perce, Sioux, Ponca, Winnebago, and Cherokee Indians. Jackson describes the government’s treatment of the Indians as "a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises" exacerbated by "a sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery, and wrongs" committed by frontier settlers, with only an occasional Indian retaliation. Such notable events as the flight of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces and the Cherokee Trail of Tears illustrate Jackson’s arguments.Valerie Sherer Mathes’s foreword traces Jackson’s life and writings and places her in the context of reform advocacy in the midst of nineteenth century expansionism. This unabridged paperback edition contains an index, and the complete appendix, which includes Jackson’s correspondence concerning the Sand Creek Massacre and her report as Special Comminnioner to investigate the needs of California’s Mission Indians.
Copper Falcon
W. Michael Gear - 2014
Cahokian settlements and Cahokian traders carried the people and the culture far and wide. But this magnificent expansion, like the empire of Rome, did not happen without conflict and battle. In Copper Falcon, a young warrior, Flint Knife, and his father travel to the legendary capitol city, ruled by the living god known as the Morning Star, to ask for military aid to drive back the barbarians. Flint Knife is amazed at the great city's awe-inspiring palaces and temples, the buzzing activity of its hundreds of thousands of residents. What should be a simple errand becomes a bewildering and frightening experience when Flint Knife learns that his father is hiding a dark secret that will change his life--and his son's life--foreverAt the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War
Lisa Brooks - 2018
Through both a narrow focus on Weetamoo, Printer, and their network of relations, and a far broader scope that includes vast indigenous geographies, Brooks leads us to a new understanding of the history of colonial New England and of American origins. Brooks’s pathbreaking scholarship is grounded not just in extensive archival research but also in the land and communities of Native New England, reading the actions of actors during the seventeenth century alongside an analysis of the landscape and interpretations informed by tribal history.
The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America
Rebecca Fraser - 2016
But the story did not end there. All settlers had to become linguists, traders, and explorers, and yet not forget their roots and customs from the old country. With the aid of exciting contemporary documents, Rebecca Fraser brings to life of an ordinary family, the Winslows, made less ordinary by their responses to the challenges of the New World. The very special relationship between Edward Winslow and Massassoit chief of the Wampanoags is commemorated in the first Thanksgiving. But fifty years later Edward's son Josiah was commander in chief of the New England militias against Massassoit's son in King Philip's War.Written with the pace of an epic, this is a story that is both national but intimate and human, chronicling as the Winslows made the painful decisions that ensured their survival in America.
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.
First Generations: Women in Colonial America
Carol Berkin - 1996
Carol Berkin's multicultural history reconstructs the lives of American women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-women from European, African, and Native backgrounds-and examines their varied roles as wives, mothers, household managers, laborers, rebels, and, ultimately, critical forces in shaping the new nation's culture and history.
