Books in the The Civilization of the American Indian Series series

A guide to all the known hieroglyphic symbols of the Classic Maya script. In the New Catalog Martha Macri and Matthew Looper have produced a valuable research tool based on the latest Mesoamerican scholarship.

Recounts the reservation period of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes in western Oklahoma. This is an investigation - and an indictment - of the assimilation and reservation policies thrust upon them in the latter half of the nineteenth century, policies that succeeded only in doing enormous damage to sturdy, vital people.

An examination of the craft of silversmithing among the Navaho and Pueblo Indians, based on museum inspections, field work, interviews and a brief apprenticeship to a Navaho silversmith. Adair aims to relate the art to its social framework as well as provide an analysis of the economic aspects.

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.

"An outstandingly clear picture of Spotted Tail . . . the definitive work."-Saturday ReviewSpotted Tail, the great head chief of the Brule Sioux, was an intelligent and farseeing man who realized alone of all the Sioux that the old way of life was doomed and that to war with the white soldiers was certain suicide. Although he was branded a traitor by many members of his tribe, the canny Brule, with all the skill of an accomplished diplomat, fought a delaying action over the council tables with the high officials in Washington. The only man in the tribe big enough to stand up to the whites and insist upon the rights of the Brulés under existing treaties with the U. S. government, he used every means available to him, short of a shooting war, to protect his people from being rushed into the white man's ways by government agents and eastern "Friends of the Indians."Thus the story of Spotted Tail is the story of the Brulé struggle against being made into imitation whites overnight, even when they were forced on the reservation, where they were expected to farm the land, raise cattle, send their children to school, and adopt Christianity-all at once.The assassination of Spotted Tail in 1881 by his political enemy, Crow Dog, ended the history of the Brulé Sioux as a tribe. With the great voice stilled, at Rosebud Agency only the voices of little men were heard, quarreling about little matters. With his death, the government effected its purpose: to break the tribal organization to bits and put the Brulés under the control of their white agent.George E. Hyde was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1882. As a boy he became interested in Indians and began writing about them in 1910. He has produced some of the most important books on the American Indian ever written, including Indians of the High Plains, Indians of the Woodlands, Red Cloud's Folk, Spotted Tail's Folk, and Life of George Bent, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Hyde died in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1968 at the age of 86.

Presents the medical practices of the American Indians and portrays the historical relationship between the native Americans and the newcomers from the Old World. The author touches on such topics as pharmacology, healing, folklore and botany.

The westward drive of the warlike Sioux Indians along a thousand miles of prairie and woodland, from the upper reaches of the Mississippi to the lower Powder River in Montana, is one of the epic migrations of history. From about 1660 to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the Teton Sioux swept away all opposition: Arikaras, Ponkas, Crees, Crows, Cheyennes--all fell away and dispersed as the Sioux advanced, until the invaders ranged over a vast territory in the northwest, hunting buffalo and raiding their neighbors. During the ensuing years of heavy conflict, between 1865 and 1877, Red Cloud of the Oglalas stood out as one of the greatest of the Sioux leaders.George E. Hyde was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1882. As a boy he became interested in Indians and began writing about them in 1910. He has produced some of the most important books on the American Indian ever written, including Indians of the High Plains, Indians of the Woodlands, Red Cloud's Folk, Spotted Tail's Folk, and Life of George Bent, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Hyde died in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1968 at the age of 86.Royal B. Hassrick was the author of serveral books on Indians and Indian art, including The Sioux: Customs of a Warrior Society, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

The Arapahoes are an important Plains Indian tribe. Previously neglected in favor of their more hostile allies, the Sioux and the Cheyennes, they have benefited from increasing attention in recent years. In this tribal history Virginia Cole Trenholm traces Arapaho life-ways from prehistoric times in Minnesota and Canada to twentieth-century Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma. In a new preface she summarizes the major events for the last Arapaho generation.

The fierce bands of Comanche Indians, on the testimony of their contemporaries, both red and white, numbered some of the most splendid horsemen the world has ever produced. Often the terror of other tribes, who, on finding a Comanche footprint in the Western plains country, would turn and go in the other direction, they were indeed the Lords of the South Plains. For more than a century and a half, since they had first moved into the Southwest from the north, the Comanches raided and pillaged and repelled all efforts to encroach on their hunting grounds. They decimated the pueblo of Pecos, within thirty miles of Santa Fé. The Spanish frontier settlements of New Mexico were happy enough to let the raiding Comanches pass without hindrance to carry their terrorizing forays into Old Mexico, a thousand miles down to Durango. The Comanches fought the Texans, made off with their cattle, burned their homes, and effectively made their own lands unsafe for the white settlers. They fought and defeated at one time or another the Utes, Pawnees, Osages, Tonkawas, Apaches, and Navahos. These were "The People," the spartans of the prairies, the once mighty force of Comanches, a surprising number of whom survive today. More than twenty-five hundred live in the midst of an alien culture which as grown up around them. This book is the story of that tribe--the great traditions of the warfare, life, and institutions of another century that are today vivid memories among its elders. Despite their prolonged resistance, the Comanches, too, had to "come in." On a sultry summer day in June 1875, a small band of starving tribesmen straggled in to Fort Sill, near the Wichita Mountains in what is now the southwestern part of the state of Oklahoma. There they surrendered to the military authorities. So ended the reign of the Comanches on the southwestern frontier. Their horses had been captured and destroyed; the buffalo were gone; most of their tipis had been burned. They had held out to the end, but the time had now come for them to submit to the United States government demands.

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 biography situates Chief Moses of the Columbias in the opening of the Northwest and subsequent Indian-white relations, between 1850 and 1898. He held his tribe at peace and resisted the call to arms of his friend Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces.