Native Americans in California & the Northwest

Ostenaco - Skiagusta Uku - Mankiller of the Cherokeesby Sir Joshua Reynolds 1762 Gilcrease Museum

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin US National Park Service

Natives of the North American California & the Northwest 

One of the most poignant stories in the history of Indian-White relations is the story of Ishi, a Yahi Indian, who stumbled out of the California backcountry and into a slaughterhouse corral in the summer of 1911. Ishi’s band had eluded capture and extermination for many years, but, when all had died except for Ishi, he decided to take his chances and present himself to his American neighbors. Ishi In Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), is an account of Ishi’s life written by Theodora Kroeber, wife of professor Alfred Kroeber, who became one of Ishi’s caretakers. This amazing human interest story, written with a warm, empathetic intimacy, is truly a “must read.”

Another important work is Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.’s The Nez Percé Indians and the Opening of the Northwest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). This well-written history explores the Nez Percé Indians and their traditional way of life, their responses to increasing pressure from Whites and the resultant conflicts, and concludes with a description of the Nez Percé war and Chief Joseph’s subsequent flight. Lowell John Bean’s Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) and Frederica deLaguna’s Under Mount Saint Elias: The History and Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990) are good introductory texts on the Indians of California and Alaska, respectively.

1600s European Depictions of Native Americans - More Fantasy than Fact - Virginia

1706 Account of Voyages of Martin Pring and Bartholomew Gilbert. Martin Pringe in north Virginia, 1603. Hand-colored engraving from book page, c.1625 or earlier

Martin Pringe captained a voyage to "the North part of Virginia" in 1603 for merchants of the city of Bristol, exploring the coast of New England & returning with a cargo of sassafras & a bark canoe. In this narrative illustration, the artist has adapted details freely & wholly invented the scene. The attire of the Indians & the vegetation both resemble features of more southerly regions.

Studying Native Americans in the Southwest

Chief Nutimus Netawatwees (born 1650)

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin - US National Park Service

Natives of the North American Southwest 

In the American Southwest, Indians interacted with Spaniards, Mexicans, Americans, and other Indians. Several studies synthesize the historical and cultural interactions between Indians and their neighbors. One eminently readable—but rather lengthy—study is Elizabeth A. H. John’s award-winning Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontations of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975). John examines Spanish-Indian relations from Coronado’s visit to the Pueblos to the collapse of imperial Spanish authority at the end of the nineteenth century, arguing that over the decades— and centuries—Indians and Spaniards worked out a system of mutual accommodation. Another lengthy but well-written study is Edward H. Spicer’s Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962). Spicer’s study extends beyond John’s to include Indian relations with Mexico and the United States. A similar—but more recent and shorter—study is Gary Clayton Anderson’s The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). David Roberts provides a well-written, broadly-accessible survey of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in The Pueblo Revolt : The Secret Rebellion That Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Peter Iverson has written several tribal histories on the Navajo Indians, one of America’s largest and most influential tribes. Diné: A History of the Navajos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), is a richly-illustrated broad overview of the Navajo people that will appeal to a broad audience. Iverson’s Carlos Montezuma and the Changing World of American Indians, 2d ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001) examines the life of a Yavapai Indian who was born in the mid-nineteenth century, attended college, and became a leading Native American rights advocate in the early twentieth century.

Forrest Carter’s Watch For Me On the Mountain (New York: Delacourt Press, 1978) is a fast-moving, spirited work of historical fiction about Geronimo and the Apaches’ struggle against the U.S. military. Another appealing biography is Eve Ball’s award-winning Indeh: An Apache Odyssey, revised ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). Her book presents a series of oral interviews conducted with several Apaches, in particular Ace Daklugie, son of the famous warrior Juh, whose life spanned the pre-reservation and reservation periods. The interviews are sometimes humorous, sometimes sorrowful, but always sensitive and informative. Those searching for a traditional account of the Apache wars should consult Dan L. Thrapp’s The Conquest of Apacheria (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967).

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Llamas

1671 John Ogilby’s America, the image is based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus.  Peru

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native Americans on The Plains

George Caleb Bingham (American genre painter, 1811-1879) Eh-toh'k-pah-she-pée-shah, Black Moccasin, aged Chief 1832

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin US National Park Service

Natives of the North American Plains 

The Plains Indians are the most prominent Indians in popular culture. Not surprisingly, there are many books on Plains Indians that demonstrate good scholarship and are accessible to a general audience. Among them are John C. Ewers’s The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains (1958); Ernest Wallace and Adamson Hoebel’s The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (1953); and several histories on the Pawnees and Sioux written by George E. Hyde—all of which are published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Two classics that incorporate Indian points of view are Peter J. Powell’s People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830-1879, with an Epilogue 1969-1974 (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1981), and Jerome A. Greene’s edited volume, Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877 (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1994). Recent and accessible tribal histories include Jeffrey Ostler’s The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and novelist Stanley Noyes’s lively narrative of Comanche history, Los Comanches: The Horse People, 1751-1845 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).

