This work is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Indian removal that accurately presents the removal process as a political, economic, and tribally complicit affair. In 1830, Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. president to implement removal of Native Americans with the passage of the Indian Removal Act. Less than a decade later, tens of thousands of Native Americans—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee-Creek, Seminole, and others—were forcibly moved from their tribal lands to enable settlement by Caucasians of European origin. Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal presents a realistic depiction of removal as a complicated process that was deeply affected by political, economic, and tribal factors, rather than the popular romanticized concept of American Indians being herded west by military troops through a trackless wilderness. This work is presented in two volumes. Volume One contains essays on subjects and people that are general in scope and arranged alphabetically by subject; Volume Two is dedicated to primary documents regarding Indian removal and examines specific information about political debates, Indian responses to removal policy, and removals of individual tribes.

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 to date of the many important roles Chisholm played: trailblazer, friend of Indian chiefs, linguist of Indian languages, scout, and—perhaps most important—liaison between Indian tribes, the U.S. government, and the Republic of Texas. With his formidable intellect and talent for diplomacy, Chisholm blazed a trail in the history of the American Southwest more fascinating even than the one that bears his name.

Slavery existed in North America long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. For centuries, from the pre-Columbian era through the 1840s, Native Americans took prisoners of war and killed, adopted, or enslaved them. Christina Snyder's pathbreaking book takes a familiar setting for bondage, the American South, and places Native Americans at the center of her engrossing story. Indian warriors captured a wide range of enemies, including Africans, Europeans, and other Indians. Yet until the late eighteenth century, age and gender more than race affected the fate of captives. As economic and political crises mounted, however, Indians began to racialize slavery and target African Americans. Native people struggling to secure a separate space for themselves in America developed a shared language of race with white settlers. Although the Indians' captivity practices remained fluid long after their neighbors hardened racial lines, the Second Seminole War ultimately tore apart the inclusive communities that Native people had created through centuries of captivity. Snyder's rich and sweeping history of Indian slavery connects figures like Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe with little-known captives like Antonia Bonnelli, a white teenager from Spanish Florida, and David George, a black runaway from Virginia. Placing the experiences of these individuals within a complex system of captivity and Indians' relations with other peoples, Snyder demonstrates the profound role of Native American history in the American past.