Kategoria BISAC: History >> Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

In the sixteenth century, silver mined by native peoples became New Spain's most important export. Silver production served as a catalyst for northern expansion, creating mining towns that led to the development of new industries, markets, population clusters, and frontier institutions. Within these towns, the need for labor, raw materials, resources, and foodstuffs brought together an array of different ethnic and social groups--Spaniards, Indians, Africans, and ethnically mixed individuals or castas. On the northern edge of the empire, 350 miles from Mexico City, sprung up...

The battle of the Thames was the culmination of a bloody campaign that saw American forces clash with the British and their Native American allies on multiple occasions. In a battle that included the future US president William Henry Harrison, American naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry, and the legendary Shawnee leader Tecumseh, the Americans prevailed, due in part to their imaginative use of Kentucky mounted riflemen to charge British regular infantry and artillery. Their victory allowed them to secure the Northwest frontier, a crucial strategic gain in the War of 1812.

Drawing on his...

Definitively tracing the evolution and history of the Maya civilization from the arrival of migrating 'first peoples' to the end of the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican World with the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. A span of some thousands of years are concisely covered in one volume in a thorough study of the evolution of a complex Maya society. A new world of understanding about the ancient Maya civilization has been opened up from new archaeological discoveries and studies.

Easy to read and very interesting, providing first an overview, then a chapter by chapter journey through...

As a youngster in the 50's and 60's, Ron Bogg grew up in an area rich in archaeological resources. His home town, Jefferson City, Missouri, sat on a south bluff, close to several important rivers and creeks which emptied into the Missouri River. He walked a few blocks from his home and found three-to-five-thousand-year-old tools in a cow pasture overlooking a creek bottom. While still a child, he developed a desire to learn more about the people who created the artifacts he found.

His quest for understanding brought him to his first meeting of the Central States Archaeological...

Throughout the nineteenth century, Native and non-Native women writers protested U.S. government actions that threatened indigenous people's existence. The conventional genres they sometimes adopted -- the sensationalistic captivity narrative, sentimental Indian lament poetry, didactic assimilation fiction, and the mass-circulated commercial magazine -- typically had been used to reinforce the oppressive policies of removal, war, and allotment. But in Unconventional Politics Janet Dean explores how four authors, Sarah Wakefield, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, the Muscogee/Creek S. Alice...

The lavishly illustrated Cat Serpents: Underwater Spirits in Mississippian Pottery is a fascinating look at the unique combinations of animal, bird, reptilian, and human characteristics created 1500 years ago by mound building people living in the Mississippi River Valley of Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas. Hundreds of full color photographs illustrate the varied forms and are accompanied by detailed descriptions. Thoughtful articles interpreting the mythology and traditions of the Dhegihan people of the Mississippian Culture bring a new understanding to the symbolism of...

The Civil War experiences of Albert C. Ellithorpe, a Caucasian Union Army officer commanding the tri-racial First Indian Home Guards, illuminate remarkable and understudied facets of campaigning west of the Mississippi River. Major Ellithorpe s unit comprised primarily of refugee Muscogee Creek and Seminole Indians and African Americans who served as interpreters fought principally in Arkansas and Indian Territory, isolated from the larger currents of the Civil War. Using Ellithorpe s journal and his series of "Chicago Evening Journal" articles as her main sources, M. Jane Johansson...

The North is a complex place that is beautiful, moody, and anything but untouched. The Arctic, part of the international North that is pivotal to the world because of climate change, is no longer a frontier of the past. The same interest in the North that preoccupied artists and explorers of the Romantic era has returned greater than ever, but rather than merely depicting its grandeur, today's artists, scientists, and explorers question the future of the landscape.

Up Here connects art, science, and environment at a time when unprecedented climate change requires unprecedented...

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered...

Naamiwan's Drum follows the story of a famous Ojibwe medicine man, his gifted grandson, and remarkable water drum. This drum, and forty other artefacts, were given away by a Canadian museum to an American Anishinaabe group that had no family or community connections to the collection. Many years passed before the drum was returned to the family and only of the artefacts were ever returned to the museum.

Maureen Matthews takes us through this astonishing set of events from multiple perspectives, exploring community and museum viewpoints, visiting the ceremonial group leader...

In the prehistoric Southwest, if you traveled from one community to another, you would have observed tremendous diversity in how people looked and spoke. This volume is the first to look at how prehistoric people's appearance and speech conveyed their identities. Previously, Southwest archaeologists have studied identity using architecture, ceramics, textiles, and jewelry. This book uses a holistic, comparative approach to consider all aspects of appearance. Advocating a people-centered perspective for studying the past, Neitzel and her colleagues show how these characteristics conveyed...