Another prolific and well-respected historian of the West is Robert M. Utley. Among his many works is The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, revised ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), which surveys of Indian-White relations on the Plains and the far West. Utley’s The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) examines the Ghost Dance messianic movement among the Sioux and the slaughter of approximately two hundred Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee in 1890.

Not to be overlooked is Francis Parkman’s The California and Oregon Trail: Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life (New York: George P. Putnam, 1849), a travel narrative of his trip to the Plains and his extended visit with an Oglala Sioux band. The Oregon Trail has remained a classic for over a century and a half and is still in print today. Elliot West’s The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998) is a well-written study that examines the evolving lifestyles of both Indians and Whites on the Great Plains through the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that conflict and competition were important forces of transformation.

John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1932) is a warm, sympathetic biography of a Sioux holy man. Neihardt interviewed Black Elk and several other Sioux and, using artistic license, interpreted and rewrote the interviews. This book has been enthusiastically received and is available in at least eight different languages. Those wishing to understand Black Elk without Neihardt’s interpretation should consult Raymond J. DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), a book that contains the verbatim transcripts of the Black Elk interviews along with a thoughtful, one hundred-page biographical sketch of Black Elk.

Mari Sandoz grew up in the Sand Hills of Nebraska and personally befriended many Indians in the early reservation period. Her Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1942) is a tragic, loving, almost mystical narrative about the famous Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, whom she saw as the last champion of the traditional Sioux way of life. One esteemed biographer calls it “the best American biography ever written.” Among her many other books are Cheyenne Autumn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), which describes the exodus of the Northern Cheyennes from a reservation in Oklahoma to their traditional homelands on the Northern Plains, and These Were the Sioux (New York: Hastings House, 1961), a short, easy-to-read, and affectionate portrayal of pre-reservation Sioux life.
______________________________________
About Black Moccasin, aged Chief 1832 - “The chief sachem of this tribe [Hidatsa/Minitari] is a very ancient and patriarchal looking man . . . and counts, undoubtedly, more than a hundred snows. I have been for some days an inmate of his hospitable lodge, where he sits tottering with age, and silently reigns sole monarch of his little community around him, who are continually dropping in to cheer his sinking energies, and render him their homage. His voice and his sight are nearly gone; but the gestures of his hands are yet energetic and youthful, and freely speak the language of his kind heart . . . I have . . . painted his portrait as he was seated on the floor of his wigwam, smoking his pipe, whilst he was recounting over to me some of the extraordinary feats of his life, with a beautiful Crow robe wrapped around him, and his hair wound up in a conical form upon his head, and fastened with a small wooden pin, to keep it in its place . . . This man has many distinct recollections of Lewis and Clark, who were the first explorers of this country, and who crossed the Rocky Mountains thirty years ago.” According to George Catlin, Black Moccasin’s long-stemmed pipe was a calumet, or peace pipe, “mutually smoked by the chiefs, after the terms of the treaty are agreed upon.” Black Moccasin had been a chief when Lewis and Clark visited the Hidatsa village in the winter of 1804-05; Catlin reckoned he was 105 years old in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, nos. 23, 29, 1841

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Hispaniola

1671 John Ogilby’s America, the image is based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus.  Hispaniola

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa. 

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native Americans in the Southeast

Choctaw Natives ready for Lacross by George Catlin

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin

US National Park Service

Natives of the North American Southeast 

The American Southeast was home to the “Five Civilized Tribes”—the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles—and there are many good books documenting their history. Angie Debo and Grant Foreman wrote in the first half of the twentieth century, and their work, though dated, is still solid. Debo’s The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (1934) and Foreman’s The Five Civilized Tribes (1934)—both published by the University of Oklahoma Press—are thorough overviews of their subjects. Debo’s And Still the Waters Run (Princeton: Princeton University Press) was a controversial exposé of how Oklahoma’s politicians and leading citizens bilked the Indians and the Five Civilized Tribes of their land and resources.

