First published in 2007. Deemed as an important contribution to the study of certain aspects of South American native civilisation, collated over five years, and includes personal observations as well as literature relating to the customs and beliefs of the native Indians in this vast area.

In 1906 when the Creek Indian Chitto Harjo was protesting the United States government's liquidation of his tribe's lands, he began his argument with an account of Indian history from the time of Columbus, "for, of course, a thing has to have a root before it can grow." Yet even today most intelligent non-Indian Americans have little knowledge of Indian history and affairs those lessons have not taken root. This book is an in-depth historical survey of the Indians of the United States, including the Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska, which isolates and analyzes the problems which have beset these people since their first contacts with Europeans. Only in the light of this knowledge, the author points out, can an intelligent Indian policy be formulated. In the book are described the first meetings of Indians with explorers, the dispossession of the Indians by colonial expansion, their involvement in imperial rivalries, their beginning relations with the new American republic, and the ensuing century of war and encroachment. The most recent aspects of government Indian policy are also detailed the good and bad administrative practices and measures to which the Indians have been subjected and their present situation. Miss Debo's style is objective, and throughout the book the distinct social environment of the Indians is emphasized—an environment that is foreign to the experience of most white men. Through ignorance of that culture and life style the results of non-Indian policy toward Indians have been centuries of blundering and tragedy. In response to Indian history, an enlightened policy must be formulated: protection of Indian land, vocational and educational training, voluntary relocation, encouragement of tribal organization, recognition of Indians' social groupings, and reliance on Indians' abilities to direct their own lives. The result of this new policy would be a chance for Indians to live now, whether on their own land or as adjusted members of white society. Indian history is usually highly specialized and is never recorded in books of general history. This book unifies the many specialized volumes which have been written about their history and culture. It has been written not only for persons who work with Indians or for students of Indian culture, but for all Americans of good will.

examines relations between Southeastern Indians who were removed to Indian Territory in the early nineteenth century and Southern Plains Indians who claimed this area as their own. These two Indian groups viewed the world in different ways. The Southeastern Indians, primarily Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, were agricultural peoples. By the nineteenth century they were adopting American "civilization": codified laws, Christianity, market-driven farming, and a formal, Euroamerican style of education. By contrast, the hunter-gathers of the Southern Plains-the Comanches, Kiowas, Wichitas, and Osages-had a culture based on the buffalo. They actively resisted the Removed Indians' "invasion" of their homelands. The Removed Indians hoped to lessen Plains Indian raids into Indian Territory by "civilizing" the Plains peoples through diplomatic councils and trade. But the Southern Plains Indians were not interested in "civilization" and saw no use in farming. Even their defeat by the U.S. government could not bridge the cultural gap between the Plains and Removed Indians, a gulf that remains to this day.

In the past two decades, new research and thinking have dramatically reshaped our understanding of Choctaw history before removal. Greg O’Brien brings together in a single volume ten groundbreaking essays that reveal where Choctaw history has been and where it is going. Distinguished scholars James Taylor Carson, Patricia Galloway, and Clara Sue Kidwell join editor Greg O’Brien to present today’s most important research, while Choctaw writer and filmmaker LeAnne Howe offers a vital counterpoint to conventional scholarly views. In a chronological survey of topics spanning the precontact era to the 1830s, essayists take stock of the great achievements in recent Choctaw ethnohistory. Galloway explains the Choctaw civil war as an interethnic conflict. Carson reassesses the role of Chief Greenwood LeFlore. Kidwell explores the interaction of Choctaws and Christian missionaries. A new essay by O’Brien explores the role of Choctaws during the American Revolution as they decided whom to support and why. The previously unpublished proceedings of the 1786 Hopewell treaty reveal what that agreement meant to the Choctaws. Taken together, these and other essays show how ethnohistorical approaches and the “new Indian history” have influenced modern Choctaw scholarship. No other recent collection focuses exclusively on the Choctaws, making Pre-removal Choctaw History an indispensable resource for scholars and students of American Indian history, ethnohistory, and anthropology.

For almost fifty years George Bird Grinnell's great work The Fighting Cheyennes has stood unrevised and virtually unchallenged as the definitive account of the struggles of the Cheyenne Indians to preserve their way of life. Now Donald J. Berthrong has re-examined Grinnell's findings and searched historical records unavailable to or not used by Grinnell to verify or correct his conclusions. The result is this accurate, highly interesting account of the Cheyennes' life on the Great Plains, their system of government and religion, and their relation to the fur and hide trade during their last years of freedom. After nearly two centuries of fighting other Indians and whites for their lands, in the eighteenth century the Cheyenne's were forced to shift their range from the Minnesota River Valley to the Central and Southern Plains. From 1861 through 1875, they fought to maintain their free, nomadic existence. There were bloody wars with territorial forces and federal troops, and a few years of intermittent peace and retaliation (including the massacre at Sand Creek in 1864). Finally, after the intensive winter campaign of 1874-75, the fierce Southern Cheyenne's were brought to bay by the U.S. Army and herded onto a reservation in western Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their turbulent, colorful history related by Berthrong will interest the general reader as well as the historian and anthropologist

Includes bibliographies and index.

Of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians the Cherokees were early recognized as the greatest and the most civilized. Indeed, between 1540 and 1906 they reached a higher peak of civilization than any other North American Indian tribe. They invented a syllabary and developed an intricate government, including a system of courts of law. They published their own newspaper in both Cherokee and English and became noted as orators and statesmen. At the beginning the Cherokees’ conquest of civilization was agonizingly slow and uncertain. Warlords of the southern Appalachian Highlands, they were loath to expend their energies elsewhere. In the words of a British officer, "They are like the Devil’s pigg, they will neither lead nor drive." But, led or driven, the warlike and willful Cherokees, lingering in the Stone Age by choice at the turn of the eighteenth century, were forced by circumstances to transfer their concentration on war to problems posed by the white man. To cope with these unwelcome problems, they had to turn from the conquests of war to the conquest of civilization.