Established by the Cherokee Nation in 1851 in present-day eastern Oklahoma, the nondenominational Cherokee Female Seminary was one of the most important schools in the history of American Indian education. Unusual among Indian schools because it was founded by neither the federal government nor by missionary agencies, the school offered a rigorous curriculum from elementary grades through high school that was patterned after that of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. It offered no instruction in the Cherokee language or culture, but it was open only to full- and mixed-blood Cherokee girls. Many...

Henry Mihesuah, a Comanche of the Quahada band, has led an ordinary modern American Indian life filled with extraordinary moments. Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s on his family's allotment outside Duncan, Oklahoma, Mihesuah was a member of a family of farmers who gave part of what they grew to black sharecroppers and often helped feed their poorer white neighbors. Never afraid of controversy and always the first to fight, Henry Mihesuah fell in love with and married a white woman and then served a dangerous tour of duty in the Marines in post-World War II China. In the 1950s he took a...

Ten leading Native scholars examine the state of scholarly research and writing on Native Americans. Their distinctive perspectives and telling arguments lend clarity to the heated debate about the purpose and direction of Native American scholarship.

All too frequently, Native Americans have little control over how they and their ancestors are researched and depicted in scholarly writings. The relationship between Native peoples and the academic community has become especially rocky in recent years. Both groups are grappling with troubling questions about research ethics, methodology, and...

So You Want to Write about American Indians? is the first of its kind an indispensable guide for anyone interested in writing and publishing a novel, memoir, collection of short stories, history, or ethnography involving the Indigenous peoples of the United States. In clear language illustrated with examples many from her own experiences Choctaw scholar and writer Devon Abbott Mihesuah explains the basic steps involved with writing about American Indians.So You Want to Write about American Indians? provides a concise overview of the different types of fiction and nonfiction...

During the decades between the Civil War and the establishment of Oklahoma statehood, Choctaws suffered almost daily from murders, thefts, and assaults--usually at the hands of white intruders, but increasingly by Choctaws themselves. This book focuses on two previously unexplored murder cases to illustrate the intense factionalism that emerged among tribal members during those lawless years as conservative Nationalists and proassimilation Progressives fought for control of the Choctaw Nation.