First Girl in the West


Eliza Spalding Warren - 2013
    Her story is unparalleled—and offers fascinating insights into the earliest days of the emigrants. Eliza’s parents launched the Oregon Trail era with the original covered wagon trek in 1836. Settling in the region that is now the junction of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, Eliza grew up among native peoples. She learned their language and understood their culture better than any pioneer girl of the era. Eliza was at the Whitman Mission on the day of the fateful attacks that so profoundly changed the course of western history. Her telling of that story is uniquely valuable—even though she was just 10 years old—because she was the only survivor who spoke the language of the attackers. This first-person account is an eye-opening look at life in the early West.Eliza’s story is as fresh and readable today as the day it was written—a rare example of a historic document that can still engage modern readers, even children. This enhanced edition adds dozens of photos, maps, graphics, and notes to the original manuscript. The bonus material provides a layer of context that gives readers deeper insight into her compelling story.

Lakota Woman


Mary Crow Dog - 1990
    Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.

American Indian Stories


Zitkála-Šá - 1921
    Determined, controversial, and visionary, she creatively worked to bridge the gap between her own culture and mainstream American society and advocated for Native rights on a national level. Susan Rose Dominguez provides a new introduction to this edition.

American Indian Myths and Legends


Richard Erdoes - 1984
    From all across the continent come tales of creation and love, of heroes and war, of animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. Alfonso Ortiz, an eminent anthropologist, and Richard Erdoes, an artist and master storyteller, Indian voices in the best folkloric sources of the nineteenth century to make this the most comprehensive and authentic volume of American Indian myths available anywhere.With black-and-white drawings throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

Blackfoot Lodge Tales The Story of a Prairie People


George Bird Grinnell - 2001
    Double Runner Small Leggings Mad Wolf and the Little Blackfoot were smoking and talking and I was writing in my note-book. As I put aside the book and reached out my hand for the pipe Double Runner bent over and picked up a scrap of printed paper which had fallen to the ground.

Panther in the Sky: A Novel Based on the Life of Tecumseh


James Alexander Thom - 1984
    Rich, colorful and bursting with excitement, this remarkable story turns James Alexander Thom's power and passion for American history to the epic story of Tecumseh's life and give us a heart-thumping novel of one man's magnificent destiny--to unite his people in the struggle to save their land and their way of life from the relentless press of the white settlers.

An Undisturbed Peace


Mary Glickman - 2016
    But Abe’s visions of a privileged apprenticeship in the Sassaporta Brothers’ empire based in Savannah, Georgia, are soon replaced with the grim reality of indentured servitude in his uncle Isadore’s camp town near Greensborough, North Carolina.   Some 50 miles west, a woman named Dark Water of the Mountains leads a life of irreverent solitude. The daughter of a powerful Cherokee chief, it has been nearly 20 years since she renounced her family’s plans for her to marry a wealthy white man.   Far away in Georgia, a black slave named Jacob has resigned himself to a life of loss and injustice in a city of refuge for criminals.   A trio of outsiders linked by unrequited and rekindled love, Abe, Dark Water, and Jacob find themselves surrounded by the escalating horrors of President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. As the US government implements the appalling logistics of transporting the Native American tribes of the South to the western side of the Mississippi River, Abe tries desperately to intervene—and Jacob and Dark Water fight for their lives.

The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle


Robert Anasi - 2002
    Robert Anasi took up boxing in his twenties to keep in shape, attract women, and sharpen his knuckles for the odd bar fight. He thought of entering "the Gloves," but put it off. Finally, at age thirty-two-his last year of eligibility-he vowed to fight, although he was an old man in a sport of teenagers and a light man who had to be even lighter (125 pounds) to fight others his size.So begins Anasi's obsessive preparation for the Golden Gloves. He finds Milton, a wily and abusive trainer, and joins Milton's "Supreme Team": a black teenager who used to deal guns in Harlem, a bus driver with five kids, a hard-hitting woman champion who becomes his sparring partner. Meanwhile, he observes the changing world of amateur boxing, in which investment bankers spar with ex-convicts and everyone dreads a fatal blow to the head. With the Supreme Team, he goes to the tournament, whose outcome, it seems, is rigged, like so much in boxing life today. Robert Anasi tells his story not as a journalist on assignment but as a man in the midst of one of the great adventures of his life. The Gloves, his first book, has the feel of a contemporary classic.

Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation


John Ehle - 1988
    government policy toward Indians in the early 1800s is that it persisted in removing to the West those who had most successfully adapted to European values. As whites encroached on Cherokee land, many Native leaders responded by educating their children, learning English, and developing plantations. Such a leader was Ridge, who had fought with Andrew Jackson against the British. As he and other Cherokee leaders grappled with the issue of moving, the land-hungry Georgia legislatiors, with the aid of Jackson, succeeded in ousting the Cherokee from their land, forcing them to make the arduous journey West on the infamous "Trail of Tears." (Library Journal)

Now You Know: A Novel


Susan Kelly - 2013
    It ends with a promise. On her deathbed Frances extracts it from her three daughters—the utterly capable homemaker Alice; the recalcitrant Allegra, a recovering alcoholic; and bohemian Edie, who shrinks in the face of any commitment: their promise to “look after Libba.” As if the formidable, tough-minded Libba Charles, author of ten books, a literary celebrity, needed looking after. Yet when they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother’s summer hideaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, they go. None of them is prepared, though, for what they will discover there—about their mother, about Libba, about themselves—in this poignant, adroit rendering of reunions and farewells.

Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade


John O. Casler - 1893
    Let us determine to die here and we will conquer. Rally behind them!” With these words Gen. B. E. Bee of the Confederates States Army inspired the famous nickname for Gen. T. J. Jackson, and his brigade, at the First Battle of Bull Run: Stonewall. Three months earlier the 2d, 4th, 5th and 27th Virginia Infantry Regiments had been brigaded together with the 33rd, in whose “A” Company John O. Casler was serving as a Private.However, their reputation came at a cost: if there was an extra hard duty, Jackson would send in his old brigade lest he be thought of as favouring them.Drawn from his diary at the time, Casler recounts his experiences in the ranks, from marches and looting to nail-biting escapades and the monotony of life as a prisoner of war. Instead of a history of the war, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade is a remarkable account of men in war, graphically bringing to light the challenges they faced on a daily basis.Praise for Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade“…as illustrating the daily life of a soldier in the ranks it is one of the very best publications I have read. I found it a vivid reminder of the days gone by…” — E. M. Schutte, late Sergeant Company C, 13th Massachusetts.“Your style is clear and entertaining. It will do all the old boys of both sides good to read it.” — J. G. Winne, late 16th New York Horse Artillery.“This is to certify that John O. Casler belonged to Company A, 33d Virginian Infantry, Stonewall Brigade. John was a good soldier, always ready and willing to perform any duty assigned him.” — W. H. Powell, Captain Company A, 33d Virginian Infantry, Stonewall Brigade.John O. Casler (1838-1926) was an American soldier and author born in Frederick County, Virginia. While he had left the family home aged twenty one, when it seemed that war was imminent he returned and enlisted in the Confederate States Army in June 1861. Following the war he emigrated to Sherman, Texas. For details of other books published by Albion Press go to the website at www.albionpress.co.uk. Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker


Bill Neeley - 1995
    After the Civil War, the trickle of white settlers encroaching on tribal land in northern Texas suddenly turned inot a tidal wave. Within a few short years, the great buffalo herds, a source of food and clothing for the Indians from time immemorial, had been hunted to the verge of extinction in an orgy of greed and destruction. The Indians' cherished way of life was being stolen from them.Quanah Parker was the fiercest and bravest of the Comanches who fought desperately to preserve their culture. He led his warriors on daring and bloody raids against the white settlers and hunters. He resisted to the last, heading a band of Comanches, the Quahadas, after the majority of the tribe had acquiesced to resettlement on a reservation. But even the Comanches—legendary horsemen of the Plains who had held off Spanish and Mexican expansion for two centuries—could not turn back the massive influex of people and eaponry from the East.Faced with the bitter choice between extermination or compromise, Quanah stepped off the warpath and sat down at the bargaining table. With remarkable skill, the Comanche warrior adapted to the new challenges he faced, learning English and the art of diplomacy. Working to bridge two very different worlds, he fought endlessly to gain a better deal for his people. As the tribe's elder statesman, Quanah lobbied Congress in Washington, D.C., entertained President Teddy Roosevelt and other dignitaries at his home, invested in the railroad, and enjoyed the honor of having a Texas town named after him. The Last Comanche Chief is a moving portayal of this famed leader. His story is an inspiring and compelling chapter in the history of Native Americans and of the American West.

A Warrior’s Promise: sequel to Capture My Heart


Rosanne Bittner - 2018
    Peter is educated and can conduct himself as white; however, Claire understands that deep in his heart, her husband is very Indian. In the prequel to this story (CAPTURE MY HEART), it was the “Indian” Two Wolves, a scout for the U. S. Army, who rescued Claire from a fate worse than death and who saved her life more than once in a flight from those who would harm them. Now, as a married couple running a supply business near Fort Collins, Colorado, a restless hatred from Colorado citizens and the Colorado Militia toward the Cheyenne threatens to tear Peter and Claire apart. Peter adores and respects Claire’s strength in standing up for the man she loves against those who would condemn her for loving an Indian. He has promised Claire to always be by her side and help her run their business … until the United States Army asks him to accept another scouting mission. Because he thinks it will help the Cheyenne, Peter agrees, but events that follow challenge his promises to Claire. When Peter comes across the aftermath of the horrible Sand Creek Massacre committed by the Colorado Militia and their leader, Colonel John Chivington, his Cheyenne blood rises to the surface, and he is once again Two Wolves, a warrior who wants revenge. Will Two Wolves’s rage be stronger than his love for Claire and their unborn child? Only true love can hold these two together against a land torn by the changes of a growing West. Power, passion, true history and romance all make this story another winner for “The Queen of Western Romance,” Rosanne Bittner.

Barkskins


Annie Proulx - 2016
    Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.

The Joy of Life


Mary Beth Smith - 2013
    If you have read other books about him, read this one to discover more about his philosophy and spirituality based on his own works. It covers his entire life from birth to death. The Joy of Life distills the personality of Theodore Roosevelt into one medium-sized book. Quotes appear in this book which show him to be funny, hyperactive, energetic, exciting, enthusiastic, entertaining and lovable. His contemporaries say such things as: the more I see him the more and more I love him; work was an entertainment with him there; it was love at first sight; never have we laughed so much as when T.R. was our host. The book shows what motivated him at each stage of his life. During his Police Commissioner days he said to Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives, "I have read your book and I have come to help." Charging up San Juan hill he realized that he was destined to become a great leader of people like his Rough Riders: a mixed group who included cowboys, Indians, Ivy Leaguers, hispanics, marshals, negroes and Texas Rangers. His greatest effort was in conservation. He preserved millions of acres of land including wildlife refuges, national parks, national monuments and irrigation projects. He accomplished many things in his life but would have obtained a place in history for that alone.