Bücher veröffentlicht von University of Oklahoma Press

When it adopted a new constitution in 1969, the Seminole Nation was the first of the Five Tribes in Oklahoma to formally reorganize its government. In the face of an American legal system that sought either to destroy its nationhood or to impede its self-government, the Seminole Nation tenaciously retained its internal autonomy, cultural vitality, and economic subsistence. Here, L. Susan Work draws on her experience as a tribal attorney to present the first legal history of the twentieth-century Seminole Nation.Work traces the Seminoles' story from their removal to Indian Territory from Florida in the late nineteenth century to the new challenges of the twenty-first century. She also places the history of the Seminole Nation within the context of general Indian law and policy, thereby revealing common threads in the legal struggles and achievements of the Five Tribes, including their evolving relationships with both federal and state governments.As Work amply demonstrates, the history of the Seminole Nation is one of survival and rebirth. It is a dramatic story of an Indian nation overcoming formidable obstacles to move forward into the twenty-first century as a thriving sovereign nation.

Born in 1888 in Oklahoma Territory, Jim Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Indian. In 1912 he participated in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, winning both the decathlon and pentathlon. It was then that King Gustav V of Sweden dubbed him "the world's greatest athlete."

The California gold rush of 1849 created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city's docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The committee, which met in secret, fed biased stories to the newspapers, depicting itself as a necessary substitute for incompetent law enforcement. But its actual purpose was quite different. In Dirty Deeds, historian Nancy J. Taniguchi draws on the 1856 Committee's minutes--long lost until she unearthed them--to present the first clear picture of its actions and motivations. San Francisco's real estate comprised a patchwork of land grants left from the Spanish and Mexican governments--grants that had been appropriated and sold over and over. Even after the establishment of a federal board in 1851 to settle the complicated California claims, land titles remained confused, and most of the land in the city belonged to no one. The acquisition of key waterfront properties in San Francisco by an ambitious politician motivated the thirty-odd merchants who called themselves "the Executives" of the Vigilance Committee to go directly after these parcels. Despite the organization's assertion of working on behalf of law and order, its tactics--kidnapping, forced deportations, and even murder--went far beyond the bounds of law. For more than a century, scholars have accepted the vigilantes' self-serving claims to honorable motives. Dirty Deeds tells the real story, in which a band of men took over a city in an attempt to control the most valuable land on the West Coast. Ranging far beyond San Francisco, the 1856 Vigilance Committee's activities affected events on the East Coast, in Central America, and in courts throughout the United States even after the Civil War.

Many Anglo-Americans in the nineteenth century regarded Indian tribes as little more than illiterate bands of savages in need of "civilizing." Few were willing to recognize that one of the major Southeastern tribes targeted for removal west of the Mississippi already had an advanced civilization with its own system of writing and rich literary tradition. In Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820-1906, James W. Parins traces the rise of bilingual literacy and intellectual life in the Cherokee Nation during the nineteenth century--a time of intense social and political turmoil for the tribe. By the 1820s, Cherokees had perfected a system for writing their language--the syllabary created by Sequoyah--and in a short time taught it to virtually all their citizens. Recognizing the need to master the language of the dominant society, the Cherokee Nation also developed a superior public school system that taught students in English. The result was a literate population, most of whom could read the Cherokee Phoenix, the tribal newspaper founded in 1828 and published in both Cherokee and English. English literacy allowed Cherokee leaders to deal with the white power structure on their own terms: Cherokees wrote legal briefs, challenged members of Congress and the executive branch, and bargained for their tribe as white interests sought to take their land and end their autonomy. In addition, many Cherokee poets, fiction writers, essayists, and journalists published extensively after 1850, paving the way for the rich literary tradition that the nation preserves and fosters today. Literary and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820-1906 takes a fascinating look at how literacy served to unite Cherokees during a critical moment in their national history, and advances our understanding of how literacy has functioned as a tool of sovereignty among Native peoples, both historically and today.

"The Songdog sings an ancient song. It echoed over the Western plains and deserts long before man was there to hear it. The singer and the song have survived the mastodon, the mammoth, the elephants and the camels that once roamed this continent. The coyote's voice has not been stilled. Not even by man...In 'The Coyote,' the reader will find many books in one. It is a biography that traces the life story of one coyote from birth to adulthood; an historical and current description of predator control; a sometimes violent adventure story; and, most of all, an examination of creature physchology."-Anaheim Bulletin "The viewpoints of both rancher and environmentalist are presented in this intelligent, often shocking book on the emotional coyote controversy. The amazing adaptability of this small predator leads the author to question humankind's right to interfere with nature. Unusual illustrations depict the coyote's desert life."-American West

The Ch'ol Maya who live in the western Mexican state of Chiapas are direct descendants of the Maya of the Classic period. Exploring their history and culture, volume editor Karen Bassie-Sweet and the other authors assembled here uncover clear continuity between contemporary Maya rituals and beliefs and their ancient counterparts. With evocative and thoughtful essays by leading scholars of Maya culture, The Ch'ol Maya of Chiapas, the first collection to focus fully on the Ch'ol Maya, takes readers deep into ancient caves and reveals new dimensions of Ch'ol cosmology. In contemporary Ch'ol culture the contributors find a wealth of historical material that they then interweave with archaeological data to yield surprising and illuminating insights. The colonial and twentieth-century descendants of the Postclassic period Ch'ol and Lacandon Ch'ol, for instance, provide a window on the history and conquest of the early Maya. Several authors examine Early Classic paintings in the Ch'ol ritual cave known as Jolja that document ancient cave ceremonies not unlike Ch'ol rituals performed today, such as petitioning a cave-dwelling mountain spirit for health, rain, and abundant harvests. Other essays investigate deities identified with caves, mountains, lightning, and meteors to trace the continuity of ancient Maya beliefs through the centuries, in particular the ancient origin of contemporary rituals centering on the Ch'ol mountain deity Don Juan. An appendix containing three Ch'ol folktales and their English translations rounds out the volume. Charting paths literal and figurative to earlier trade routes, pre-Columbian sites, and ancient rituals and beliefs, The Ch'ol Maya of Chiapas opens a fresh, richly informed perspective on Maya culture as it has evolved and endured over the ages.

