Here are 100 books that Where White Men Fear to Tread fans have personally recommended if you like
Where White Men Fear to Tread.
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I’ve been a labor union attorney and lifelong historical researcher drawn to the 1900s Progressive Era because of the parallels between that time and today. To write Unseen, I read over 100 books and articles about Indian life ways, reservations, boarding schools, and federal policy. Many sources are firsthand accounts written by Indians and ethnologists whom Indians deem credible. Whenever fact or opinion conflicted, I deferred to the Indian account. Pre-Columbus, Indians totaled 5 million. By the 1900 census, fewer than 250,000 survived. My research yielded a history that was both horrific and inspiring. I concluded that there is much to learn from these First Peoples.
One thing my research has shown me is that Indian tribes differ from each other in most ways. Still, they do share some values—those of mutual aid, honesty, and respect for Mother Nature.
I found that this compilation of distinct Indian voices offers eloquent and emotional insights into the history, creativity, and values found in Indian life. Certainly, the contributions describe historical pain. But they are also bright with truthful, uplifting insight. Most importantly, they made clear to me that our present society has much to learn from America’s Indian tribal cultures, past and present.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve been a labor union attorney and lifelong historical researcher drawn to the 1900s Progressive Era because of the parallels between that time and today. To write Unseen, I read over 100 books and articles about Indian life ways, reservations, boarding schools, and federal policy. Many sources are firsthand accounts written by Indians and ethnologists whom Indians deem credible. Whenever fact or opinion conflicted, I deferred to the Indian account. Pre-Columbus, Indians totaled 5 million. By the 1900 census, fewer than 250,000 survived. My research yielded a history that was both horrific and inspiring. I concluded that there is much to learn from these First Peoples.
This slim autobiography enchants with its simplicity. It is easy to see why it is considered a classic of American Indian literature.
La Flesche gives a first-hand account of his own boyhood in a boarding school far from his family and community. While many Indian parents resisted the theft of their children, others surrendered them. They had no choice. While many reservation Indians were dying from starvation, disease, despair, and outright murder, this young boy struggled with the daily dehumanization of forced assimilation.
This book is a testament to the Indians' extraordinary endurance. The author, himself, triumphed by becoming a respected academic and America’s first Indian ethnologist, working for the Smithsonian.
The Middle Five, first published in 1900, is an account of Francis La Flesche's life as a student in a Presbyterian mission school in northeastern Nebraska about the time of the Civil War. It is a simple, affecting tale of young Indian boys midway between two cultures, reluctant to abandon the ways of their fathers, and puzzled and uncomfortable in their new roles of "make-believe white men." The ambition of the Indian parents for their children, the struggle of the teachers to acquaint their charges with a new world of learning, and especially the problems met by both parents and…
I’ve been a labor union attorney and lifelong historical researcher drawn to the 1900s Progressive Era because of the parallels between that time and today. To write Unseen, I read over 100 books and articles about Indian life ways, reservations, boarding schools, and federal policy. Many sources are firsthand accounts written by Indians and ethnologists whom Indians deem credible. Whenever fact or opinion conflicted, I deferred to the Indian account. Pre-Columbus, Indians totaled 5 million. By the 1900 census, fewer than 250,000 survived. My research yielded a history that was both horrific and inspiring. I concluded that there is much to learn from these First Peoples.
I found this to be an authentic voice of a Hopi girl and woman. She tells of her journey from village to boarding school and beyond into the mainstream culture. It is highly descriptive of traditional Hopi daily life activities. But, on a deeper level, it reveals the authentic emotions of a young Hopi woman who comes to see the value to be found in both worlds while enduring the heartache of not belonging wholly to either one.
What I learned from my research is that, for some, the boarding school experience was irredeemably destructive. For others, like Sekaquaptewa, it was a mixed bag. It offered her the skills to survive and ultimately help her community survive the lifelong onslaughts of the dominant culture.
