U. of Oklahoma Press

After Custer; loss and transformation in Sioux country.

Little is written about the events that ensued after Custer's last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn, and its effect on the Native Sioux and the US Army's eventual sucess. Historian Hedren brings light to the cost of winning a battle, but losing on a much grander scale. From the slaughtering of the buffalo to forcing the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne off the land, the loss of a way of life and the ensuing generation's attempt at coping are presented and investigated in this account. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Alaska; a history, 3d ed.

This illustrated, large-format (8.25 inchesx10.25 inches) history for general readers features a wealth of b&w historical and contemporary photos and illustrations, about 120 total. The book begins with Alaska's geography and the activities of Native Peoples before contact, then covers the Russian expansion into Siberia, the sale of Russian North America in 1867, and US territorial Alaska, from the American settlement of Alaska in 1867 through the Gold Rush, the region's development during WWII, and the Cold War period. The next section of the book describes the transition to statehood and gives details on the oil economy in the '70s and '80s, the effects of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and conservation. The final section looks at modern Alaska. The book includes a 30-page bibliographic essay and 30 pages of appendices listing commanders, judges, delegates to Congress, statistics, governors, and national regional corporations. The authors are affiliated with the University of Alaska. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Archaeology of desperation; exploring the Donner Party's Alder Creek camp.

It has been commonly accepted that the Donner Party, when stranded at their Alder Creek Camp in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-1847, consumed their dead as part of a meager starvation diet. While opinions vary, that seems to be at the very least a strong suspicion. The authors here combine examinations of history, ethnohistory, archaeology, bioarchaeology, and social anthropology in an effort to re-explore with fresh approaches what actually happened. Editors Dixon (anthropology, U. of Montana), Shablitsky (research archaeologist, U. of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History), Novak (anthropology, Syracuse U.), and nine co-authors contributed to the book. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Aztecs on stage; religious theater in colonial Mexico.

Six plays from 16th-century colonial Mexico illustrate the reception of Christianity by Nahuatl-speaking natives. Some are morality plays, with fictional characters whose virtuous or sinful behavior leads to heavenly reward or damnation to hell. Most, however, tell stories from the Bible, saints' lives and other religious literature. Among the plays here are The Nobleman and his Barren Wife, The Three Kings, and Dialogue on the Apparition of the Virgin Saint Mary of Guadalupe. There is no index. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Deep trails in the old West; a frontier memoir.

This memoir of the Wild West, edited and notated by famed Western expert and writer Frederick Nolan, details the life and times of Frank Clifford, a Welsh immigrant who became an outlaw and roughneck cowboy in the American Southwest during the end of the nineteenth century. The work follows Clifford as he invents new lives, and new aliases, across the West, staying one step ahead of the law and his enemies, and finally becoming a respected citizen of a small Kansas town and a leader of its city government. The account was dictated to an acquaintance in the 1940s and was given to the editor of this volume some fifty years later. The volume includes several black and white photographs. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Eugene B. Adkins collection; selected works.

Eugene B. Adkins (1920-2006) collected Native American and American Southwestern art, from paintings and photographs through jewelry and other crafts. This book displays selected works from the collection, which is now housed at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma. The breadth of the collection is displayed with color paintings, drawings, and photos on every page. The book also includes essays by art historians and curators and the stewards of the Eugene B. Adkins collection. Essays cover Adkins's life and how he built the collection over 40 years, and touch on time and modernity in the art of the American Southwest, photography of the American Southwest, Native American paintings and sculpture, Native jewelry and silverwork, and Native American pottery, baskets, and textiles. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Forging a fur empire; expeditions in the Snake River country, 1809-1824.

Reid took time off from teaching responsibilities at New York U. School of Law (he's now emeritus) to research and write this history of early fur trading in the far northern West. He bases his narrative on accounts written by Alexander Ross (who led a beaver trapping expedition in 1824, in what is now Idaho and Montana) and others, exploring cultural interactions as well as legal, institutional, and commercial behaviors. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Forging a nation; the American history collection at Gilcrease Museum.

Intended for a general audience, this history showcases documents, paintings, sculptures, and other objects from the extensive collection of the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa Oklahoma. The intriguing images (many full-page) are interspersed throughout the book, accompanying essays on the colonial experience, the Revolution, national identity as it evolved in the 19th century, the Civil War, and the settlement of the American West. The writing is clear and accessible(but credentials or affiliations of the essay writers are not stated). Distribution is by the U. of Oklahoma Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Fort Clark and its Indian neighbors; a trading post on the Upper Missouri.

Fort Clark was a fur trade post in what is now western North Dakota, during the mid-19th century. This 'biography' of Fort Clark and the Indian villages that surrounded it offers a context for understanding newly discovered archaeological evidence about the cultures of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indians who traded at Fort Clark. The book focuses on the relationship between the fort and the Indian villages, looking at the beginnings of the fur trade in the region, life at Fort Clark, early events and visitors, and the later years of the trading post. The book includes historical b&w photos and illustrations and will be of interest to historians and scholars. Wood is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Justinian Caire and Santa Cruz Island; the rise and fall of a California dynasty.

