HIST 270: Native American History

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them." Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

Based in part on interviews with notable Native Americans-including Adam Fortunate Eagle, Johnny Bear Contreas, and Waneek Horn-Miller-and featuring removable facsimiles of rare documents from U.S. archives and private collections, this is a powerful you-are-there account of American history as seen through the eyes of the people who were here first. Readers will gain a whole new perspective on the past as they share the outlook of those who view the #147;discovery” of America as one of history's great tragedies. nbsp; Facsimile documents include: An issue of The Cherokee Phoenix newspaper from 1828 A seventeenth century map of the New World President Lincoln's hand-written pardon of 38 Dakota warriors Top-secret Navajo Code Talker documents from the Second World War And much more!

Did Native Americans suffer genocide? This controversial question lies at the heart of Native America and the Question of Genocide. After reviewing the various meanings of the word genocide, author Alex Alvarez examines a range of well-known examples, such as the Sand Creek Massacre and the Long Walk of the Navajo, to determine where genocide occurred and where it did not. The book explores the destructive beliefs of the European settlers, and then looks at topics including disease, war, and education through the lens of genocide. Native America and the Question of Genocide shows the diversity of Native American experiences post-contact, and illustrates how tribes relied on ever-evolving and changing strategies of confrontation and accommodation depending on their location, the time period, and individuals involved, and these often resulted in very different experiences. Alvarez treats this difficult subject with sensitivity and uncovers the complex realities of this troubling period in American history.

Amanda goes through her young life having to survive experiences that nobody should have to. She was always quiet and found it easier to keep to herself, rather than share herself with the world. She struggled with being open and talking to anyone about what was invading her life. In her heart she believed it was much easier to keep her secrets to herself. Sometimes sharing your deepest and darkest with someone you love is the only way to free yourself. Will she ever be able to find that someone? Do the trials of her adolescence make her stronger in the end? Or will her world be turned upside down and she'll be crushed under the weight of her love for another? Can she recover from the unthinkable? Will Amanda be able to pull though and find the one thing she's always longed for and never really had...love?

Review of the previous edition: "A model of excellence in the art of reference volume publishing... Every public and school library... should acquire this treasure. It will remain the standard for many years to come." - Dr. James A. Clifton, Department of Anthropology, Western Michigan University This superb, fully illustrated reference offers the most up-to-date and essential facts on the identity, kinships, locations, populations and cultural characteristics of some 400 separately identifiable peoples native to the North American continent, both living and extinct, from the Canadian Arctic to the Rio Grande. The concise information is organized for easy use and covers all cultural/geographical regions: the Northeastern Woodlands, Southeastern Woodlands, Plains and Prairie, Plateau, Great Basin, California, Southwest, Northwest Coast, Subarctic and Arctic. Tribes are grouped by linguistic family. The spiritual beliefs and the role of Native Americans in history and modern culture are addressed in detail. More than 300 color and archival photographs, 21 regional maps and a dazzling portfolio of over 100 specially commissioned color illustrations give a dramatic visual introduction to the vast range of Native American culture. Population and settlement trends based on recent census figures paint detailed portraits of all officially recognized tribes. Appendices include the Powwow Trail and a list of museums holding Native American artifacts (including the new Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian). This is one of the most comprehensive, up-to-date and useful references on the subject and an important record of Native American peoples.

In 1779, Shawnees from Chillicothe, a community in the Ohio country, told the British, "We have always been the frontier." Their statement challenges an oft-held belief that American Indians derive their unique identities from longstanding ties to native lands. By tracking Shawnee people and migrations from 1400 to 1754, Stephen Warren illustrates how Shawnees made a life for themselves at the crossroads of empires and competing tribes, embracing mobility and often moving willingly toward violent borderlands. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Shawnees ranged over the eastern half of North America and used their knowledge to foster notions of pan-Indian identity that shaped relations between Native Americans and settlers in the revolutionary era and beyond. Warren's deft analysis makes clear that Shawnees were not anomalous among Native peoples east of the Mississippi. Through migration, they and their neighbors adapted to disease, warfare, and dislocation by interacting with colonizers as slavers, mercenaries, guides, and traders. These adaptations enabled them to preserve their cultural identities and resist coalescence without forsaking their linguistic and religious traditions.

