The belief in American exceptionalism reached its apex during the 1800s and was expressed as a God-given passport called Manifest Destiny. Among its victims were Native Americans. The Sioux resisted, eventually in desperation resorting to Ghost Dancing and claiming that Indians, not the whites, were the chosen people. The military, political, and legal destruction of Indian culture provided precedent and justification for the empire building that accelerated soon after Sioux resistance was crushed. Frank Fiske was a young boy who observed this confrontation firsthand at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, where Sitting Bull was held, then killed. Fiske recorded the story as he grew and also kept the glorious past of the Sioux alive with his spectacular photographs of the people and their traditions.The story of the Sioux is interwoven with the story of the early years in the life of the multi-talented Fiske, who attended school at Fort Yates with Indian children. He entertained soldiers, cowboys, and Indians by playing the violin, worked as a steamboat cabin boy and helped in the army post's photograph studio. Photography proved to be his specialty and when still in his teens, he opened his own commercial studio. His appreciation of Native American culture led him to photographing the Sioux. Fiske's photographs feature prominently in this book and his photographic techniques are explained.This thought-provoking book documents the dramatic atmosphere where the US Army, Mississippi steamboat captains, missionaries, hard-pressed settlers and a host of other characters converged with the American Indians, during the westward expansion - a critical time in US history when the character of the nation was still being forged.

Winner of the 2023 Prose Award in Cultural Anthropology and SociologyFinalist for the 2023 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person. Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed—and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.

Catherine Cater's infectious love of ideas inspired students, colleague and friends. A distinguished teacher and intellectual specializing in English literature and philosophy, Dr. Cater faced barriers of race and gender when she entered the academic world and moved to the North. She elevated the level of scholarship at universities and their communities in both the South and North, most notably North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, where her long career left an indelible mark on the academic stature of the institution.Catherine Cater was born in New Orleans and spent her youth in Alabama. Diverse influences, from exposure to the Ku Klux Klan to immersion in Great Books, came together in the creation of this enigma who was a great lady. She popped up in North Dakota as a complete outsider, yet her dynamism naturally drew people to her. English literature and philosophy were her primary scholarly areas but her curiosity knew no bounds.The telling of her story may appear unusual or uneven due to the author's relationship with the subject of this book. The author was Catherine Cater's student over 50 years ago and remained her friend from that time onward. Here, he has blended first-person recollection with third-person narration based on research and interviews. The memories of personal encounters with this sparkling woman bring her to life as the real person she was and help to show why she is so highly regarded by those who benefited from having been in her presence.

Peregrinate: To travel or wander around from place to place. The land of the United States is defined by vast distances encouraging human movement and migration on a grand scale. Consequently, American stories are filled with descriptions of human bodies walking through the land. In Peregrinations, Amy T. Hamilton examines stories told by and about Indigenous American, Euroamerican, and Mexican walkers. Walking as a central experience that ties these texts together—never simply a metaphor or allegory—offers storytellers and authors an elastic figure through which to engage diverse cultural practices and beliefs including Puritan and Catholic teachings, Diné and Anishinaabe oral traditions, Chicanx histories, and European literary traditions. Hamilton argues that walking bodies alert readers to the ways the physical world—more-than-human animals, trees, rocks, wind, sunlight, and human bodies—has a hand in creating experience and meaning. Through material ecocriticism, a reading practice attentive to historical and ongoing oppressions, exclusions, and displacements, she reveals complex layerings of narrative and materiality in stories of walking human bodies. This powerful and pioneering methodology for understanding place and identity, clarifies the wide variety of American stories about human relationships with the land and the ethical implications of the embeddedness of humans in the more-than-human world.

What do Bat Masterson, Bill Cody, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, David Crockett, William Tecumseh Sherman, Mark Twain, Elizabeth Custer, and the Statue of Liberty all have in common? They all spent time in New York City! Each chapter in this fascinating book provides a short biography of a Western hero or celebrity and tells how they made their mark on the city that many considered the media and cultural capital of the time. By tracing their path across the city—from casual visits, media campaigns, and political tours to family ties, shopping sprees, and steady employment—author Michael P. O'Connor aptly demonstrates how New York City influenced the lives and livelihood of many familiar names in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Locations around the city significant to the Westerners, including the Old Bowery Theatre, the Market Exchange, Battery Park, the St. Nicholas Hotel, and St. Patrick's Cathedral, are illustrated through historic images and modern photos accompanied by brief histories. A timeline from 1812 to 1933 highlights the settling of the West alongside a history of New York City. An appendix provides a listing of Alamo defenders who had ties to the city, and a bibliography provides an extensive list of further reading and reference materials. O'Connor's meticulous research and passion for the subject make this an informative and entertaining blend of New York City history and Western lore perfect for both tourists and historians.

The first book in a dramatic fictional trilogy set in the old west. Takoda, a young Lakota warrior, is compelled to fight for his life after his father is killed in a hunting accident, facing murderous beaver trappers and brutal treatment at the hands of a ruthless band of buffalo hunters. However, his future is to become defined by the dark influence of Theodore Winthrop, a Minnesotan senator who wants to rid the plains of the native tribes. Takoda's survival depends on a chance encounter with a wagon train, where he meets Carla Kopp, with whom he is destined to unveil the scope of Winthrop's political and military subterfuge, a plan to steal four hundred million dollars in gold, and strategies designed to challenge the Lakota's very existence.