Two prominent scholars of Cherokee history are William G. McLoughlin and Theda Perdue. Among MacLoughlin’s several works is Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), which describes how the Cherokees underwent a profound cultural change after the American Revolution by adopting many Anglo-American social, economic, political, and religious practices. Theda Perdue’s Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1866 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979) looks at how Cherokee Indians participated in the slave trade, adopted the slave-labor plantation system, and attempted to negotiate the slavery issue during the Civil War years. The principal chief of the Cherokees from the 1820s through 1866 was John Ross, and Gary E. Moulton’s biography John Ross: Cherokee Chief (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), describes how Ross managed the many crises of these turbulent years.

Other significant books in the field include Charles Hudson’s Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), which is a lengthy but pleasantly readable and richly illustrated account of the Spanish expedition into the American Southeast in 1539-1543 and the Indians encountered there. In The Tree that Bends: Discourse, Power, and the Survival of the Maskókî People (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), Patricia Riles Wickman studies the experience of the Florida Indians and makes the claim that, rather than being swept away by Americans—as conventional wisdom suggests—descendants of early Florida Indians still inhabit the state today. Joel W. Martin’s Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991) is an insightful ethnohistorical account of the religious dimensions to the Creek “Redstick Revolt” of 1813-1814. James H. Merrell’s The Indians’ New World: The Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989) is a study of the amazingly adaptable Catawbas, a small tribe in the Carolina Piedmont that managed, unlike many southeastern tribes, to retain their ancestral homelands.

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Florida

Jacob van Meurs from Arnoldus Montanus (1625-1683) De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld  (The New and Unknown World) 1671 Indians from Florida

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native Americans in the Northeast

A-wun-ne-wa-be, Bird of Thunder 1845

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin - US National Park Service

Native Americans in the Northeast 

There are many good histories discussing Indians of northeastern America. James Axtell’s The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) is a thoughtful, provocative study that employs ethnohistorical methods to examine relations between the Indians and the colonial French and English. Colin Calloway’s New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) is a thoughtful thematic overview of Indian history through the eighteenth century, and in Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), Karen Ordahl Kupperman surveys the complexities of the tentative give-and-take relations between Indians and Europeans along the east coast. Helen Rountree’s Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990) is an ethnohistorical survey of the Powhatan Indians, that, unlike many books on eastern Indians, surveys the history of the tribe from the time of early contact through twentieth century.

Focusing principally on Puritan-Indian relations in the seventeenth century are Alden Vaughan’s The New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1965) and Douglas Edward Leach’s Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958). Vaughan argues that conflict among groups was to be expected and that the Puritan Indian policy was relatively just; Leach, however, disagrees. Jill Lepore’s The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998) looks at how memories of the conflict hardened racial divisions and shaped the identities of Indians and Whites alike. John Demos’s The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Knopf, 1994) examines the life of Eunice Williams, the daughter of a Puritan minister, who, after being captured by French and Indians, refused repatriation efforts and ultimately married a Catholic Mohawk.

At the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, there was an Indian uprising against the British. Francis Parkman writes about A Pontiac’s Rebellion” in his two-volume classic The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Conquest of Canada, revised ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1870). Parkman, one of America’s greatest narrative historians, provides a gripping account, though some find his prose condescending at times. A more up-to-date scholarly account can be found in Gregory Evan Dowd’s War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Richard White’s The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) argues that Indians existed in a cultural, political, and economic “middle ground” between rival British, French, and American imperial powers. White’s book is lengthy and intended for academics, and it is one of the most significant books on the subject.

The Iroquois were the dominant Indians in the northeast, and there are several first-rate Iroquois histories. Anthony F. C. Wallace’s The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1970) is a classic ethnohistorical study of the Seneca Indians (an Iroquoian tribe), the challenges posed them by White contact, and their subsequent renaissance in the nineteenth century. Another excellent study of Iroquois history and culture is Daniel K. Richter’s The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). The captivity narrative of Mary Jemison, who was abducted by the Iroquois in 1758 as a teenager, provides a sympathetic insider’s view of Iroquois life in the eighteenth century. This easy-to-read account is available as A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, ed., June Namias (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).

Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian who lived in what is now Ohio and Indiana, is one of America’s most famous native leaders. Several biographies examine Tecumseh’s life and a pan-Indian resistance movement he orchestrated, including John Sugden’s recent Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc. 1997), and R. David Edmunds’s more concise Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984).

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Brazil

1671 John Ogilby’s America, the image is based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus.  Brazil

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa. 

