This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Based on an unusual document describing, at first hand, an American Indian's daily existence in the last century, this volume breathes life into a wealth of information usually found only in monographs. Tow Leggings, an aged Crow Indian of the upper Missouri, was interviewed shortly before his death in 1923 by a representative of New York's Museum of the American Indian. The field manuscript then lay in the museum's vaults for nearly half a century. Mr. Nabokov, now a research associate of the museum, was asked by its director to tell Two Leggings' story as the old warrior himself told it and to place the episodes in historical and cultural perspective. Incessant forays against enemy tribes for scalps and horses, Sun Dances in which performers pierced their breast muscles with wooden skewers, battlefield competition and wife-stealing between rival military societies, the complex religious relationship between vision fasts, medicine bundles, and a war raid's outcome--all these and more are vividly re-created as Two Leggings experienced them; and in the telling the key motivating processes of Crow male life are understood. The book's drama turns on Two Leggings' consuming ambition to become a "pipeholder," or war leader. A pauper-orphan in his youth, he strove impetuously for renown but was gradually forced to conform to tribally accepted methods of achieving tribally instilled goals. A penetrating and illuminating record of a way of life now vanished, Two Leggings' story is a primary source for understanding, and witnessing in action, the religious and social values of a Plains Indian people.

Fur traders observed that no other Indians of the Upper Missouri were so well dressed or bragged of their tribal affiliation as frequently or as vociferously as the Crow. Two Leggings, the teller of the story you are about to read, was above all else a Crow warrior. His story tells us quite as much of tribal values that motivated and guided his actions as it does of his personal escapades. He was one of the last Crow Indians to abandon the warpath.

Thousands of years of American Indian history are covered in this work, from the first migrations into North America, through the development of specific tribal identities, to the turbulent first centuries of encounters with European settlers up until 1800. American Indians in the Early West offers a concise guide to the development of American Indian communities, from the first migrations through the arrival of the Spanish, French, and Russians, to the appearance of Anglo-American traders in the easternmost portions of the West around 1800. With coverage divided into periods and regions, American Indians in the Early West looks at how Indian communities evolved from hunter-gatherers to culturally recognized tribes, and examines the critical encounters of those tribes with non-Natives over the next two-and-a-half centuries. Readers will see that the issues at stake in those encounters—political control, preserving traditions, land and water rights, resistance to economic and military pressures—are very relevant to the Native American experience today.

This unique anthology chronicles the Plains Indians' struggle to maintain their traditional way of life in the changing world of the nineteenth century. Its rich variety of 34 primary sources - including narratives, myths, speeches, and transcribed oral histories - gives students the rare opportunity to view the transformation of the West from Native American perspective. Calloway's comprehensive introduction offers crucial information on western expansion, territorial struggles among Indian tribes, the slaughter of the buffalo, and forced assimilation through the reservation system. More than 30 pieces of Plains Indian art are included, along with maps, headnotes, questions for consideration, a bibliography, a chronology, and an index.