"Fascinating accounts of told Native American history -- the murder of Andrew J. Bolon, Yakima Indian Agent, mid-September 1855, remained a mystery for almost six decades. Then, Su-el-lil broke decades of fear-induced silence to recall his witness of the murder, and to lead his friend L. V. McWhorter to the murder site. And in 1911 Owl Child detailed how, while riding with a band of Piegan Blackfeet in Southern Montana Territory, he watched as a detachment of several hundred U.S. Cavalry was set upon by perhaps thousands of Indian warriors and annihilated, watched the commander's terrifying last moments -- and suicide." -- Amazon.com viewed November 12, 2020.
Throughout the 1850s, Native peoples of the inland Northwest actively resisted white encroachments into their traditional territories. Tensions exploded in 1858 when nearly one thousand Palouses, Spokanes, and Coeur d?Alenes routed an invading force commanded by Colonel Edward Steptoe. In response, Colonel George Wright mounted a large expedition into the heart of the Columbia Plateau to punish and subdue its Native peoples. Opposing Wright?s force was a loose confederacy of tribes led by the famous warrior Kamiakin. ø Indian War in the Pacific Northwest is a vivid and valuable first-person account of that aggressive and bloody military campaign. Related by Lawrence Kip, a young lieutenant serving under Wright, it provides a rare glimpse of military operations and campaign life along the far western frontier before the Civil War. Replete with colorful prose and acute observations, his journal is also notable for its dramatic descriptions of clashes with Kamiakin?s men and compelling portraits of leading figures on both sides of the Plateau Indian War. ø The new introduction provides the historical and cultural background and aftermath of the conflict, explores its effects on present-day Native peoples of the Columbia Plateau, and critically assesses Kip?s observations and interpretations. Also included in this Bison Books edition are two Native accounts of the conflict by Kamiakin and Mary Moses.
Since the shocking news first broke in 1876 of the Seventh Cavalry’s disastrous defeat at the Little Big Horn, fascination with the battle—and with Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer—has never ceased. Widespread interest in the subject has spawned a vast outpouring of literature, which only increases with time. This two-volume bibliography of Custer literature is the first to be published in some twenty-five years and the most complete ever assembled. Drawing on years of research, Michael O’Keefe has compiled entries for roughly 3,000 books and 7,000 articles and pamphlets. Covering both nonfiction and fiction (but not juvenile literature), the bibliography focuses on events beginning with Custer’s tenure at West Point during the 1850s and ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Included within this span are Custer’s experiences in the Civil War and in Texas, the 1873 Yellowstone and 1874 Black Hills expeditions, the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, and the Seventh Cavalry’s pursuit of the Nez Perces in 1877. The literature on Custer, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Seventh Cavalry touches the entire American saga of exploration, conflict, and settlement in the West, including virtually all Plains Indian tribes, the frontier army, railroading, mining, and trading. Hence this bibliography will be a valuable resource for a broad audience of historians, librarians, collectors, and Custer enthusiasts.
In 1834 the weary missionary Jason Lee arrived on the banks of the Willamette River and began to build a mission to convert the local Kalapuya and Chinook populations to the Methodist Church. The denomination had become a religious juggernaut in the United States, dominating the religious scene throughout the mid-Atlantic and East Coast. But despite its power and prestige and legions of clergy and congregants, Methodism fell short of its goals of religious supremacy in the northwest corner of the continent. In A Country Strange and Far Michael C. McKenzie considers how and why the Methodist Church failed in the Pacific Northwest and how place can affect religious transplantation and growth. Methodists failed to convert local Native people in large numbers, and immigrants who moved into the rural areas and cities of the Northwest wanted little to do with Methodism. McKenzie analyzes these failures, arguing the region itself--both the natural geography of the place and the immigrants' and clergy's responses to it--was a primary reason for the church's inability to develop a strong following there. The Methodists' efforts in the Pacific Northwest provide an ideal case study for McKenzie's timely region-based look at religion.
Col. George Wright’s campaign against the Yakima, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Palouse, and other Indian peoples of eastern Washington Territory was intended to punish them for a recent attack on another U.S. Army force. Wright had once appeared to respect the Indians of the Upper Columbia Plateau, but in 1858 he led a brief war noted for its violence, bloodshed, and summary trials and executions. Today, many critics view his actions as war crimes, but among white settlers and politicians of the time, Wright was a patriotic hero who helped open the Inland Northwest to settlement. “Hang Them All” offers a comprehensive account of Wright’s campaigns and explores the controversy surrounding his legacy. Over thirty days, Wright’s forces defeated a confederation of Plateau warriors in two battles, destroyed their food supplies, slaughtered animals, burned villages, took hostages, and ordered the hanging of sixteen prisoners. Seeking the reasons for Wright’s turn toward mercilessness, Cutler asks hard questions: If Wright believed he was limiting further bloodshed, why were his executions so gruesomely theatrical and cruel? How did he justify destroying food supplies and villages and killing hundreds of horses? Was Wright more violent than his contemporaries, or did his actions reflect a broader policy of taking Indian lands and destroying Native cultures? Stripped of most of their territory, the Plateau tribes nonetheless survived and preserved their cultures. With Wright’s reputation called into doubt, some northwesterners question whether an army fort and other places in the region should be named for him. Do historically based names honor an undeserving murderer, or prompt a valuable history lesson? In examining contemporary and present-day treatments of Wright and the incident, “Hang Them All” adds an important, informed voice to this continuing debate.
Coming Full Circle is an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationships between spirituality and health in several contemporary Coast Salish and Chinook communities in western Washington from 1805 to 2005. Suzanne Crawford O'Brien examines how these communities define what it means to be healthy, and how recent tribal community-based health programs have applied this understanding to their missions and activities. She also explores how contemporary definitions, goals, and activities relating to health and healing are informed by Coast Salish history and also by indigenous spiritual views of the body, which are based on an understanding of the relationship between self, ecology, and community. Coming Full Circle draws on a historical framework in reflecting on contemporary tribal health-care efforts and the ways in which they engage indigenous healing traditions alongside twenty-first-century biomedicine. The book makes a strong case for the current shift toward tribally controlled care, arguing that local, culturally distinct ways of healing and understanding illness must be a part of contemporary Native healthcare. Combining in-depth archival research, extensive ethnographic participant-based field work, and skillful scholarship on theories of religion and embodiment, Crawford O'Brien offers an original and masterful analysis of contemporary Native Americans and their worldviews.
Lucullus V. McWhorter met and befriended Yakama and Nez Perce warriors in 1903, forming deep relationships and accumulating facts, stories, and perspectives that would otherwise have been irretrievably lost. Adopted as an honorary member of the Yakama tribe and given the name Old Wolf, he served as a stirring spokesman for non-treaty bands and captured prominent Nez Perce voices in his classic Western histories, Yellow Wolf (1940) and Hear Me, My Chiefs! (1952). Originally published in 1996, Voice of the Old Wolf is the only biography of Lucullus V. McWhorter (1860-1944). Author Steven Ross Evans focused on the Yakima area rancher’s unique roles as Nez Perce tribal historian and collector of traditional lore to help fill a significant gap in the chronology of Nez Perce history--the post 1880s to the 1940s, and assembled numerous excellent photographs, many previously unpublished. This edition includes a new foreword describing the vast McWhorter collection held by Washington State University.