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native American Imagery, Art, and Expression

George Caleb Bingham (American genre painter, 1811- 1879) Captured by Indians

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin - US National Park Service

Native American Imagery, Art, and Expression

Native Americans—and the value judgments associated with them—have been cast and recast throughout the centuries based on contemporaneous social, cultural, and political forces. The book that best documents these reinterpretations of “the Indian” is Robert F. Berkhofer Jr.’s The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1978). Brian W. Dippie’s The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1982) explains how White perceptions of “the Indian” influenced government policy. June Namias’s White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993) surveys the captivity narratives genre, a genre that often used the Indian as a foil for White society.

Many artists have chosen Native Americans as subjects for their works. Perhaps the most famous is George Catlin, who painted Native American scenes and portraits in the mid-nineteenth century. There are many books on Catlin, including George Catlin and his Indian Gallery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), edited by George Gurney and Therese Thau Heyman. The work of Karl Bodmer, one of Catlin’s contemporaries, is noted for its ethnographic value in Karl Bodmer’s America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), by David C. Hunt, et al. Paula Richardson Fleming and Judith Luskey’s The North American Indians in Early Photographs (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1992) provides a broad overview of Native American photography from the 1850s through the early twentieth century. The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) discusses the significance of Native Americans in frontier art.

Native people documented their own histories and cultures using a variety of visual media. Ledger drawings—or ledger art—was a common way for native peoples to record and commemorate their history. Cheyenne Dog Soldiers: A Ledgerbook History of Coups and Combat (Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1997), edited by Jean Afton, et. al., is a handsome presentation of a ledgerbook illustrated by Cheyenne warriors in the 1860s. Janet Catherine Berlo has edited a similar book entitled Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawk’s Vision of the Lakota World (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 2000), in which a Lakota Sioux depicts a wide range of scenes from late nineteenth century tribal life. There are many informative books that explore Native American art and artifacts. David W. Penney’s Art of the American Indian Frontier: The Chandler-Pohrt Collection (Seattle: University of Washington Press and The Detroit Art Institute, 1992) presents over two hundred decorated weapons, pipes, headdresses, accessories, and articles of clothing—and his North American Indian Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), provides a good region-by-region overview of Native American art.

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Cannibals

Jacob van Meurs from Arnoldus Montanus (1625-1683) De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld  (The New and Unknown World) 1671 Indians from North America

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native American Writings

George Caleb Bingham (American genre painter, 1811-1879) Om-pah-tón-ga, Big Elk, a Famous Warrior 1832

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin - US National Park Service

Native Voices 

Although Indian voices are under-represented in the literature, there are still many worthy selections available, including Black Elk Speaks, Indeh, and Jerome Green’s book on Lakota and Cheyenne views of the Plains wars—each discussed above. The works of Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), a mixed-blood Sioux, deserve particular attention. Eastman was a boarding school standout and graduate of Dartmouth College who received his M.D. from Boston University’s medical school. To reformers, Eastman represented the ideal assimilated Indian. Despite his success in White society, he never lost his affection for traditional Indian culture and devoted much of his life to explaining its merits to White Americans. Among his many works is From the Deep Woods to Civilization (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1916), a moving autobiographical account.

Vine Deloria, Jr., was the leading Native American intellectual of the latter twentieth century. He wrote copiously on social, political, and theological issues and was a leading Indian rights advocate. Those interested in contemporary Native American issues ought to read one of his many books and essays. Among his publications are Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1969), which is a humorous yet caustic social and political commentary, and God Is Red: A Native View of Religion.(New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1973), which attempts to explain Indian religions vis-à-vis Christianity.

Other significant native histories include Born a Chief: The Nineteenth Century Hopi Boyhood of Edmund Nequatewa, as told to Alfred F. Whiting (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993).
Charlotte J. Frisbie has edited two lengthy Indian autobiographies, Tall Woman: The Life Story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo Woman, c. 1874-1978 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001); and Navajo Blessingway Singer: The Autobiography of Frank Mitchell, 1881-1967 (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1978). Those interested in contemporary native histories might read Mary Crow Dog’s Lakota Woman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), a captivating autobiography of a Sioux woman who was born into reservation poverty and joined the Indian protest movements of the 1960s. Another contemporary native history is Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1995). It is a riveting account, alternately humorous and unsettling, of a man the Washington Post calls “[o]ne of the biggest, baddest, meanest, angriest, most famous American Indian activists of the late twentieth century.”

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans

Indigenous People from New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, & Pennsylvnia from John Ogilby's (1600-1676) book of 1671.

