Native American History

[Gazella]

I’m halfway through Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. It basically tells the stories of the farmers and their families who lived through the Dust Bowl (aka the Dirty Thirties) of the 1930s. So far, it’s one of the most interesting histories I’ve read. In the book, the author talks little about Native American tribes such as the Apache, Comanche, and the Kiowa tribe and their notable chiefs like Quanah Parker, Ten Bears, Geronimo, etc.

History easily fascinates me and of course I got really interested and found myself putting my Kindle down and researching about Native Americans as the author did not go much into depth since the book is really about the Great Dust Bowl. I watched films about Sacagawea and I know that she accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition. I just discovered that Pocahontas was real. I always thought she was a part of Native American folklore. As a kid, I used to always watch the Disney film although I’m pretty sure that a lot of the movie was pure fiction.

Anyway, I’m looking for some good recommendations on books about Native American history. It could be about the life of a particular prominent chief/leader, or something general like the history of a tribe or an event involving Native Americans.

[jersysman]

This is a very good book about Quanah Parker - The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neely.

This one about Geronimo is also good - GERONIMO by S.M. Barrett

[Apache]

Originally Posted by jersysman

This is a very good book about Quanah Parker - The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neely.

This one about Geronimo is also good - GERONIMO by S.M. Barrett

http://www.amazon.com/Geronimo-Story...words=Geronimo
Here is a link to Geronimo and it is written by both Geronimo and S.M. Barrett.
Apache

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by jersysman

This is a very good book about Quanah Parker - The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neely.

This one about Geronimo is also good - GERONIMO by S.M. Barrett

Thank you for the recommendations! Will check them out.



*********************


Has anyone read and would recommend Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee?

[WillAdams]

The Geronimo version is available in a very nice edition here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Geronimo/

[BenG]

Another good book is Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne

It was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/bo...anted=all&_r=0

Also there's the old stand-by: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

http://www.amazon.com/Bury-My-Heart-...t+Wounded+Knee

[Stitchawl]

Take a look at 'Seven Arrows' by Hyemeyohsts Storm. It's an in depth look at the spiritual quest of the Native Americans in the SW part of the US, and how they learn to appreciate the world around them. Beautifully written, it's almost poetry in prose form.

Another very good read, but on a much sadder note is "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a historically accurate account by Dee Brown of the loss of Indian life, land, and culture at the hands of white America.

A third recommendation would be "Dancing with the Wheel" by Sun Bear. This isn't as much a history as it is a workbook to learn the Indian way of balancing the spirit using the concept of the Medicine Wheel.

These were some of the books I read in a series of classes in Native American Spirituality I attended at university that made the greatest impression on me.


Stitchawl

[Gazella]

Thank you all for the recommendations so far. They all seem really interesting!

Originally Posted by WillAdams

The Geronimo version is available in a very nice edition here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Geronimo/

I'm not sure if it would be legal for me to download this or not. My country (UAE) uses a Life +50 years copyright law. I don't really know how this works. If anyone can help me with this I'd really appreciate it.

[Billi]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Another very good read, but on a much sadder note is "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a historically accurate account by Dee Brown of the loss of Indian life, land, and culture at the hands of white America.

Another vote for "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". It's one of my favourite books ever.
For more recent history, maybe you are interested in Peter Matthiessen: "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse".

[Mike L]

Gazella,

Your mention of Sacagawea and Lewis & Clark reminded me of Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. It's the only book I've read about the expedition, but I greatly enjoyed it.

You've probably heard of Stephen Ambrose in connection with his World War II books - especially Band of Brothers and D-Day 6th June 1944. But he's written several on native American history, including a "parallel lives" work on Crazy Horse and Custer (which I haven't read yet). I also enjoyed his Nothing Like it in the World, about the building of the transcontinental railway.

Mike

[jgaiser]

I haven't read it yet (it's somewhere on Mt. ToBeRead), but I've had a number of recommendations for Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux

[Istvan diVega]

Not a subject I'm particularly well versed in, but I'll give one more vote to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Its status as a classic is very well deserved.

[dreams]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I haven't read it yet (it's somewhere on Mt. ToBeRead), but I've had a number of recommendations for Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux

Black Elk Speaks was one that I read in university and really enjoyed. I did reread it many years later and still enjoyed it. I have the pbook version and see that it is on amazon, but I would prefer the pbook version myself.

Spoiler:

The famous life story of the Lakota healer and visionary, Nicholas Black Elk.

Widely hailed as a spiritual classic, this inspirational and unfailingly powerful story reveals the life and visions of the Lakota healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and the tragic history of his Sioux people during the epic closing decades of the Old West. In 1930, the aging Black Elk met a kindred spirit, the famed poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt (1881–1973) on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The Lakota elder chose Neihardt to share his visions and life with the world. Neihardt understood and today Black Elk is known to all.

Black Elk’s remarkable great vision came to him during a time of decimation and loss, when outsiders were stealing the Lakotas’ land, slaughtering buffalo, and threatening their age-old way of life. As Black Elk remembers all too well, the Lakotas, led by such legendary men as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, fought unceasingly for their freedom, winning a world-renowned victory at the Little Bighorn and suffering unspeakable losses at Wounded Knee.

Black Elk Speaks however is more than the epic history of a valiant Native nation. It is beloved as a spiritual classic because of John Neihardt’s sensitivity to Black Elk’s resounding vision of the wholeness of earth, her creatures, and all of humanity. Black Elk Speaks is a once-in-a-lifetime read: the moving story of a young Lakota boy before the reservation years, the unforgettable history of an American Indian nation, and an enduring spiritual message for us all.

