When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today? Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, settling throughout North America. They describe hunting practices among different tribes, how some made the gradual transition to more settled, agricultural ways of life, the role of kinship and cooperation in Native societies, their varied burial rites and spiritual practices, and many other features of Native American life. Throughout the book, Perdue and Green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. Most importantly, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty--first with European powers and then with the United States--in order to retain their lands, govern themselves, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful. Going beyond the stereotypes that so often distort our views of Native Americans, this Very Short Introduction offers a historically accurate, deeply engaging, and often inspiring account of the wide array of Native peoples in America. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

From 1831 to 1837, George Catlin traveled extensively among the native peoples of North America—from the Muskogee and Miccosukee Creeks of the Southeast to the Lakota, Mandan, and Pawnee of the West, and from the Winnebagos and Menominees of the North to the Comanches of eastern Texas. Studying their habits, customs, and modes of life, he made copious notes and numerous sketches of ceremonies, buffalo hunts, symbols, and totems. Catlin’s unprecedented fieldwork culminated in more than five hundred oil paintings and his now-legendary journals, which, as Peter Matthiessen writes in his introduction, “taken together... constitute the first, last, and only ‘complete’ record of the Plains Indians ever made at the height of their splendid culture, so soon destroyed by traders’ liquor and disease, rapine and bayonets.” A one-volume edition of Catlin's journals Illustrated with more than fifty reproductions of Catlin's incomparable paintings

A look at the varied and fascinating cultures of the North American Indian.

This is the stirring, epic story of the hundreds of Indian nations that have inhabited North America for more than 15,000 years and of their centuries-long struggle with the Europeans. It is a story of friendship, treachery, courage and war, beginning when Columbus disembarked at Hispaniola among the Arawaks in 1492, and comes to a climax when the last groups of Sioux were moved onto a reservation following the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.We meet men and women, heroes and villains through their own words, their lives recreated from memory, memoir, and ancient documents: Massasoit, whose greeting to the Mayflower pilgrims - 'Welcome, Englishmen' - was given in their own language; Pocahontas, whose father's intervention on behalf of John Smith ironically changed the course of her life; Deganawida, known as the Peace Maker, whose Great Law laid the foundation for the confederacy among the five nations of the Iroquois, which in turn may have influenced the colonists' fledging efforts at confederation; Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet; Tecumseh, the charismatic Shawnee leader; Satanta, who led the Kiowa resistance; Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; Cochise and Geronimo of the Apaches; Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Sioux...Written by the celebrated historian Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., lavishly illustrated with nearly 500 paintings, woodcuts, drawings, photographs, and Indian artifacts, this thrilling and beautiful book shows us the many worlds of North America's Indians, as we have never seen them before.

This book details the growth of the European Fur trade in North America and how it drew the Native Americans who lived in the Great Lakes region, notably the Huron, Dakota, Sauk and Fox, Miami and Shawnee tribes into the colonial European Wars. During the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, these tribes took sides and became important allies of the warring nations. However, slowly the Indians were pushed westward by the encroachment of more settlers. This tension finally culminated in the 1832 Black Hawk's War, which ended with the deportation of many tribes to distant reservations.

A reference guide to Native American history, culture, and life contains contributions by more than 260 experts, and includes articles on present-day community life, treaties, and the status of women

Illustrates and describes the lifestyles of the great Indian tribes that inhabited the continental United States