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans. 

Early Native American Literature

American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Native American oral literature is quite diverse. Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures like the Navajo are different from stories of settled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo-dwelling Acoma; the stories of northern lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radically from stories of desert tribes like the Hopi.

Tribes maintained their own religions -- worshipping gods, animals, plants, or sacred persons. Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies. These tribal variations enter into the oral literature as well.  Still, it is possible to make a few generalizations. Indian stories, for example, glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual as well as physical mother. Nature is alive and endowed with spiritual forces; main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual. 

The Mexican tribes revered the divine Quetzalcoatl, a god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, and some tales of a high god or culture were told elsewhere. However, there are no long, standardized religious cycles about one supreme divinity. The closest equivalents to Old World spiritual narratives are often accounts of shamans initiations and voyages. Apart from these, there are stories about culture heroes such as the Ojibwa tribe's Manabozho or the Navajo tribe's Coyote. These tricksters are treated with varying degrees of respect. In one tale they may act like heroes, while in another they may seem selfish or foolish. Although past authorities, such as the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, have deprecated trickster tales as expressing the inferior, amoral side of the psyche, contemporary scholars -- some of them Native Americans -- point out that Odysseus and Prometheus, the revered Greek heroes, are essentially tricksters as well.

Examples of almost every oral genre can be found in American Indian literature: lyrics, chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs, epics, and legendary histories. Accounts of migrations and ancestors abound, as do vision or healing songs and tricksters' tales. Certain creation stories are particularly popular. In one well-known creation story, told with variations among many tribes, a turtle holds up the world. In a Cheyenne version, the creator, Maheo, has four chances to fashion the world from a watery universe. He sends four water birds diving to try to bring up earth from the bottom. The snow goose, loon, and mallard soar high into the sky and sweep down in a dive, but cannot reach bottom; but the little coot, who cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up some mud in his bill. Only one creature, humble Grandmother Turtle, is the right shape to support the mud world Maheo shapes on her shell -- hence the Indian name for America, "Turtle Island."

The songs or poetry, like the narratives, range from the sacred to the light and humorous: There are lullabies, war chants, love songs, and special songs for children's games, gambling, various chores, magic, or dance ceremonials. Generally the songs are repetitive. Short poem-songs given in dreams sometimes have the clear imagery and subtle mood associated with Japanese haiku or Eastern-influenced imagistic poetry. A Chippewa song runs:
A loon I thought it was
But it was
My love's
splashing oar.

Vision songs, often very short, are another distinctive form. Appearing in dreams or visions, sometimes with no warning, they may be healing, hunting, or love songs. Often they are personal, as in this Modoc song:
I
the song
I walk here.

Indian oral tradition and its relation to American literature as a whole is one of the richest and least explored topics in American studies. The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include "canoe," "tobacco," "potato," "moccasin," "moose," "persimmon," "raccoon," "tomahawk," and "totem." 

Before the late 1700s Native Americans had only oral stories. The traditions of the tribe could be accounted in stories. From a political perspective, rituals, ceremonies, & narrative stories could recount the positions held within the tribe & the structural relations of the community. Stories could also tell of past experiences with outside groups, such as the explorers. David Cusick (c1780–c1831) was a Tuscarora artist & the author of David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations (1828). This is an early (if not the first) account of Native American history & myth, written & published in English by an Indian. David Cusick, from the Oneida Reservation in Madison County, New York, provided the “Iroquois Creation Story,” which is formed from the collected oral myths of 25 versions, & is influenced by the political threat of Andrew Jackson’s election to presidency & the forces against the Native American people, but this story is not written until the early 1800s. 

David Cusick (artist), c.1780-c.1840. Stonish Giants image published in 1828 Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations

The written accounts of Native American stories were also recorded by Spaniards in journals, such as Juan Mateo Mange (1670-1727?) & Pedro Font (1737-1781) a Franciscan missionary & diarist. From 1773 to 1775, he served at Mission San José de Tumacácori in Pima Country. He was the chaplain of Juan Bautista de Anza's expedition that explored Alta California from 1775 to 1776.  Font authored the diary With Anza to California, the principal account of the expedition. There are no earlier written Native American accounts, because they did not have a writing system. We can assume that the political influence of the European explorers & their monarch taking their land & enslaving them would be reflected in their stories, some of which are written about later in history when Native American literature moves to the written format, roughly around the late-1700s.

See: Outline of U.S. History, a publication of the U.S. Department of State copied from the website of the United States Information Agency, where it was published in November 2005.