An energetic Hopi woman emerges from a traditional family background to embrace the more conventional way of life in American today. Enchanting and enlightening a rare piece of primary source anthropology.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been a labor union attorney and lifelong historical researcher drawn to the 1900s Progressive Era because of the parallels between that time and today. To write Unseen, I read over 100 books and articles about Indian life ways, reservations, boarding schools, and federal policy. Many sources are firsthand accounts written by Indians and ethnologists whom Indians deem credible. Whenever fact or opinion conflicted, I deferred to the Indian account. Pre-Columbus, Indians totaled 5 million. By the 1900 census, fewer than 250,000 survived. My research yielded a history that was both horrific and inspiring. I concluded that there is much to learn from these First Peoples.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and yet knew little about the variety and value of its native peoples. I found this book to be a moving and compassionate telling of how white settlement impacted Pacific Northwest Indians. It is also uplifting because it details how a present-day tribe embraced self-determination while manifesting their strong environmental values.
Deloria draws the connection between the universally held Indian respect for the earth and its creatures and the emergence of the nation’s tribes as leaders of the environmental restoration movement. It is a movement that has become particularly strong and effective in my region.
Prior to the onslaught of the Europeans, the Puget Sound area was one of the most heavily populated regions north of Mexico City. The Native Americans who lived there enjoyed a bounty of seafood, waterfowl, and berries, which they expertly collected and preserved. Detailing the associated culture, technologies, and techniques, Vine Deloria Jr. explains in depth this veritable paradise and its ultimate demise.
Raising the possibility that the utopian lifestyle enjoyed by the Indians of the Pacific Northwest might have continued in perpetuity had Europeans not sought a Northwest Passage. Deloria describes in devastating detail the ramifications of the Europeans'…
I'm a nature writer and poet who lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of northern Michigan. My study and my work delves into the mysterious connections between all living things. I've sailed the world's lakes and oceans and lived on the land from Alaska to California to the Caribbean. The natural world cannot just be described but must be experienced – all the writers on my list have taken this approach – as I've followed the lead of these great writers but in my own unique way. I would enjoy a day on a secluded river with each of them in search of the elusive brook trout.
A creative non-fiction work that brings the native folk hero alive in spirit while following the modern-day hero Leonard Peletier and the AIM resistance.
Again, the landscape descriptions take the reader away into the land once travelled by Native Americans. Matthiessen’s literary touch lends an almost novel-like thread by comparing the legends of Crazy Horse, perhaps the most revered of Lakota warriors, who becomes more than an historical figure in support of the fight for Native American rights and dignity in the American West of the 1970s.
An “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise
On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal…
Before I started writing, my understanding of war largely came about through its manifestation over subsequent decades in individuals. My grandfather selectively shared stories from his time as a bomber, then as a POW in Germany. Maybe it was this conjunction, a personal sense of rebuilding and of storytelling, that has driven my interest in the subject over these years, as a journalist and critic and then as an author of a book on the subject.
Wars take a long time to end. Work is done to bury the loss, grief, and guilt described above as quickly as possible. Oftentimes the forces that stand to profit from this forgetting succeed, except among those groups which are either ignored or for whom the loss is too deep. What Layli Long Soldier’s brilliant Whereas discloses is how the acts of government, the papers generated like planks over a well, seek to hide that grief and loss, and how those groups might reclaim the stories those papers hope to disappear.
WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I love history in all forms. I enjoy first-person memoirs, and I also love historical biographies if they are well-written. Native American history is one of my areas of fascination, and the founding of our country is another. World War two is another area that I have delved into in the last few years, and it's so complex. Ultimately, all of the books I recommended are connected to important historical events, but their real strength is the people whom they are about. Looking through my list, I see that all of the books are about underdogs or figures who ultimately did not prevail in terms of their specific situations.
Much like the biography of Quanah Parker, this book tells the story of Red Cloud, the last great Chief of the Sioux Indians and the only one to defeat the Americans in war. He's an amazing historical figure and not one that I had learned anything about in school.
I'm fascinated by this period of American history and the complex relations between the Native American tribes and the white settlers. Red Cloud was not only a great warrior and leader of men but also insightful and pragmatic. I found him quite heroic and more interesting than Sitting Bull, who seems more well-known. It's a great book, another one for me that is a joy to revisit regularly.
From bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin comes the epic, untold story one of the most powerful Sioux warriors of all time, Red Cloud—now adapted for a younger audience!