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Santa Cruz Island, the largest of the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, was the largest privately held island off the coast of the U.S. The author's great grandfather, Justinian Caire, a French immigrant who made his fortune as a merchant in San Francisco, had purchased all shares of the island where the family owned and operated several ranches and vineyards between the 1880s and 1930s. Chiles uses documents, legal correspondence, annual reports, journals, and family letters to detail the history of the Caire family's activities on Santa Cruz Island, the rift that formed in the family after Justinian's death, and the lengthy legal struggle which ultimately led to the family's loss of the island. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ned Wynkoop and the lonely road from Sand Creek.

When gold rusher and land speculator Ned Wynkoop joined the First Colorado Volunteers during the Civil War, he was appalled to witness the Colorado Volunteers' attack on a sleeping Indian camp at the Sand Creek Massacre. This biography centers on Wynkoop's attempts to end the 1864 Indian War and his later work as an Indian agent, when he tried to convince the Indian Bureau to allow the tribes to have guns for hunting and to increase their allotments of food and clothing. The book is illustrated with a wealth of b&w historical photos. The bibliography lists archival sources, government documents, books, articles, and theses. Kraft has written other historical works. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Pío Pico; the last governor of Mexican California. (reprint, 2010)

Salomon (Latin American Studies, California State U., East Bay) tells the story of Pío Pico, a prominent businessman of mestizo and black heritage, third generation Californian, and two-term governor of Alta California before and during the U.S.-Mexican War. Salomon describes Pico's rise to power, his activities as governor, his enthusiasm for change, his choice to accept reappointment despite the high likelihood of a U.S. invasion, and his determination and struggle to hold onto land, wealth, and power even after Mexico's 1848 defeat and up until his death at age 93. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Plains Indian art; the pioneering work of John C. Ewers.

John C. Ewers was one of the leading scholars of Plains Indian cultures, and especially Plains Indian art during the 20th century. He published several important books and essays on the topic, beginning with the award-winning Plains Indian Paintingin 1939, and he was one of the founders of the area of study known as ethnohistory. This, his final work, was begun in the 1990s with the assistance of his daughter, Jane Ewers Robinson, and published posthumously. Here Ewers presents 15 essays and articles about the Plains Indian traditions he found particularly fascinating, including images of the white man in nineteenth century Plains Indian art, the emergence of the named Indian artists in the American west, images of bears, weasels, water monsters, and Spanish cattle in Plains art, Blackfeet picture writing, effigy pipes, pipes for Presidents, Assiniboin antelope-horn headdresses, and collaborations between Plains artists and anthropologists. The essays are illustrated with full-color photos of the art, as well as illustrations and historical photos. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley; making the modern old West.

The rock formations of Rainbow Bridge in southern Utah and Monument Valley on Utah's border with Arizona, sacred to Navajo tribes since ancient times, have now come to symbolize the modern American West. Harvey, a journalist for the Salt Lake Tribune, explores how the two cultures produced meaning out of this area in the late 19th century and through the 20th century, looking at how social, economic, and cultural conditions determine how we see, experience, use, and contest space. The discussion touches on images of the rock formations created by novelist Zane Grey and filmmaker John Ford, efforts of environmentalists to save Rainbow Bridge from the damming of Glen Canyon, and contemporary tourism. The book includes b&w historical photos. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shooting from the lip; the life of senator Al Simpson.

Montana-based Hardy served first as Republican Senator Alan Simpson's press secretary and chief of staff for 18 years, and then as the Smithsonian Institution's Director of Government Affairs. Drawing on Simpson's papers, expansive collection of photographs, documents, intimate correspondence, handwritten notes, and 19-volume diary begun shortly before he was elected majority whip of the US Senate, Hardy presents an insightful biography of the Senator's life and political career. Undertaken by Hardy at the Senator's request and with Simpson's direction to tell "the whole truth," the book traces not only Simpson's achievements but also his difficult public and private moments, from sometimes-destructive childhood antics, to a deep depression in young adulthood, and his growing maturity and rise to national importance in the US Senate. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Winning the West with words; language and conquest in the lower Great Lakes.

The myths of the 'vanishing Indian' and the 'stalwart pioneer' who marched into an uninhabited wilderness were grounded in the larger belief that Native peoples simply ceased to exist in the lower Great Lakes region at the beginning of the 19th century. Buss (history, Oklahoma City U.) deconstructs the narrative of statehood development in the region in order to reveal the history of Indian subjugation and dispossession that underlies the history of American progress. The author examines texts such as travel journals, captivity narratives, and newspaper editorials to show how whites in the late 18th century and the 19th century used metaphor, rhetoric, and imagery to assert cultural dominance over Indian-occupied territory in the Great Lakes region and to support narratives of westward expansion, Indian removal, and progress. The book includes b&w historical illustrations. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)