1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus


Charles C. Mann - 2005
    Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America


Scott Weidensaul - 2012
    But before Custer or Lewis and Clark, before the first Conestoga wagons rumbled across the Plains, it was the East that marked the frontier—the boundary between complex Native cultures and the first colonizing Europeans.Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground—when radically different societies adopted and adapted the ways of the other, while struggling for control of what all considered to be their land.The First Frontier traces two and a half centuries of history through poignant, mostly unheralded personal stories—like that of a Harvard-educated Indian caught up in seventeenth-century civil warfare, a mixed-blood interpreter trying to straddle his white and Native heritage, and a Puritan woman wielding a scalping knife whose bloody deeds still resonate uneasily today. It is the first book in years to paint a sweeping picture of the Eastern frontier, combining vivid storytelling with the latest research to bring to life modern America’s tumultuous, uncertain beginnings.

The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca


Anthony F.C. Wallace - 1969
    Finally, this book does it for the Seneca. It is enthralling history, told in a knowledgeable, highly readable way."-- Alvin M. Joseph, Jr., author of The Indian Heritage of America"This book is at once troubling and richly textured; for it draws skillfully and impartially on the resources of history, ethnology and psychology to chronicle the agony and decline of one of the proudest of American Indian peoples."-- Morris Opler Book World"Here is a carefully crafted masterpiece of anthropological and historical investigation. It is about both the specific renaissance of the Seneca and the possible renaissance of any people. On its specific subject matter, it will probably remain the definitive study for a long time."-- Christian Science Monitor"

Falling Into Place: A Memoir of Overcoming


Hattie Kauffman - 2013
    Nationally recognized for her high-profile interviews and coverage of disasters and triumphs that affected millions, Kauffman candidly shares the experiences that made her into a perceptive and award-winning newswoman. An inspiring account of the Holy Spirit's transforming power, Kauffman's life is a true testament to God's goodness. Now available in trade paper.

A Distant Trumpet


Paul Horgan - 1960
    Originally published in 1960 selling half a million copies at the time and first reissued as a Nonpareil paperback in 1991, this immensely popular work of fiction has attracted, informed, and been embraced by a whole new generation of readers.

Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America


Jay Atkinson - 2015
    Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including thirty-nine-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant by dashing her head against a tree. After a forced march of nearly one hundred miles, Duston and two companions were transferred to a smaller band of Abenaki, who camped on a tiny island located at the junction of the Merrimack and Contoocook Rivers, several miles north of present day Concord, New Hampshire.This was the height of King William s War, both a war of terror and a religious contest, with English Protestantism vying for control of the New World with French Catholicism. After witnessing her infant s murder, Duston resolved to get even. Two weeks into their captivity, Duston and her companions, a fifty-one-year-old woman and a twelve-year-old boy, moved among the sleeping Abenaki with tomahawks and knives, killing two men, two women, and six children. After returning to the bloody scene alone to scalp their victims, Duston and the others escaped down the Merrimack River in a stolen canoe. They braved treacherous waters and the constant threat of attack and recapture, returning to tell their story and collect a bounty for the scalps.Was Hannah Duston the prototypical feminist avenger, or the harbinger of the Native American genocide? In this meticulously researched and riveting narrative, bestselling author Jay Atkinson sheds new light on the early struggle for North America."

Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862


Duane P. Schultz - 1992
    On the day after Christmas, in Mankato, Minnesota, thirty-eight Indians were hanged on the order of President Lincoln. This event stands today as the greatest mass execution in the history of the United States. In Over The Earth I Come, Duane Schultz brilliantly retells one of America's most violent and bloody events--the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862.

The Medicine Way: A Shamanic Path to Self Mastery (The "Earth Quest" Series)


Kenneth Meadows - 1991
    Medicine was energy - a vital force and source of knowledge that was inherent in nature itself. This book introduces the practical workings of this means of self-development, which aims to help the reader: realize the true wonder of nature and their place within it; find the way consciously to shape their own destiny; and learn how to enjoy the present moment and find fulfilment in life. It also contains information on the origins of important traditional teachings, including insights into symbolism and meaning of the Crystal Skulls.

Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life


James Daschuk - 2013
    Macdonald’s “National Dream.”It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present


David Treuer - 2019
    Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII


Chester Nez - 2011
    Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function. And, after the war, the Navajos were forbidden to speak of their service until 1968, when the code was finally declassified. Of the original twenty- nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them.In this memoir, the eighty-nine-year-old Nez chronicles both his war years and his life growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation-the hard life that gave him the strength, both physical and mental, to become a Marine. His story puts a living face on the legendary men who developed what is still the only unbroken code in modern warfare.

Coyote Rage


Owl Goingback - 2019
    Coyote is on a murderous hunt, leaving behind a trail of carnage. The shape-shifter is determined to kill the human representatives to the Great Council in Galun’lati, eliminating the rule of mankind in the New World. But Raven has overheard the Trickster’s evil plan, and will do anything to protect Luther Watie and his daughter, Sarah Reynolds, even if it means turning his skin inside out. The forces of evil are aligning in two very different worlds. Can mankind be saved, or will creatures of fur and fangs once again reign supreme? Cover art by Ben Baldwin “OWL GOINGBACK UNDERSTANDS WHAT MAKES HORROR FICTION TICK.” --The Arizona Republic “THE SUSPENSE OF A CLIVE BARKER OR DEAN KOONTZ.” --Kirkus Reviews

How the West Was Won


Louis L'Amour - 1962
    They were men like Linus Rawlings, a restless survivor of Indian country who’d headed east to see the ocean but left his heart—and his home—in the West. They were women like Lilith Prescott, a smart, spirited beauty who fled her family and fell for a gambling man in the midst of a frontier gold boom. These pioneering men and women sowed the seeds of a nation with their courage—and with their blood. Here is the story of how their paths would meet amid the epic struggle against fierce enemies and nature’s cruelty, to win for all time the rich and untamed West.

The Cherokee Nation: A History


Robert J. Conley - 2005
    The first history of the Cherokees to appear in over four decades, this is also the first to be endorsed by the tribe and the first to be written by a Cherokee. Robert Conley begins his survey with Cherokee origin myths and legends. He then explores their relations with neighboring Indian groups and European missionaries and settlers. He traces their forced migrations west, relates their participations on both sides of the Civil War and the wars of the twentieth century, and concludes with an examination of Cherokee life today. Conley provides analyses for general readers of all ages to learn the significance of tribal lore and Cherokee tribal law. Following the history is a listing of the Principal Chiefs of the Cherokees with a brief biography of each and separate listings of the chiefs of the Eastern Cherokees and the Western Cherokees. For those who want to know more about Cherokee heritage and history, Conley offers additional reading lists at the end of each chapter.

Comanches: The Destruction of a People


T.R. Fehrenbach - 1974
    T. R. Fehrenbach traces the Comanches' rise to power, from their prehistoric origins to their domination of the high plains for more than a century until their demise in the face of Anglo-American expansion.Master horseback riders who lived in teepees and hunted bison, the Comanches were stunning orators, disciplined warriors, and the finest makers of arrows. They lived by a strict legal code and worshipped within a cosmology of magic. As he portrays the Comanche lifestyle, Fehrenbach re-creates their doomed battle against European encroachment. While they destroyed the Spanish dream of colonizing North America and blocked the French advance into the Southwest, the Comanches ultimately fell before the Texas Rangers and the U. S. Army in the great raids and battles of the mid-nineteenth century.This is a classic American story, vividly and poignantly told.