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - California

Jacob van Meurs from Arnoldus Montanus (1625-1683) De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld (The New and Unknown World) 1671 - June 26, 1579, Sir Francis Drake being crowned by California Indians

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Dance

1671 John Ogilby’s America, the image is based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus.

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native American & White Relations and Policy

Sarah Molasses. Daughter of Governor John Neptune of the Penobscots. Copy of painting by Jeremiah P. Hardy of Bangor, Maine, ca. 1825

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin US National Park Service

Indian-White Relations and Policy

One of the leading authorities in the field of Indian-White relations is Francis Paul Prucha. His
masterful two-volume The Great Father: The United States Government and the American
Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) examines the relationship between the
United States government and Native Americans from the colonial era through the Carter
administration. Anyone interested in U.S. Indian policy should begin with it. It is also available
in an abridged edition. Prucha has also written a short, astute, easy-to-read book entitled The
Indians in American Society: From the Revolutionary War to the Present (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1985) that uses the concepts of paternalism, dependency, Indian rights, and
self-determination to survey United States Indian policy.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reformers, philanthropists, and
government officials wrestled with “the Indian question”—the question of what was to be done
with the Indians after they had been confined to reservations. Thomas Jefferson was the first
president to give this question significant thought. He wanted to “civilize” the Indians and
incorporate them into Anglo-American society. The best book on Jefferson’s Indian program is
Bernard Sheehan’s The Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973). It argues that Jefferson’s well-intended
reform program proved destructive of native culture—and that ultimately, “the white man’s
sympathy was more deadly than his animosity.” Anthony F. C. Wallace’s Jefferson and the
Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1999) concludes that Jeffersonian Indian policy produced “ethnic
cleansing” and laments that Jefferson and Madison did not work harder to “orchestrate diversity”
in the Early Republic.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the government—believing it was
rescuing Indians from irrelevance and marginalization—again attempted to replace native
cultures with White American values. In the words of one reformer, the goal was to “kill the
Indian and save the man.” Frederick E. Hoxie’s A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate
the Indians, 1880-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) provides a thoughtful
overview of this phase of Indian policy, examining the reformers’ evolving motives as well as
the challenges they faced.

Reformers frequently sent Indian youths to boarding schools to immerse them in
American culture while stripping away their own native culture. Several books have explored
the boarding school experience, like Devon A. Mihesuah’s Cultivating the Rosebuds: The
Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851-1909 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1993). K. Tsianina Lomawaima’s prize-winning They Called It Prairie Light: The
Story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994) examines the
history of a coeducational Indian boarding school in Oklahoma, making effective use of
interviews with the school’s alumni. Lomawaima’s book explores an often-overlooked aspect of
the native response to American conquest and does so from an Indian perspective.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration abandoned the policy of forced assimilation in
favor of cultural pluralism; however, as Alison R. Bernstein demonstrates in American Indians
and World War II: Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1991),World War II was a profoundly integrating force for many Indians. After the war, the
government once again decided to forcibly assimilate native peoples into mainstream society by
terminating the special legal status of tribes and the federal government’s accompanying
obligations to them, and also by relocating native people from rural reservation communities to
urban areas. The standard work on the subject is Donald Lee Fixico’s Termination and
Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1986). Also of interest is Alvin M. Josephy Jr., et. al., eds., Red Power: The American Indians’
Fight for Freedom, 2d ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), a collection of
government documents and Native American statements from the 1960s through the 1990s
dealing with a variety of social, political, and economic points of contention.

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Hunting

Jacob van Meurs from Arnoldus Montanus (1625-1683) De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld  (The New and Unknown World) 1673 Indians from North Amrica

For most of the 1600s & 1700s, few first-hand images of Native Americans are known to have been created with little or no contemporary documentation. European publishers often used illustrations imagined by European artists, who had never sailed across the Atlantic.  These illustators were hired to illustrate written accounts of events in the New World without any visual evidence about how people actually lived & looked. And, so, they had to rely on European fantasy & generic landscapes to create images of America's Indiginous Peoples. For these representations, which tend to be exotic, the artists borrowed indiscriminately, mixing invented & actual details & interchanging characteristics of native groups from both American continents & from Africa.  

