Books published by University of Oklahoma Press

Ever since the Custer massacres on June 25, 1876, the question has been asked: What really happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn? Now, because a grass fire in 1983 cleared the terrain of brush and grass and made possible thorough archaeological examinations of the battlefield, we have many answers to important questions.

"The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing" is an important story of intellectual discovery and a tale of code breaking comparable to the interpreting of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the decoding of cuneiform. Using classic articles taken from publications unavailable to most readers, accounts by Spaniards who witnessed the writing of the glyphs and research by twentieth-century scholars--from Tatiana Proskouriakoff to Michael Coe--this book provides a history of the interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs. Introductory essays offer the historical context and describe the personalities and theories of the many authors who contributed to the understanding of these ancient glyphs.More than two hundred line drawings illustrate the text and serve as an introduction to decipherment. This landmark work in Maya studies is the first book to examine the centuries of thought behind the decoding of Maya hieroglyphs.

Using primary sources, this book tells the stories of the white, black and Native American women who settled on the Oklahoma frontier, and who crossed racial and cultural barriers to work together, first in domestic concerns and later in community and national affairs.

This texts collects together 44 stories covering Kiowa history from the 1700s through the 1940s, all gleaned from interviews with Kiowas (who actually took part in the events or recalled them from the accounts of their elders), and the notes of Captain Hugh L. Scott at Fort Sill.

In this historical novel, the US cavalry rolls into Texas in the 1870s with orders to keep the peace and move the fierce Comanches quietly onto the reservation. It is a tale of adventure, hardship and defeat.

This text surveys the formative development of northwest Texas. Despite the unfamiliar and often hostile environment, the first pioneers persisted through problems such as conflicts with Indians, the Civil War, Reconstruction and outlawry to form a ranching-based social and economic way of life.

In 1841, US government authorities sent Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock to Indian Territory to investigate numerous charges of fraud and profiteering by various contractors. This study explains the politics behind Hitchcock's mission and his accomplishments in advancing ethnographic knowledge.