“I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it.” —Red Cloud
This young readers edition of the New York Times bestseller of the same name tells the long forgotten story of the powerful Oglala Lakota chief, Red Cloud. At the height of Red Cloud’s power the Sioux claimed control of vast parts of the west. But as the United States rapidly expanded,…
As a journalist, the Little Bighorn fascinates me because it has all the elements of a great story: larger-than-life characters, conflict, fighting against the odds, and mystery. I turned that fascination into research when I left newspapering to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. I wrote a number of articles about press coverage of Custer and the Last Stand, and this research eventually led to two books, most recently a biography of Custer focusing on his artistic personality, especially his writing career. I’ve continued to explore the history of war reporting, always looking for topics that make good stories.
This dual-biography has the best description of Custer’s death ever written. Of course, no one knows exactly what happened, and that sense of mystery is one of the reasons it has become part of American lore. But master historian Stephen Ambrose uses the available evidence to speculate in a few beautifully written paragraphs what brought Custer to his legendary defeat and how he might have reacted to it in his last moments. The comparative stories of Custer and Crazy Horse leading to the battle is a fast-paced tale that will make you keep turning pages, forgetting you know how it will end. But the book is more than fine writing. The dual-biography format is the perfect vehicle for Ambrose to explain the clash of cultures that led to tragic conflict.
A New York Times bestseller from the author of Band of Brothers: The biography of two fighters forever linked by history and the battle at Little Bighorn.
On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where three thousand Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer. Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both became leaders in their…
I’ve been teaching, writing, and learning about Indian issues, past and present, for more than four decades. I taught for several years on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, and for years I was a correspondent for Indian Country Today and reported from reservations across the country and several Mexican states. I’ve written and published widely about rez issues including cultural repatriation, land use, Native corporations, language preservation, environmental dumping, and Indian law. I’ve spent a lot of time listening, watching, and reading before putting my own thoughts down on paper, and these are some of the books that have deeply moved me.
Buffalo Bill made a movie on the rez about Indians? Geronimo had a Cadillac? Indian rhythms are all over 20th-century classical music? Philip Deloria has a knack for showing us how Indian people usually defy what the media says they are—they turn up in funny places, do remarkable things, and achieve extraordinary results. Many of the Indians in this book aren’t found on the reservation, a reminder that Native people have traveled far and wide to do astonishing things when the spirit of adventure calls.
What is Geronimo doing sitting in a Cadillac? Why is an Indian woman in beaded buckskin sitting under a salon hairdryer? Such images startle and challenge our outdated visions of Native America. Philip Deloria's revealing accounts of Indians doing unexpected things - singing opera, driving cars, acting in Hollywood - explores this cultural discordance in ways that suggest new directions for American Indian history. Deloria chronicles how Indians came to represent themselves in Wild West shows, Hollywood films, sports, music, and even Indian people's use of the automobile - an ironic counterpoint to today's highways teeming with Dakota pickups and…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
William Heath has a Ph.D. in American Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He has taught American history and literature as well as creative writing at Kenyon, Transylvania, Vassar, the University of Seville, and Mount Saint Mary’s University, retiring as a professor emeritus. He has published two poetry books, The Walking Man and Steel Valley Elegy; two chapbooks, Night Moves in Ohio and Leaving Seville; three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Award), Devil Dancer, andBlacksnake’s Path;a work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest(winner of two Spur Awards); and a collection of interviews, Conversations with Robert Stone.
What Calloway does for Washington, Wallace does for Jefferson. Even more than Washington, Jefferson talked one game and played another. He could be splendidly eloquent on how much he wanted the Indian nations to become Americans, yet that could only happen, in Jefferson’s mind, if they surrendered their identity as Indians. If anything, the situation was even worse than Wallace suggests, as I point out in detail in my book on William Wells. While there is much to admire about Jefferson, his Indian policy shows how idealism can serve as a front for blatant exploitation and near genocide.
In Thomas Jefferson's time, white Americans were bedeviled by a moral dilemma unyielding to reason and sentiment: what to do about the presence of black slaves and free Indians. That Jefferson himself was caught between his own soaring rhetoric and private behavior toward blacks has long been known. But the tortured duality of his attitude toward Indians is only now being unearthed.
In this landmark history, Anthony Wallace takes us on a tour of discovery to unexplored regions of Jefferson's mind. There, the bookish Enlightenment scholar--collector of Indian vocabularies, excavator of ancient burial mounds, chronicler of the eloquence of America's…
