Written by renowned authorities and enriched with legends, eyewitness accounts, quotations, and haunting memories from many different Native American cultures, this history depicts these peoples and their way of life from the time of Columbus to the 20th century. Illustrated throughout with stunning works of Native American art, specially commissioned photographs, and beautifully drawn maps.
At the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did Lewis and Clark’s journey have on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, who offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling’s illumination of her ancestral family, their survival, and the magic they use to this day; to Mark N. Trahant’s attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and Roberta Conner’s comparisons of the explorer’s journals with the accounts of the expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling, these essays shed new light on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West.
Reimagining Indians investigates a group of Anglo-American writers whose books about Native Americans helped reshape Americans' understanding of Indian peoples at the turn of the twentieth century. Hailing from the Eastern United States, these men and women traveled to the American West and discovered "exotics" in their midst. Drawn to Indian cultures as alternatives to what they found distasteful about modern American culture, these writers produced a body of work that celebrates Indian cultures, religions, artistry, and simple humanity. Although these writers were not academically trained ethnographers, their books represent popular versions of ethnography. In revealing their own doubts about the superiority of European-American culture, they sought to provide a favorable climate for Indian cultural survival in a world indisputably dominated by non-Indians. They also encouraged notions of cultural relativism, pluralism, and tolerance in American thought. For the historian and general reader alike, this volume speaks to broad themes of American cultural history, Native American history, and the history of the American West.
A powerful collection of text and full-color photographs that offers an intimate glimpse of Native American life. • Includes rare photos and firsthand accounts of the sun dance, sacred pipe, yuwipi, and vision quest ceremonies. • By internationally recognized ethnographer Richard Erdoes, author of Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions and Gift of Power. How do you go about knowing a people? In this phenomenal combination of landscape, ceremony, individual portrait, and prose, Richard Erdoes brings forth the lesser seen world of the Native American experience and vision. With the aid of firsthand accounts collected during three decades of personal interactions with indigenous tribes, Erdoes chronicles the traditional rites, individual lives, and historical persecution of North America's indigenous peoples. The images and words of Crying for a Dream represent Erdoes' finest work. His focus on the natural and sacred world of North America's indigenous peoples includes elements of the Sioux ceremonial cycle and portraits of native peoples from the plains, mesas, and deserts. The sun dance, sacred pipe, yuwipi, and vision quest are described by the author and his subjects and are illustrated with more than 70 photographs.
A Broken Flute is a book of reviews that critically evaluate children's books about Native Americans written between the early 1900s and 2003, accompanied by stories, essays and poems from its contributors. The authors critique some 600 books by more than 500 authors, arranging titles A to Z and covering pre-school, K-12 levels, and evaluations of some adult and teacher materials. This book is a valuable resource for community and educational organizations, and a key reference for public and school libraries, and Native American collections.
For many people, Native American architecture calls to mind the wigwam, tipi, iglu, and pueblo. Yet the richly diverse building traditions of Native Americans encompass much more, including specific structures for sleeping, working, worshipping, meditating, playing, dancing, lounging, giving birth, decision-making, cleansing, storing and preparing food, caring for animals, and honoring the dead. In effect, the architecture covers all facets of Indian life. The collaboration between an architect and an anthropologist, Native American Architecture presents the first book-length, fully illustrated exploration of North American Indian architecture to appear in over a century. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton together examine the building traditions of the major tribes in nine regional areas of the continent from the huge plank-house villages of the Northwest Coast to the moundbuilder towns and temples of the Southeast, to the Navajo hogans and adobe pueblos of the Southwest. Going beyond a traditional survey of buildings, the book offers a broad, clear view into the Native American world, revealing a new perspective on the interaction between their buildings and culture. Looking at Native American architecture as more than buildings, villages, and camps, Nabokov and Easton also focus on their use of space, their environment, their social mores, and their religious beliefs. Each chapter concludes with an account of traditional Indian building practices undergoing a revival or in danger today. The volume also includes a wealth of historical photographs and drawings (including sixteen pages of color illustrations), architectural renderings, and specially prepared interpretive diagrams which decode the sacred cosmology of the principal house types.
