Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Bill Caufield
Unabridged: 3 hr 22 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 01/20/2024
Genre: History - Native American
One of the best known of the six nations is the Seneca, and arguably the most famous Seneca chief was Ely Samuel Parker. Over the course of his life, he was a Seneca chief, a civil engineer, a close friend and adjutant to General Ulysses S. Grant, an advocate for the Indian peoples, and the first Native American Commissioner of the Department of Indian Affairs. His marriage to a much younger socialite scandalized Washington, and he made a fortune on Wall Street and lost it all. He ended his life in genteel poverty, working for nearly 20 years in an obscure position for the New York City Police Department. Parker was a largely self-taught engineer, who worked on various canal projects, and was hired by the Department of the Treasury to supervise the construction of several buildings in Galena, Illinois, where he met a shy salesclerk named Ulysses S. Grant. At the age of 18, he dined with President Polk, later talked with President Lincoln, and had the commanding general of the U.S. Army as the best man at his wedding.
Stand Watie’s life connects the traditional Cherokee homeland in Tennessee and Georgia, the fight within the tribe over leaving for the West or staying on their homeland and trying to resist, and the Trail of Tears. At the same time, his life also includes the ongoing split between mixed-blood and full-blood Cherokee in the Cherokee Nation, and the chaos of Indian Territory during the Civil War. Like the country as a whole, the Cherokee Nation was split over the question of slavery, and with an estimated 100 slaves owned, Watie was the biggest native slaveholder in the region. At the start of the war, Watie was commissioned as a colonel in Confederate service and later as a brigadier general. His 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles Regiment fought more engagements than any other Confederate unit west of the Mississippi River. As a result, Watie is perhaps the most famous figure of a widely overlooked aspect of the Civil War.
The new United States was faced with a fundamental problem: to expand, it had to settle lands to the west of the Appalachian Mountains, ceded to it by the British. However, the mountains were occupied by Native American groups who had no desire to m...
In response to Sioux raids along the Bozeman Trail, the United States Army closed the trail in 1865 to mount the Powder River Expedition against the Sioux alliance that kept ravaging settlers and the beleaguered Crows. With the Civil War nearing it...
Along the sandy shores and ancient forests of crystal blue Lake Erie, a proud, brave, and confident people lived long ago, building homes, raising crops, hunting game, rearing children, and surviving through harsh winters and hot summers. None of t...
As settlers continued to encroach further west, the Shawnee, who were attempting to put together a confederacy of Native Americans to resist, stood firm and ready to fight them. Before America fought Britain in the War of 1812, they were engaged in...
Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "forty acres and a mule"—the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who a...
Throughout history, there have been men of war and men of peace, but few have actually had a war named after them. One of them was Pontiac, also known as Obwandiyag, an Odawa chief who left his mark on history by continuing the battle against the Br...
The short war between a confederation of Native American tribes under Little Turtle’s leadership has been referred to by many names, including the Northwest Indian War, the Ohio War, and the Miami War, but it is probably best known as Little ...
The development of North America as a series of British colonies prior to the end of the 18th century went ahead without any definitive policy in regards to the Native Americans who were impacted, displaced and not infrequently overwhelmed by the p...
Red Horse, a Lakota chief, recorded a detailed eyewitness account of the Battle of Little Bighorn. He recalls seeing a rising cloud of red dust just before US soldiers charged their camp. With the hot sun bearing down on them, the Sioux took no pris...