Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: KC Wayman
Unabridged: 1 hr 36 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 01/17/2023
Genre: History - Native American
Most Americans have heard of the Little Bighorn, the 1876 battle in which a band of Lakota Sioux and their allies wiped out most of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer. The movie images are of fierce warriors in long eagle feather headdresses flowing behind them as they gallop across the plains on nimble Indian ponies. In fact, many Americans know the names of the commanders who beat Custer, most notably Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and there are famous photographs of the stolid looking, copper-skinned Sitting Bull participating in Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show.”
Children in schools also learn that there were more battles in the coming years as American settlers pushed west, and names like Geronimo are instantly famous after the U.S. Army’s tough fight with the Apache. A few may even have learned of the formidable Comanches in the Texas Panhandle, and maybe even events like the Fetterman Massacre or the fights at Adobe Wells.
Today, far fewer people are familiar with the conflicts that took place east of the Mississippi before the Indian Wars of the late 19th century, fought in the forests and woodlands rather than on the prairies. The names of a few of the tribes involved are well known - the Cherokee, Iroquois and Seminole and Choctaw – while other formidable groups like the Yamasee, Miamis, Delaware, Powhatan, and Shawnee are less known. As whites pushed west from the East Coast, there were fights against the Abenaki, and during the French & Indian War, two regiments of Redcoats and colonial militia were decimated near what is now Pittsburgh. An alliance under Chief Pontiac threw the British and Americans out of the Great Lakes country for a time in the mid-18th century and had much to do with the fracture between colonies and the mother country. And tribal leaders like Blue Jacket and Little Turtle waged bitter wars in the Old Northwest, including inflicting the worst defeat ever of the U.S. Army.
James McLaughlin worked as an Indian agent for most of his life. His most infamous act, however, was ordering the arrest of Sitting Bull for fear that his participation in the Ghost Dance movement would inspire Indian rebellion. “The newspaper...
On December 29, 1890, the U.S. military entered the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with the intention of disarming the natives. When met with resistance, the cavalry opened fire on the Lakota in a massacre that killed several hundred men, wome...
In 1831, the Cherokee Nation brought a case against the state of Georgia to the Supreme Court. They argued that as a separate foreign nation, certain Georgia laws overstepped their jurisdiction and wrongfully stripped Cherokees of their rights. The ...
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...
Preserving Native American culture is an effort that is pervading the anthropological and cultural work of today, and without the work of past observers like Z.A. Parker – certain pieces of history could have been missing from books permanentl...
In 1877, the U.S. government ordered the Nez Perce Indians to leave their tribal lands in the Pacific Northwest for a reservation in Idaho. Though this mandate violated previous treaty agreements, the Army forced the Indians to flee. Led by Chief Jo...
As archaeologists quickly learned, there are numerous temples dedicated to Quetzalcoatl all across Mesoamerica. From the Aztec to the Maya, Quetzalcoatl - the Feathered Serpent - rears his beautiful head from magnificent relief carvings in temples ...
In 1890, the US government feared an imminent Indian uprising among the displaced Sioux people. General Nelson A. Miles reported from the field summarizing the issue at hand. The government was failing to fulfill the terms of the treaty they had coe...
Pauite leader Wovoka founded the Ghost Dance movement in the late 1880s as conditions for Native Americans became increasingly hopeless. Wovoka declared himself the messiah and spread the news that Indians were to prepare themselves for salvation th...