In the 1671 edition of John Ogilby's (1600-76) America, Being an Accurate Description of The New World, many images of Native Americans are based on the work of Arnoldus Montanus (c 1625–1683). Translated by the bookseller Ogilby from the original Dutch in 1671, the book provides an account of the newly discovered lands in the Americas. Although it is inaccurate, often including fanciful tales of mythical beasts & locations such as the Fountain of Youth, it was widely read & was a highly influential book. At its time, the publication offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North & South America & was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. In 1671 the Amsterdam printer Jacob "van" Meurs (1619-1680) published De nieuwe en onbekende weereld; of Beschryving van america en't zuid-land, or America, by Montanus, a compilation in Dutch of historical accounts from North & South America. Montanus, a Jesuit, seemed to seek illustrations emphasizing the non-Christian, heathen character of Native Americans.

Studying Native American History in Textbooks & General Overviews

Detail The Common Council of Georgia Receiving the Indian Chiefs by Willem Verelst c. 1734 - 1735 (DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum - Colonial Williamsburg)

Native Americans and American History 

by Francis Flavin - US National Park Service

References, Textbooks, and General Overviews

Perhaps the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for Native American history is the
Handbook of North American Indian series published by the Smithsonian Institution under the
general editorship of William C. Sturtevant. This twenty-volume series describes the history,
culture, and language of the different Indian tribes of North America. Each volume focuses on
the tribes of a particular region, and there are separate volumes on Indian-White relations 
and Indian languages. 

Frank W. Porter III edits a fifty-volume series from Chelsea House Publishers
entitled The Indians of North America. Each book is authored by an established scholar, is about
one hundred pages in length, and includes photographs, drawings, and maps. Most volumes are
tribal histories, but there are volumes on thematic topics, too. These books are written for
secondary school students and are informative, easy-to-read introductions to Indian histories.

Useful survey textbooks include --
Roger Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History, (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2004); 

Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary
Survey of American Indian History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999); and

R. David Edmunds, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Neal Salisbury, The People: A History of 
Native America (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006).

Philip Weeks’s “They Made Us Many Promises”: The American Indian Experience from 1524 to the Present, 2d ed. (Wheeling, Illinois: HarlanDavidson, Inc., 2002), is a collection of essays highlighting important topics in Indian history that range from native relations with the colonial French, Spanish, and British up to the efforts to repatriate native artifacts and burial remains in the end of the twentieth century. 

These texts are written for college undergraduates, but are useful to general readers as well --
Collin G. Calloway’s award-winning One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003) is a narrative survey of the often overlooked
pre-nineteenth century Native American West. 

James P. Rhonda’s Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) discusses the Corps of Discovery’s interactions with the Indians they encountered on their epic voyage to the Pacific.

One of the most popular surveys of Indian history is Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at
Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston,
1970). This book reflects the revisionist sentiments of the 1960s, presenting Indian history as a
tragic tale of broken treaty after broken treaty, bloody defeat after bloody defeat, and the
confinement of one tribe to reservation space after another. The book ends with the 1890
Wounded Knee massacre—implying that meaningful Indian history in the West ended in the
nineteenth century—and overlooks themes of cultural adaptation and persistence. Nevertheless,
this evocative, powerfully-written book has remained on “must read” lists for over three decades.

People interested in surveying history through biography will find the following books
useful -- 
Alvin M Josephy, Jr.’s The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resistance,
revised ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1993) focuses on the confrontational aspects of Indian-White
relations, as did Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The book includes vignettes on
Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, and others. Josephy was a talented writer, and like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, it has become a classic in the field. 

R. David Edmunds has edited 2 volumes of biographical essays that present a more multidimensional understanding of Native American leadership. Studies in Diversity: American Indian Leaders (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980) is a collection of a dozen essays that examine native leadership paradigms from the middle of the eighteenth century through the middle of the twentieth. His The New Warriors: Native American Leaders Since 1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001) contains fifteen biographical essays that discuss the lives of prominent
twentieth-century Indians. The New Warriors is particularly valuable because it engages the often overlooked story of twentieth century Native American leadership, and includes essays 
on five Indian leaders who are women.

16C & 17C Europeans Depict Native Americans - Powhatan

Ralph Hamor visits Powhatan with a proposal from the book by Ralph Hamor (c 1589-1626) A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia, and the successe of the affaires there till the 18 of June. 1614. A 1615.  This engraving was one of a series of images created by artist Georg Keller (1568-1634) to illustrate a 1617 German edition of Hamor's A True Discourse. The original 1615 English edition had no illustrations, so German printer Johann Abelius hired the artist Keller to illustrate his translation of Hamor's A True Discourse. Because Hamor's original 1615 London edition had no pictures, the artist drew upon earlier 1590 engravings of Virginia Indians by Theodore de Bry (1528-98) copied from John White's illustrations, as well as descriptions in Hamor's text. Only some details in the engravings are copied from the 1590 de Bry prints, but not all. Johann Theodore de Bry (1561-1623) the son & successor of Theodore, issued his translation of Hamor's Present State of Virginia in 1618. For illustrations, the younger de Bry simply copied Keller's invented pictures.

