Warrior in Two Camps is the biography of Ely S. Parker, the first native American to serve as commissioner of Indian Affairs. The name Ely Samuel Parker is seldom found among famous Indian chiefs. Indeed, the name seems somehow out of place in the company of men called Black Hawk or Crazy Horse or Geronimo. But the prosaic name is part of the story of an American Indian who chose to live his life in the white man’s world. It is a story in which a frock coat replaces the traditional deerskin, and a surveyor’s level and a soldier’s orderly book take the place of the wampum belt and the war club.

Despite the perennial interest in the American Civil War, historians have not examined sufficiently how Native American communities were affected by this watershed event in U.S. history. This ground-breaking book by one of the foremost Iroquois historians significantly adds to our understanding of this subject by providing the first intimate look at the Iroquois' involvement in the American Civil War and its devastating impact on Iroquois communities. Both fascinating and fast-moving, The Iroquois in the Civil War exposes many myths about Native American soldiers. To correct old stereotypes about American Indians, Hauptman discusses the Iroquois' distinguished war service as commissioned and noncommissioned officers as well as ordinary cavalrymen and common foot soldiers. Drawing upon archival records and personal wartime letters and diaries never before used by ethnohistorians, Hauptman portrays the dilemma the Iroquois experienced during this era. He assesses the Iroquois' military volunteerism, their loyalty to the Union, and their concurrent effort to maintain their lands, sovereignty, and cultural identity just at a time when new pressures for tribal dissolution were increasing. He not only provides us with a remarkable glimpse into the hearts and minds of Iroquois Indians on the battlefield but also adds significantly to our understanding about the conflict affecting the women and children remaining on the reservations.

Standard narratives of Native American history view the nineteenth century in terms of steadily declining Indigenous sovereignty, from removal of southeastern tribes to the 1887 General Allotment Act. In Crooked Paths to Allotment, C. Joseph Geneti

Children’s book icon Joseph Bruchac tells the fascinating story of a Seneca (Iroquois) Civil War officer Ely S. Parker (1828–1895) is one of the most unique but little-known figures in US history. A member of the Seneca (Iroquois) Nation, Parker was an attorney, engineer, and tribal diplomat. Raised on a reservation but schooled at a Catholic institution, he learned English at a young age and became an interpreter for his people. During the American Civil War, he was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel and was the primary draftsman of the terms of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. He eventually became President Grant’s Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to hold that post. Award-winning children’s book author and Native American scholar Joseph Bruchac provides an expertly researched, intimate look at a man who achieved great success in two worlds yet was caught between them. Includes archival photos, maps, endnotes, bibliography, and timeline.

A searching account of nineteenth-century salvage anthropology, an effort to preserve the culture of “vanishing” Indigenous peoples through dispossession of the very communities it was meant to protect. In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists, and other chroniclers began amassing Indigenous cultural objects—crafts, clothing, images, song recordings—by the millions. Convinced that Indigenous peoples were doomed to disappear, collectors donated these objects to museums and universities that would preserve and exhibit them. Samuel Redman dives into the archive to understand what the collectors deemed the tradition of the “vanishing Indian” and what we can learn from the complex legacy of salvage anthropology. The salvage catalog betrays a vision of Native cultures clouded by racist assumptions—a vision that had lasting consequences. The collecting practice became an engine of the American museum and significantly shaped public education and preservation, as well as popular ideas about Indigenous cultures. Prophets and Ghosts teases out the moral challenges inherent in the salvage project. Preservationists successfully maintained an important human inheritance, sometimes through collaboration with Indigenous people, but collectors’ methods also included outright theft. The resulting portrait of Indigenous culture reinforced the public’s confidence in the hierarchies of superiority and inferiority invented by “scientific” racism. Today the same salvaged objects are sources of invaluable knowledge for researchers and museum visitors. But the question of what should be done with such collections is nonetheless urgent. Redman interviews Indigenous artists and curators, who offer fresh perspectives on the history and impact of cultural salvage, pointing to new ideas on how we might contend with a challenging inheritance.

Children's book icon Joseph Bruchac tells the fascinating story of a Seneca (Iroquois) Civil War officer Ely S. Parker (1828-1895) is one of the most unique but little-known figures in US history. A member of the Seneca (Iroquois) Nation, Parker was an attorney, engineer, and tribal diplomat. Raised on a reservation but schooled at a Catholic institution, he learned English at a young age and became an interpreter for his people. During the American Civil War, he was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel and was the primary draftsman of the terms of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. He eventually became President Grant's Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to hold that post. Award-winning children's book author and Native American scholar Joseph Bruchac provides an expertly researched, intimate look at a man who achieved great success in two worlds yet was caught between them. Includes archival photos, maps, endnotes, bibliography, and timeline.