American Indian History

The French and Indian War was the world's first truly global conflict. When the French lost to the British in 1763, they lost their North American empire along with most of their colonies in the Caribbean, India, and West Africa. In The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France, the only comprehensive account from the French perspective, William R. Nester explains how and why the French were defeated.

Do you like true stories of the Wild West? You should love these tales of outlaws, gunslingers and adventurers then. Of course you will have heard of most of them as many have become legends. Their escapades were exciting, daring and reckless and many paid the ultimate price in the end. These tales romp along with plenty of action and recreate the atmosphere of this exciting and dangerous era in America's history using the vernacular of the times. PLEASE NOTE - Whilst the events that took place are primarily true, (as far as we know), the author has used a certain amount of creative license...

The received idea of Native American history - as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did 150 Sioux die at the hands of the US 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.

A sweeping and deeply personal account of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life.

On November 4, 1791, a coalition of warriors determined to set the Ohio River as a permanent boundary between tribal lands and White settlements faced an army led by Arthur St. Clair—the resulting horrific struggle ended in the greatest defeat of an American army at the hands of Native Americans. The road to the battle of the Wabash began when Arthur St. Clair was appointed to lead an army into the heart of the Ohio Indian Confederacy while building a string of fortifications along the way. He would face difficulties in recruiting, training, feeding, and arming volunteer soldiers.

One of the most groundbreaking and highly acclaimed titles that Heyday has published, The Ohlone Way describes the culture of the Indian people who inhabited the Bay Area prior to the arrival of Europeans. Recently included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Top 100 Western Non-Fiction” list, The Ohlone Way has been described by critic Pat Holt as a “mini-classic”.

This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.

Long before state health care or food stamps, before the creation of welfare ghettoes in our major cities, America’s first experiment with socialism and government dependency practically destroyed the American Indian. Government experts created the Indian reservations. America’s churches whole-heartedly supported it, convinced the reservation would be the key to winning souls for Christianity.

In March 1621, when Plymouth’s survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth’s governor, John Carver, declared their people’s friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the 'First Thanksgiving'. The treaty remained operative until King Philip’s War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.

Adoptee activist, award-winning journalist and author Trace L Hentz announced “THE COUNT 2024” to coincide with “Almost Dead Indians,” Book 5 in the Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects series. "I am sorry we didn't know this sooner, this history. I guess the governments didn't want us to know," she says. Since 2004 she tirelessly investigated numerous adoption programs, such as the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA (The Adoption Resource Exchange of America). Both involved moving Native American babies and children across North America into adoptions with non-Native ...

The French and Indian War is one of the most significant, yet least acknowledged and understood, periods of American history. Fought chiefly between the two imperial powers of England and France in the mid-18th century, the struggle would also draw in native Indian nations who sought to exert their own strength and sovereignty over the North American continent. From the first shots fired in the Ohio Valley wilderness in 1754 until the Treaty of Paris signed in 1763, the French and Indian War became a conflict that encircled the globe.

In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making.

In a real-life version of Little Big Man comes Indian captive narrative of Herman Lehmann. He was captured as a boy in 1870 and lived for nine years among the Apaches and Comanches. Long considered one of the best captivity stories from the period, Lehmann came to love the people and the life. Only through the gentle persuasion of famed Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, was Lehmann convinced to remain with his white family once he was returned to them.

Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist's storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present. With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation.

In 1875, Indian Territory, in what is now the state of Oklahoma, was a haven for thieves, swindlers, and murderers, all trying to escape the reach of the law. When President U.S. Grant appointed Judge Isaac Parker judge of the Western District of Arkansas, which included the territory, Parker was intent upon bringing fugitives to justice. He authorized U.S. Marshal James Fagan to hire 200 deputy marshals to help police the 4,500 square mile lawless territory. Among those deputies was Bass Reeves. Born a slave in 1838, Reeves had spent the Civil War as a runaway in Indian Territory, and ...

The Algonquin, or Eastern Woodlands Indian, tribes inhabited Indiana as the Europeans began penetrating the region in the 17th Century. The tribes in Indiana included the Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Potawatomie, Kickapoo, and others. The Algonquin Tribes of Indiana relates the general culture, lifestyle, and agriculture of this vast family of Amerindian tribes.

The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. A conflict involving not only white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and the Spanish, the Creek War opened the Deep South to the Cotton Kingdom, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

In an obscure, two-hundred-year-old museum in a little town in western Massachusetts there stands what once was the most revered relic from the history of early New England: the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre of 1704.

Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers an unforgettable memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. In this rare firsthand account, Fortunate Eagle lives up to his reputation as a "contrary warrior" by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike. Although Fortunate Eagle recognizes Pipestone's shortcomings, he describes his time there as nothing less than "a little bit of heaven."

In the early spring morning light, shortly after seven o’clock, the body looked like a pile of debris covered by brown and black leaves left over from the previous autumn. A decorated war hero with severe amnesia sustained twelve years before, Clifford Dumont has remained lost in the middle of his life until unexpected events challenge him to confront his suppressed fears and the black wall of his past. When he finds the dead body of his co-worker, Jean-Paul, at a national historical battlefield, Clifford is jarred out of his day-to-day routines. His complacency is further challenged by ...