The premier edition features the first-ever annotated edition of Black Elk’s story, done by renowned Lakota scholar Raymond J. DeMallie, the original Standing Bear illustrations and new commentary on them, new maps of the world of Black Elk Speaks, and a revised index.

Another one that I read in university and was moved by the story was the story of Ishi - "In the early 1900s a small band of California Indians in the Yahi tribe lived in concealment, resisting the fate that had all but wiped out their people -- violent death by the invading gold seekers and settlers. In time, members of the small group died, until there remained a single survivor -- the man who became known as Ishi. This book tells the haunting, heroic story of Ishi -- the boy, the man, the lone survivor of his tribe.". I read another version, but see that the below is on amazon.

Spoiler:

ISHI in Two Worlds tells the true story of the man known as the "last wild Indian in North America." His sudden appearance in 1911 stunned the country. His tribe was considered extinct, destroyed in bloody massacres during the 1860s and 70s.

1911 was a pivotal moment in American history, and the lowest point for Native Americans. The west had been won, and the country now spread from sea to sea. Contact with white men's diseases and violence had reduced their numbers from over ten million to less than three hundred thousand. Geronimo had surrendered twenty five years before. In California, there were only fifty thousand Indians alive. Most were living on reservations or had been assimilated into the general population.

Yet here was one survivor, the last of his tribe, who refused to surrender. He had been hiding for forty years. When Ishi appeared, newspaper headlines across the country proclaimed the discovery of the Wild Man, the last Stone Age Man in North America.

For Alfred Kroeber, an ambitious young anthropologist at UC Berkeley, this was great news. He had been searching for years to find unacculturated Indians so that he could document true aboriginal life in America. He arranged for Ishi to come to the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Ishi only lived four more years, but during his brief stay he transformed the people around him. His dignity and sense of self, his tireless dedication to telling his stories and showing his way of life, and his lack of bitterness towards the people who had destroyed his own, amazed and impressed everyone who met him. Because of Ishi's courage and generosity, and Kroeber's meticulous notes and recordings, we have a glimpse of life in this country before the white man. Ishi embodied the entire history of Native Americans: their life before contact, the tragedy of their destruction, their refusal to disappear, their determination to carry their culture into the Twentieth Century.

Alfred Kroeber's wife, Theodora, brought Ishi's story to the modern public in 1961 in her vivid book, Ishi in Two Worlds: The Story of the Last Wild Indian in North America. Its enormous popularity led to two more books by Mrs. Kroeber: Ishi, the Last Yahi: A Documentary History, and the children's book, Ishi, Last of his Tribe. These books have been in print for three decades and have been translated into sixteen languages. An award-winning film ISHI THE LAST YAHI is available on amazon.com and from www.jedriffefilms.com

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I haven't read it yet (it's somewhere on Mt. ToBeRead), but I've had a number of recommendations for Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux

I was going to recommend that one, too.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by dreams

Another one that I read in university and was moved by the story was the story of Ishi - "In the early 1900s a small band of California Indians in the Yahi tribe lived in concealment, resisting the fate that had all but wiped out their people -- violent death by the invading gold seekers and settlers. In time, members of the small group died, until there remained a single survivor -- the man who became known as Ishi. This book tells the haunting, heroic story of Ishi -- the boy, the man, the lone survivor of his tribe.". I read another version, but see that the below is on amazon.

Spoiler:

ISHI in Two Worlds tells the true story of the man known as the "last wild Indian in North America." His sudden appearance in 1911 stunned the country. His tribe was considered extinct, destroyed in bloody massacres during the 1860s and 70s.

1911 was a pivotal moment in American history, and the lowest point for Native Americans. The west had been won, and the country now spread from sea to sea. Contact with white men's diseases and violence had reduced their numbers from over ten million to less than three hundred thousand. Geronimo had surrendered twenty five years before. In California, there were only fifty thousand Indians alive. Most were living on reservations or had been assimilated into the general population.

Yet here was one survivor, the last of his tribe, who refused to surrender. He had been hiding for forty years. When Ishi appeared, newspaper headlines across the country proclaimed the discovery of the Wild Man, the last Stone Age Man in North America.

For Alfred Kroeber, an ambitious young anthropologist at UC Berkeley, this was great news. He had been searching for years to find unacculturated Indians so that he could document true aboriginal life in America. He arranged for Ishi to come to the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Ishi only lived four more years, but during his brief stay he transformed the people around him. His dignity and sense of self, his tireless dedication to telling his stories and showing his way of life, and his lack of bitterness towards the people who had destroyed his own, amazed and impressed everyone who met him. Because of Ishi's courage and generosity, and Kroeber's meticulous notes and recordings, we have a glimpse of life in this country before the white man. Ishi embodied the entire history of Native Americans: their life before contact, the tragedy of their destruction, their refusal to disappear, their determination to carry their culture into the Twentieth Century.

Alfred Kroeber's wife, Theodora, brought Ishi's story to the modern public in 1961 in her vivid book, Ishi in Two Worlds: The Story of the Last Wild Indian in North America. Its enormous popularity led to two more books by Mrs. Kroeber: Ishi, the Last Yahi: A Documentary History, and the children's book, Ishi, Last of his Tribe. These books have been in print for three decades and have been translated into sixteen languages. An award-winning film ISHI THE LAST YAHI is available on amazon.com and from www.jedriffefilms.com

The Kroebers were Ursula K. LeGuin's mother and father. The "K." is for Kroeber.