In this richly illustrated study of a complex society, Max Carocci delves into the history of the North American Plains Indian warrior cultures, examining their ongoing legacy, continuity, and the change between historic war practices and contemporary Native American military associations. Warriors of the Plains skilfully interweaves a survey of North American Plains Indian history with a generously detailed examination of Plains Indian warrior art - weapons, amulets, clothing, and ceremonial objects - with particular emphasis on their ritual use and symbolic meanings. Replete with both modern and archival photographs from the British Museum, this book offers a novel approach to a fascinating subject, while integrating history, anthropology, and personal narratives. Showcasing meticulous scholarship and the impressive collection of the British Museum, Warriors of the Plains is a comprehensive and significant contribution to the study of North American History.

Native American reservations on the Northern Plains were designed like islands, intended to prevent contact or communication between various Native peoples. For this reason, they seem unlikely sources for a sense of pan-Indian community in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. But as Frank Rzeczkowski shows, the flexible nature of tribalism as it already existed on the Plains subverted these goals and enabled the emergence of a collective "Indian" identity even amidst the restrictiveness of reservation life. Rather than dividing people, tribalism on the Northern Plains actually served to bring Indians of diverse origins together. Tracing the development of pan-Indian identity among once-warring peoples, Rzeczkowski seeks to shift scholars' attention from cities and boarding schools to the reservations themselves. Mining letters, oral histories, and official documents—including the testimony of native leaders like Plenty Coups and Young Man Afraid of His Horses—he examines Indian communities on the Northern Plains from 1800 to 1925. Focusing on the Crow, he unravels the intricate connections that linked them to neighboring peoples and examines how they reshaped their understandings of themselves and each other in response to the steady encroachment of American colonialism. Rzeczkowski examines Crow interactions with the Blackfeet and Lakota prior to the 1880s, then reveals the continued vitality of intertribal contact and the covert—and sometimes overt—political dimensions of "visiting" between Crows and others during the reservation era. He finds the community that existed on the Crow Reservation at the beginning of the twentieth century to be more deeply diverse and heterogeneous than those often described in tribal histories: a multiethnic community including not just Crows of mixed descent who preserved their ties with other tribes, but also other Indians who found at Crow a comfortable environment or a place of refuge. This inclusiveness prevailed until tribal leaders and OIA officials tightened the rules on who could live at—or be considered—Crow. Reflecting the latest trends in scholarship on Native Americans, Rzeczkowski brings nuance to the concept of tribalism as long understood by scholars, showing that this fluidity among the tribes continued into the early years of the reservation system. Uniting the Tribes is a groundbreaking work that will change the way we understand tribal development, early reservation life, and pan-Indian identity.

A moving, thoughtful, beautifully illustrated look at the lives of men and women who helped shape the history of the Lakota people and the American West nbsp; Lakota Portraits weaves together vignettes of Lakotas, including both prominent and ordinary individuals, to tell the story of the Lakota people. It covers the sweep of Lakota history from earliest years, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examining the question of who the Lakota people are, Joseph Agonito explores the days of nomadic freedom on the Great Plains, Lakota culture and religion, internal struggles, the coming of European settlers, conflicts generated by waves of miners and immigrants, clashes with white authorities, war with American soldiers, the loss of freedom, the countless challenges encountered in transitioning to the reservation, and life on and off the reservations. nbsp; While numerous books tell the history of the Lakota people, Lakota Portraits tells their story through the colorful lives and experiences of various notable individuals who span that history. Each vignette tells a piece of the narrative#151;both grand and commonplace stories of men and women. Together, these stories paint a picture of a courageous, vibrant people, full of life and love for the Lakota nation and their homeland. nbsp; Unlike other books on the Lakota, Lakota Portraits spends considerable time on the reservation years, well into the twentieth century, and the characters who helped shape the difficult and painful adjustments the Lakota people made to life on and off the agencies.

This lively introductory survey of indigenous North American arts from ancient times to the present explores both the shared themes and imagery found across the continent and the distinctive traditions of each region. Focusing on the richness of artwork created in the US and Canada, Native North American Art, Second Edition, discusses 3,000 years of architecture, wood and rock carvings, basketry, dance masks, clothing and more. The expanded text discusses twentieth- and twenty-first-century arts in all media including works by James Luna, Kent Monkman, Nadia Myre, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Will Wilson, and many more. Authors Berlo and Phillips incorporate new research and scholarship, examining such issues as art and ethics, gender, representation, and the colonial encounter. By bringing into one conversation the seemingly separate realms of the sacred and the secular, the political and the domestic, and the ceremonial and the commercial, Native North American Art shows how visual arts not only maintain the integrity of spiritual and social systems within Native North American societies, but have long been part of a cross-cultural experience as well.