Indigenous America: Primary Documents

A brilliant military strategist, Red Cloud honed his skills against his tribe's traditional enemies -- the Pawnees, Shoshones, Arikaras, and Crows -- long before he fought to close the Bozeman Trail. Here, for the first time in print, is Red Cloud's "as-told-to" autobiography, where he shares the story of his early years. from Publisher

Autobiography of a Winnebago man whose life spanned modernization.

This volume is a fascinating and informative collection of legends, humorous tales, history, and detailed accounts of life and culture, all told from Crow points of view. From Publisher

Lame Deer’s story is one of a harsh youth and reckless manhood, a shotgun marriage and divorce, a history and folklore as rich today as when first published—and of his fierce struggle to keep his pride intact, living as a stranger in his own ancestral land. From Publisher

In Life’s Journey—Zuya, White Hat has collected and translated the stories of medicine men, retaining the simplicity of their language so as not to interpret their words through a Western lens. This is Zuya, oral history that is lived and handed down over the generations. From Publisher

In My Indian Boyhood he describes the home life and education of Indian children. Like other boys, he played with toy bows and arrows in the tipi before learning to make and use them and became schooled in the ways of animals and in the properties of plants and herbs. His life would be very different from that of his ancestors, but he was not denied the excitement of killing his first buffalo before leaving to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. from Publisher

Native American Autobiography is the first collection to bring together the major autobiographical narratives by Native American people from the earliest documents that exist to the present.The thirty narratives included here cover a range of tribes and cultural areas, over a span of more than 200 years. From the earliest known written memoir—a 1768 narrative by the Reverend Samson Occom, a Mohegan, reproduced as a chapter here—to recent reminiscences by such prominent writers as N. Scott Momaday and Gerald Vizenor, the book covers a broad range of Native American experience. From Publisher

The story of Don C. Talayesva, the Sun Chief, who was born and reared until the age of ten as a Hopi Indian, and then trained as a white man until he was twenty. Although torn between two worlds and cultures, he returned to Hopiland and readopted all the tribal customs. This is his autobiography, written for Leo Simmons, a white man who was a clan brother. From Publisher

Warm, funny, heartbreaking, and filled with information on Crow life, Hogan’s story was told to her daughter, Mardell Hogan Plainfeather, and to Barbara Loeb, a scholar and longtime friend of the family who recorded her words, staying true to Hogan’s expressive speaking rhythms with its echoes of traditional Crow storytelling. From Publisher

This definitive edition of Columbus’s account of the voyage presents the most Both Columbus’s original manuscript, presented to Ferdinand and Isabella along with other evidence of his discoveries, and a single complete copy have been lost for centuries. The primary surviving record of the voyage–part quotation, part summary of the complete copy–is a transcription made by Bartolomé de las Casas in the 1530s. From Publisher

Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World. An early traveller to the Americas who sailed on one of Columbus's voyages, Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale massacre he witnessed that he dedicated his life to protecting the Indian community. From Publisher

Popular media depict miners as a rough-and-tumble lot who diligently worked the placers along scenic rushing rivers while living in roaring mining camps in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Trafzer and Hyer destroy this mythic image by offering a collection of original newspaper articles that describe in detail the murder, rape, and enslavement perpetrated by those who participated in the infamous gold rush. From Publisher

In a series of powerful and moving documents, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history of Native American and white relations as seen though Indian eyes and told through Indian voices... Drawing from a wide range of sources--traditional narratives, Indian autobiographies, government transcripts, firsthand interviews, and more--Nabokov has assembled a remarkably rich and vivid collection, representing nothing less than an alternate history of North America. From Publisher

This collection of notable speeches by early-day leaders of twenty-two Indian tribes adds a new dimension to our knowledge of the original Americans and their own view of the tide of history engulfing them. From Publisher