The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America
Gary B. Nash - 2005
The Unknown American Revolution plunges us into the swirl of ideology, grievance, outrage, and hope that animated the Revolutionary decades.It tells of the efforts of a wide variety of men and women who stepped forward amidst a discouraging, debilitating, but ultimately successful war to inscribe on a clean slate their ideas for the kind of America they hoped would emerge from the blood-soaked eight-year conflict.Millennialist preachers and enslaved Africans, frontier mystics and dockside tars, disgruntled women and aggrieved Indians--all had their own fierce vision of what an independent America could and should be. According to Nash, the American Revolution was truly a people's revolution, a civil war at home as well as an armed insurrection against colonial control. "No one who reads this compelling book will ever again call the American Revolution a conservative affair orchestrated by great white men in great white wigs.…[Nash] reveals the churning cauldron of political and social discontents--white, red, and black, rich and poor, male and female--that was 18h-century North America. From it flowed the many and often contradictory streams that created the United States. Nash's is a real revolution, with winners as well as losers, with as many dreams dashed as dreams fulfilled." -- Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania
A History of the Indians of the United States
Angie Debo - 1970
Only in the light of this knowledge, the author points out, can an intelligent Indian policy be formulated.In the book are described the first meetings of Indians with explorers, the dispossession of the Indians by colonial expansion, their involvement in imperial rivalries, their beginning relations with the new American republic, and the ensuing century of war and encroachment.The most recent aspects of government Indian policy are also detailed the good and bad administrative practices and measures to which the Indians have been subjected and their present situation.Miss Debo's style is objective, and throughout the book the distinct social environment of the Indians is emphasized—an environment that is foreign to the experience of most white men. Through ignorance of that culture and life style the results of non-Indian policy toward Indians have been centuries of blundering and tragedy.In response to Indian history, an enlightened policy must be formulated: protection of Indian land, vocational and educational training, voluntary relocation, encouragement of tribal organization, recognition of Indians' social groupings, and reliance on Indians' abilities to direct their own lives.The result of this new policy would be a chance for Indians to live now, whether on their own land or as adjusted members of white society. Indian history is usually highly specialized and is never recorded in books of general history. This book unifies the many specialized volumes which have been written about their history and culture. It has been written not only for persons who work with Indians or for students of Indian culture, but for all Americans of good will.
The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
Jill Lepore - 1998
Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war."It all began when Philip (called Metacom by his own people), the leader of the Wampanoag Indians, led attacks against English towns in the colony of Plymouth. The war spread quickly, pitting a loose confederation of southeastern Algonquians against a coalition of English colonists. While it raged, colonial armies pursued enemy Indians through the swamps and woods of New England, and Indians attacked English farms and towns from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River Valley. Both sides, in fact, had pursued the war seemingly without restraint, killing women and children, torturing captives, and mutilating the dead. The fighting ended after Philip was shot, quartered, and beheaded in August 1676.The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Lepore makes clear that it was after the war--and because of it--that the boundaries between cultures, hitherto blurred, turned into rigid ones. King Philip's War became one of the most written-about wars in our history, and Lepore argues that the words strengthened and hardened feelings that, in turn, strengthened and hardened the enmity between Indians and Anglos. She shows how, as late as the nineteenth century, memories of the war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals--and how in our own century that same war has inspired Indian attempts to preserve "Indianness" as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness.Telling the story of what may have been the bitterest of American conflicts, and its reverberations over the centuries, Lepore has enabled us to see how the ways in which we remember past events are as important in their effect on our history as were the events themselves.From the Hardcover edition.
Takin' It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader
Alexander Bloom - 1995
Adopted nationwide, this anthology brings together representative writings, many of which have been unavailable for years or have never been reprinted. Drawn from mainstream sources, little-known sixties periodicals, pamphlets, public speeches, and personal voices, the selections range from the Port Huron Statement and the NOW Bill of Rights to speeches by Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, to private letters from civil rights workers and Vietnam soldiers. Introductions and headnotes by the editors highlight the importance of particular documents, relating them to each other and placing them within the broader context of the decade. Particular attention is paid to civil rights, Black Power, the counterculture, the women's movement, anti-war activity, and gay and lesbian struggles, as well as the conservative current that ran counter to more typical sixties movements. For this revised edition, the editors have added nearly thirty selections, including new readings on religion, the drug culture, the sexual revolution, gay rights, conservatism, and the Vietnam War experience. Covering an extremely popular period of history, Takin' it to the streets remains the most accessible and authoritative reader on an extraordinary decade, one unlike America had seen before or has experienced since.
Native Roots
Mark Reps - 2019
This two-part novella explores Zeb’s roots as a young man and his early law enforcement career as a border patrol agent and Tucson policeman. A mysterious beating, illegal immigrants crossing the border, and a brush with the jaded world of politics mesh together to teach Zeb the meaning of justice, western style. This novella is a prequel to the Zeb Hanks Mystery Series.
The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
John Putnam Demos - 1994
The minister was released, but his daughter chose to stay with her captors. Her extraordinary story is one of race, religion, and the conflict between two cultures.