Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - Indigenous

The son of white captive Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker rose from able warrior to tribal leader on the Comanche reservation. Between 1875 and his death in 1911, Quanah dealt with local Indian agents and with presidents and other high officials in Washington, facing the classic dilemma of a leader caught between the dictates of an occupying power and the wrenching physical and spiritual needs of his people. He maintained a remarkable blend of progressive and traditional beliefs, and contrary to government policy, he practiced polygamy and the peyote religion. In this crisp and readable...

"He is wise; he has something to say. Let us call him 'A-tse-nu-sti, ' the messenger." This is the story of Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester (1798-1859), "messenger" and missionary to the Cherokees from 1825 to 1859 under the auspices of the American Board of Foreign Missions (Congregational). One of Worcester's earliest accomplishments was to set Sequoyah's alphabet in type so that he and Elias Boudinot could print the bilingual "Cherokee Phoenix." After removal to Indian Territory, he helped establish the "Cherokee Advocate," edited by William Ross, and issued almanacs, gospels, hymnals,...

In reminiscing about his early years on Minnesota's White Earth Reservation at the turn of the century, John Rogers reveals much about the life and customs of the Chippewas. He tells of food-gathering, fashioning bark canoes and wigwams, curing deerskin, playing games, and participating in sacred rituals. These customs were to be cast aside, however, when he was taken to a white school in an effort to assimilate him into white society. In the foreword to this new edition, Melissa L. Meyer places Roger's memoirs within the story of the White Earth Reservation.

This biography of Black Elk is based on extensive interviews with Lucy Looks Twice, the holy man's last surviving child, as well as others who knew him personally. Michael F. Steltenkamp sheds new light on the figure portrayed in Black Elk Speaks as a victim of Western subjugation, doomed to live out his life as a relic of the past. Instead, Steltenkamp reveals that in 1904 Black Elk was baptized a Catholic and subsequently served as a devoted catechist and missionary to his fellow American Indians until his death in 1950.

Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris chronicles the extraordinary life of a twentieth-century American Indian performing artist. Born in 1903 on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, Molly ventured into show business at an early age--performing vaudeville in New York, starring in the classic docudrama The Silent Enemy, then dancing for royalty and mingling with the literary elite in Europe.

In Paris, Molly found an audience more appreciative of authentic Native dance than in the United States. There Molly married a French journalist, but she was forced to...

Perhaps no Indian leader of the mid-nineteenth century was as well known in his time as the great Lakota Sioux Red Cloud. Although his fame later was eclipsed by that of the legendary heroes who crushed Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn-Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse-Red Cloud's active leadership of his people, and his representation of the Sioux in vital negotiations with the U.S. government, survived the demise of the other leaders by many years.

Red Cloud was not born to leadership. He earned it. In his early years he gained a reputation for fierceness as...

In They Call Me Agnes, the narrator, Agnes Deernose, provides a warm, personal view of Crow Indian family life and culture.

Fred Voget, anthropologist and adopted Crow, sets the stage for Agnes's story, which he compiled from extensive interviews with Agnes and her friends. He describes the origins of the Crows and their culture during buffalo-hunting days and early reservation life. Through Agnes, an elderly Crow woman, he also reveals changes wrought on this once far-ranging, independent tribe by twentieth-century forces.

Born in 1922, Kenny Thomas Sr. has been a trapper, firefighter, road builder, river-freight hauler, and soldier. Today he is a respected elder and member of a northern Athabaskan tribal group residing in Tanacross, Alaska. As a song and dance leader for the Tanacross community, Thomas has been teaching village traditions at an annual culture camp for more than twenty years. Over a three-year period, folklorist Craig Mishler conducted a series of interviews with Thomas about his life experiences. "Crow Is My Boss" is the fascinating result of this collaboration.

Written in a style that...

The Chisholm Trail, traveled by Texas longhorn cattle moving northward across present-day Oklahoma to Kansas, was named for mixed-blood Cherokee Jesse Chisholm (1805-1868). Though Chisholm's prominence in western lore rests largely on this connection, he was active on the frontier long before the naming of the trail. Because he left no diaries, letters, or personal documents, however, his life has been shrouded in mystery.

Drawing from many sources, including early state and federal documents, newspaper accounts, and trade and military records, Stan Hoig offers the clearest picture...

"She's Tricky Like Coyote" is the story of Annie Miner Peterson, who was born in an Indian village on a tidal slough along the southern Oregon Coast in 1860.

Annie lived a full and fascinating seventy-nine years. In the 1930s, she dictated her story, in Miluk Coos, to anthropologist Melville Jacobs, who translated the account into English. Although only a few pages long, the autobiography reveals a bright, outspoken, and independent woman who was raised as a traditional Indian and married five Indian men but whose adult life was spent in the white world. Supplementing the account with...

Camilla Townsend's stunning new book, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, differs from all previous biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar seventeenth century Native Americans were--in the way they saw, understood, and struggled to control their world---not only to the invading British but to ourselves.

Neither naive nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father, the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed, Pocahontas's life is a testament to the subtle intelligence that Native...

Pocahontas may be the most famous Native American who ever lived, but during the settlement of Jamestown, and for two centuries afterward, the great chiefs Powhatan and Opechancanough were the subjects of considerably more interest and historical documentation than the young woman. It was Opechancanough who captured the foreign captain -Chawnzmit---John Smith. Smith gave Opechancanough a compass, described to him a spherical earth that revolved around the sun, and wondered if his captor was a cannibal. Opechancanough, who was no cannibal and knew the world was flat, presented Smith to his...