Books in the The Civilization of the American Indian Series series

Guatemala emerged from the clash between Spanish invaders and Maya cultures that began five centuries ago. "Strange Lands and Different Peoples" examines the myriad ramifications of Spanish intrusion, especially Maya resistance to it and the changes that took place in native life because of it.

Presents the origins, history, and contemporary use (and misuse) of tobacco by Native Americans. The book describes wild and domesticated tobacco species and how their cultivation and use may have led to the domestication of corn, potatoes, beans, and other food plants. It also analyses many North American Indian practices and beliefs.

Previous scholarship has offered only glimpses of Kiowa military societies. William Meadows now provides a detailed account of the ritual structures, ceremonial composition, and historical development of each society, as well as past and present women's groups.

Deftly interweaves a mass of archaeological, anthropological, and archival source material to resurrect the lost history of a forgotten people, from their earliest contacts with Europeans to their final expulsion just before the American Revolution.

Traces the gradual movement of the Alabamas and Coushattas from their origins in the Southeast to their nineteenth-century settlement in East Texas, exploring their motivations for migrating west and revealing how their shared experience affected their identity.

This edition of the "Codex Chimalpahin", one of the most comprehensive histories of native Mexico by a known Indian, details the history of the formation and development of Nahua societies and politics in central Mexico over an extensive period of time.

Drawing on more than twenty years of research and oral history interviews, Linda J. Goodman in Singing the Songs of My Ancestors presents a somewhat different point of view-that of the anthropologist/ethnomusicologist interested in Makah culture and history as well as the changing musical and ceremonial roles of Makah men and women.

A confederate soldier, pioneer merchant, rancher, newspaper publisher, and town builder, George Washington Grayson also served for six decades as a leader of the Creek Nation. His life paralleled the most tumultuous events in Creek Indian and Oklahoma history, from the aftermath of the Trail of Tears through World War I.

Despite challenges by the federal government to restrict the use of peyote, the Native American Church, which uses the hallucinogenic cactus as a religious sacrament, has become the largest indigenous denomination among American Indians today. The Peyote Road examines the history of the NAC, including its legal struggles to defend the controversial use of peyote.

A portrait of this American Indian warrior, which reassesses his distorted image as a bloodthirsty savage and offers an insight into his energy and drive, independence, business acumen and interest in a wide range of subjects.

A young Chippewa Indian from Minnesota collected these legends and stories told by the Tanaina Indians of southwestern Alaska. Called suk-tus ("legend-stories") and stemming from the seventeenth century, they are anecdotal narratives centered on a particular animal or animals common to the Tanaina country. Thus the tales are peopled with foxes, beavers, wolverines, porcupines, and other animals, some of which disguise themselves in human form for sinister purposes and all of which have human desires and weaknesses. According to the author, some embellishments in the stories certainly resulted from contact with Western civilization, particularly during the Russian and early fur-trading periods, but basically they are aboriginal Tanaina and are told as they have been handed down through oral tradition. Originally, suk-tus were related to entertain and instruct, and they are as apt to do so for today's audiences as for yesterday's, reflecting both the outlook of their originators and the nature of the environment in which they lived.

A study of the dress of the Plains Indians which counters the misconception that all the tribes of the central region dressed alike. Certain similarities could be found amongst the groups, but each tribe had its own distinctive traditions and preferences.

This is the history of a remarkable nation, the only Indian tribe that never officially made peace with the United States. General Thomas Sidney Jesup admired the Seminoles as adversaries: "We have, at no former period in our history, had to contend with so formidable an enemy. No Seminole proves false to his country, nor has a single instance occurred of a first rate warrior having surrendered." Jesup made those comments in 1837, and they proved true throughout the Seminole-white confrontations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Portions of the Seminoles' story--particularly their wars--have been told, but until this book no extensive history of the tribe had been written. Here is the record of those dauntless people who were tricked, robbed, defrauded, and abused. The origins of the tribe, the complex problems concerning their rights in Florida, the military operations against them, their forced removal to Indian Territory, their role in the Civil War, and their adjustment to life in the West are important elements of the book.

A history of peyotism, an important Native American religious movement. Presenting ethnographic and ethnohistorical data, rather than a theoretical exegesis, the study of this pan-tribal movement should appeal to anthropologists and historians, as well as those interested in religious groups.

The 200 letters in this volume chronicle more than 40 years of history in the old Cherokee Nation - from removal through the Civil War to Reconstruction - as recorded in the correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot families, the minority leaders in the Nation, and known as the "Treaty Party".

The Blackfeet were the strongest military power on the northwestern plains throughout the eighteenth century. But the near extinction of buffalo in the late nineteenth century brought dire poverty to the tribe, forcing them to rely in part on the U.S. government for sustenance. In this history of the Blackfeet, historian John C. Ewers relied on his own experience living among the Blackfeet as well as archival research to tell of not only the events that have so drastically affected the Blackfeet way of life, but also the ways the Blackfeet have responded, adapting and preserving their culture in the face of a changing landscape.

This is an account of the history and activities of the Apache Indians, as well as the tortuous course of events that led to the tribe's subjugation. The author examines a racial and cultural struggle in which the duplicity of white government officials proved to be a decisive factor.

Chronicles the rise of the Cherokee Nation and its rapid decline, focusing on the Ridge-Watie family and their experiences during the Cherokee removal.