With our American Philosophy and Religion series, Applewood reissues many primary sources published throughout American history. Through these books, scholars, interpreters, students, and non-academics alike can see the thoughts and beliefs of Americans who came before us.

Clad in the black robe of his priestly order and armed only with a crucifix, for more than a quarter of a century Father De Smet relentlessly tramped the American frontier to bring peace and religion to the tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the upper Missouri River country. In this biography, Robert Carriker describes De Smet’s love for the great American West and the native tribes who lived there, the Potawatomis, Flatheads, Coeur d’Alenes, Kalispels, Blackfeet, Yankton Sioux, and others to whom the Jesuit father carried Christianity. Soon the man called Black Robe became known throughout the mountains and plains as a man of peace and a friend of all Indians.

Gathered here in book form for the first time, the fourteen essays in Where We Belong exemplify Paul Shepard's interdisciplinary approach to human interaction with the natural world. Drawn from Shepard's entire career and presented chronologically, these pieces vary in setting from the Hudson River to the American prairie to New Zealand. Equally impressive is Shepard's spatial range, as he moves from subtle differences to grand designs, from the intimacy of an artist's brush stroke to a vista of the harsh Greek terrain. Alluding to a range of sources from Star Trek to Marshall McLuhan to the Bible, the writings discuss such topics as the geomorphology of New England landscape paintings, beautification and conservation projects, the Oregon Trail, and tourism. Whether Shepard is pondering why the Great Plains conjured up sea imagery in early observers, or how pioneers often resorted to architectural terms--temple, castle, bridge, tower--when naming the West's natural formations, he exposes, and thus invites us to unshoulder, the cultural and historical baggage we bring to the act of seeing. Throughout the book, Shepard seeks the antecedents of environmental perception and questions whether the paradigm we inherited should be superseded by one that leads us to a greater concern for the health of the planet. This volume is an important addition to Shepard's canon if only for the new view it offers of his intellectual development. More important, however, these selections demonstrate Shepard's grasp of a wide range of ideas related to the physical environment, including the various factors--historical, aesthetic, and psychological--that have shaped our attitudes toward the natural world and color the way we see it.

This tribal history of the Spokane Indians begins with an account of their early life in the Pacific Northwest central plateau region. It then describes in harrowing detail the U.S. government’s encroachment on their lands and the subsequent enforced settlement of Spokane people on reservations. The volume concludes with a presentation of twentieth-century developments. This edition of The Spokane Indians features a new foreword and introduction, which provide up-to-date information on the Spokane people and their most recent efforts to recover and strengthen their historical and cultural heritage.

If Lewis and Clark returned to Montana today, they would find the landscape reassuringly familiar. The same would hold true for past generations of Kootenai, Salish, Crow, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, and Blackfeet. Even after thousands of years, some ancestors could still find their way to Sun River country, an ancient oasis of water and wildlife where the mountains and prairies meet. The past still lingers along old trails, and among the people who live here today. Some, such as anthropologist and storyteller Sally Thompson, are better equipped to notice the traces of history lurking in place names and written in cairns, carved in tree bark, etched into prairie boulders, or resting among well-knapped spear points. In Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo, Thompson unearths new information and startling insights into Montana's untold history in twenty-three true stories. Along the way, she shares the challenges of groundbreaking research and the joys of finding hidden treasures. These stories connect past and present, bringing into focus a common heritage among many peoples in an uncommon land.