An incorrigible trickster, a clever thief, a rogue, sometimes a magnanimous hero, often a vengeful loser, but always a survivor, Coyote is the most complex character in the Nez Perce cycle of traditional myths. Nez Perce Coyote Tales, a collection of fifty-two stories translated from the native language, represents the most extensive treatment of ......
Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains
In The Dream Seekers, Lee Irwin demonstrates the central importance of visionary dreams as sources of empowerment and innovation in Plains Indian religion.Irwin draws on 350 visionary dreams from published and unpublished sources that span 150 years to describe the shared features of cosmology for twenty-three groups of Plains Indians. This ......
Perhaps once in a generation a great book appears on the life of a people - less than a nation, more than a tribe - that reflects in a clear light the epic strivings of men and women everywhere, since the beginnings of time. The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters is such a book. Drawing from the oral history of his people before the coming of ......
In Wah'Kon-Tah, John Joseph Mathews relied heavily on the papers of Osage agent Major Labian J. Miles to recreate the world of the Osage during the last quarter of the Nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century. Using his own experiences, Mathews stressed the spirituality, dignity, and humor of the Osages as they acculturated to ......
In an era and an area notable for badmen and gunslingers, John Wesley Hardin was perhaps the most notorious. Considered by many of his contemporaries to be also illiterate, he nevertheless left for publication after his death in 1895 this autobiography, which, though biased, is remarkably accurate and readable.
The Mayas believed the four gods, the Bacabs, held up the sky. The Bacabs were also invoked to heal disease. Ritual of the Bacabs: A Book of Maya Incantations is the first English translation of this Maya manuscript, dating back to colonial times. Discovered in the early twentieth century, the manuscript's origins are traced to the golden ......
Collective Visions in the Making of the American West
With some 400 members, the California Camera Club was the largest photography network in the United States in the early twentieth century. In The California Camera Club, Carolin Goe rgen recaptures the lost history of this community - and reveals its critical but little-known role in defining the popular image of California, and the American West ......
According to the Book of Mormon, dissent wracked the Hebrew prophet Lehi's family after they traveled to the Americas around BC. A son, Laman, led rebellious followers who became 'Lamanites,' cursed by God with a 'skin of blackness.' In the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, the first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and ......