In May 1614 Ralph Hamor, the interpreter Thomas Savage, & two guides visit Powhatan's town on the Pamunkey River. In the foreground Powhatan feels Hamor's neck for "the chaine of pearle" Powhatan had given Thomas Dale to designate the English envoy. In the background at center, Hamor has an audience with Powhatan at his house, surrounded by Powhatan's guard. After presenting gifts, Hamor asks if Dale can have Powhatan's youngest daughter as "his neerest companion, wife & bedfellow." Powhatan refuses the request. Left of the house, an Englishman stands with Indian men, perhaps a representation of Hamor finding William Parker—a colonist lost for three years—among the Indians. In this image, the artist's invented details include the spear, the design & materials of the houses, & the tropical trees.

Ralph Hamor does continue to have interaction with Virginia's Natives as this Time Line published by The Encyclopedia of Virginia records: 

February 16, 1589 - Ralph Hamor is christened, probably in the Parish of Saint Nicholas Acons, London.

March 1606 - Ralph Hamor matriculates at Brasenose College, Oxford.

May 23, 1609 - Ralph Hamor's name is included on the second charter of Virginia.

June 1610 - Ralph Hamor is appointed a clerk in Jamestown. He later becomes secretary of the colony.

June 18, 1614 - Ralph Hamor likely departs Virginia for England.

1615 - A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia by Ralph Hamor is published in England.

August 1615 - Ralph Hamor's father dies, leaving him a substantial inheritance.

Late 1616 - The Virginia Company of London names Ralph Hamor vice admiral of Virginia.

January 1617 - Ralph Hamor acquires 8 shares in the Virginia Company of London.

May 15, 1617 - On about this day, Ralph Hamor and probably his brother Thomas Hamor arrive in Virginia with the colony's new deputy governor, Samuel Argall.

1620 - Ralph Hamor arranges for the shipping of large numbers of immigrants and livestock to Virginia.

Early 1621 - Ralph Hamor sails for London with a cargo of tobacco and sassafras root worth more than £4,500.

July 24, 1621 - Ralph Hamor is elected to the governor's Council.

1622 - Ralph Hamor returns to Virginia aboard the Sea Flower along with about 120 immigrants, some of whom he may have sponsored.

March 22, 1622 - Despite being personally targeted, Ralph Hamor escapes death in a series of Indian attacks that kill more than 300 English colonists.

April 15, 1622 - Ralph Hamor is appointed commander of the settlement at Martin's Hundred.

April 19, 1622 - The governor commands Ralph Hamor to transport the whole population of Warrosquyoake to Jamestown.

May 1622 - The governor dispatches Ralph Hamor to the Chesapeake Bay to obtain provisions from Indians who live along its tributaries.

Autumn 1622 - Ralph Hamor commands a ship sent to the Potomac River to obtain provisions, killing Indians who refuse to sell food and then seizing their supplies.

April 1623 - The treasurer of the colony reports Ralph Hamor to be "miserablie poore."

1624 - By this time Ralph Hamor has erected a new house in Jamestown and been granted 500 acres of land.

February 16, 1624 - Sometime before this date Ralph Hamor and Elizabeth Fuller Clements marry. They are not known to have any children.

1625 - A man who accused Ralph Hamor of stealing papers is forced to apologize and is fined £20 sterling.

1626 - A man who accused Ralph Hamor of selling shoddy goods at "unreasonable rates" is sentenced to a month in jail and then to have his ears nailed to the pillory.

April 6, 1626 - Ralph Hamor attends a session of the governor's Council for the last recorded time.

October 11, 1626 - The governor and Council grant the widow of the recently deceased Ralph Hamor authority to administer his estate.

February 1628 - Elizabeth Fuller Clements Hamor relinquishes administration of the estate of her dead husband, Ralph Hamor, to George Menifee.


Eckhardt, J., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Ralph Hamor (bap. 1589–by October 11, 1626). (2016, January 28). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Hamor_Ralph_bap_1589-by_October_11_1626.

Native American History

Iroquois Chiefs Montage - Charles Bird King, Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees, 1821,