On September 11, 1814, an American naval squadron under Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough defeated a formidable British force on Lake Champlain under the command of Captain George Downie, effectively ending the British invasion of the Champlain Valley during the War of 1812. This decisive battle had far-reaching repercussions in Canada, the ......
Progress on the nation's second transcontinental railroad slowed in 1873. The Northern Pacific's proposed middle-the 250 miles between present Billings and Glendive, Montana-had yet to be surveyed, and Sioux and Cheyenne Indians opposed construction through the Yellowstone Valley, the heart of their hunting grounds. A previous surveying expedition ......
Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty
For the Cherokee Nation, the Civil War was more than a contest between the Union and the Confederacy. It was yet another battle in the larger struggle against multiple white governments for land and tribal sovereignty. Cherokee Civil Warrior tells the story of Chief John Ross as he led the tribe in this struggle. The son of a Scottish father and ......
For every Wild Bill Hickok or Billy the Kid, there was another western gunfighter just as deadly but not as well known. Robert K. DeArment has earned a reputation as the premier researcher of unknown gunfighters, and here he offers twelve more portraits of men who weren't glorified in legend but were just as notorious in their day.Those who think ......
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807-90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California. In 1874-75, Vallejo, working with historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, composed a five-volume history of Alta California-a monumental ......
This interdisciplinary account of a contemporary Great Lakes Algonkian community explores how the ethical system underlying Odawa (Ottawa) myth and ritual sustains traditionalists' efforts to confront the legal and social issues threatening tribal identity. Because many Odawa are not members of federally recognized communities, anthropologist ......
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma
"At the end of the Trail of Tears there was a promise," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the decision issued on July 9, 2020, in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma. And that promise, made in treaties between the United States and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation more than 150 years earlier, would finally be kept. With the Court's ruling, ......
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma
"At the end of the Trail of Tears there was a promise," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the decision issued on July 9, 2020, in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma. And that promise, made in treaties between the United States and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation more than 150 years earlier, would finally be kept. With the Court's ruling, ......
Born on a farm in the Cherokee Nation near present Oologah, Oklahoma, in 1879, Will Rogers shared his rural, agricultural beginnings with many Americans at the turn of the century. But Rogers brought his small-town talents to a national audience, becoming a mainstay of early American mass culture. Although Rogers is remembered today for his ......