Shortly after Custer's defeat in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Colonel Nelson A. Miles and his Fifth Infantry launched several significant campaigns to destroy the Lakota-Northern Cheyenne coalition in the Yellowstone River basin. Miles's expeditions involved relentless pursuit and attack throughout the winter months, culminating in the Lame Deer Fight of May 1877, the last major engagement of the Great Sioux War.Yellowstone Command is the first detailed account of the harrowing 1876-1877 campaigns. Drawing from Indian testimonies and many previously untapped sources, Jerome A. Greene reconstructs the ambitious battles of Colonel Miles and his foot soldiers. This paperback edition of Yellowstone Command features a new preface by the author.

South Texas and northern Mexico formed a seedbed of revolt in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, two decades after he had launched his own successful revolution from South Texas, Mexican president Porfirio Díaz faced a cross-border insurgency intent on toppling his government. The Garza War, so named for the revolutionary firebrand and editor Catarino Erasmo Garza, actually comprised three concerted Texas-based attempts to overthrow Díaz: a June 1890 raid led by Francisco Ruiz Sandoval, the Garza Raid of September 1891, and the San Ignacio Raid of December 1892. In the first detailed military history of the Garza War, Thomas Ty Smith reveals how an armed insurrection against a foreign government, conducted on American soil, drew the US Army into a uniquely complex conflict whose repercussions would be felt on both sides of the US-Mexico border for generations to come.Though not intended as a direct threat to the US, by using Texas as a staging area, the insurgency threatened US neutrality laws, forcing the US to honor its treaty obligations to the Porfirio Díaz government in Mexico City-a proposition further complicated by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevented soldiers from acting as law enforcement. Smith describes how what began as a measured and somewhat limited effort by the United States to enforce the Neutrality Act in Texas eventually escalated into an all-out shooting war between the army and the Garzistas, elevating the counterinsurgency campaign into the highest military, diplomatic, and political echelons of both America and Mexico.The Garza War in South Texas profiles central characters in the conflict-such as Captain John Gregory Bourke, famed for his service with Major General George Crook in the Indian Wars; the biracial, bilingual Shely brothers, former Texas Rangers who ran the army's secret spy network; and Francisco Benavides, aka El Tuerto (One-Eye), leader of the 1892 raid that resulted in the brutal slaughter and burning of a Mexican federal cavalry outpost across the river from San Ygnacio, Texas. These revolutionaries provided a cornerstone ideology, and a historic legacy, for the Mexican Revolution two decades later.

Alex Haley Memorial Award, The Tennessean¿Susan Ford Wiltshire traces the evolution of the doctrine of individual rights from antiquity through the eighteenth century. The common thread through that long story is the theory of natural law. Growing out of Greek political thought, especially that of Aristotle, natural law became a major tenet of Stoic philosophy during the Hellenistic age and later became attached to Roman legal doctrine. It underwent several transformations during the Middle Ages on the Continent and in England, especially in the thought of John Locke, before it came to justify a theory of natural right, claimed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as the basis of the "unalienable rights" of Americans.

For the Seneca Iroquois Indians, song is a crucial means of renewing both medicine and heritage. Two or three times a year, the Little Water Medicine Society of western New York meets to renew the potency of its medicine bundles through singing. These bundles have been inherited from eighteenth century Iroquois war parties, handed down from generation to generation. In this long-awaited book, William N. Fenton describes the remarkable ceremonies of one of the least recorded but most significant medicine societies of the Iroquois Indians.Most of the Senecas who were members of the Little Water Society, or Society of Shamans, have passed away, and their knowledge of ceremonial healing and spiritual renewal is fading. Fenton has written this book to preserve knowledge of the ceremonies and songs for the Iroquois people and as a contribution to anthropology, folklore, ethnomusicology, and American Indian studies. In The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas, he presents his original 1933 fieldwork, along with details from the published and unpublished works of other researchers, to describe rituals, poetry, and songs drawn from his more than six decades of research among the Six Nations.

The only religious unit in American military history. The Mormon battalion was unique in federal service, having been recruited solely from one religious body and having a religious title as the unit designation. Serving in the Mexican War, they marched across the Southwest to California. Strangely, though, the battalion's story has not been told from the perspective of the profession of arms. Since it did not engage in battle, military historians have paid little attention to it.Military aspects of the battalion overlooked. The military aspects of this unique battalion usually been ignored. The most common portrayal of the unit has been to treat it as a group of pioneers, rather than soldiers--emigrants who followed a unique path during the Mormon hegira to the Great Basin.A unique military unit. This volunteer unit of five companies was unique in many ways beyond its pioneer experience. Led by regular officers, including Philip St. George Cooke, it served as part of General Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West, invading and occupying what would become New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Formed in July 1846 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the battalion marched to California, where it was discharged from federal service in July 1847, after exactly one year's service. In the process, it did not experience combat, but made one of the most incredible and challenging marches in American military history.The great march across the Southwest. The story of that grueling march across wide prairies, mountains, and deserts is central to the battalion's story. It symbolizes the very essence of the Mormon drama as a frontier epic, and proves more than anything else the men's loyalty, stamina, and sacrifice. In telling that tale, the author also illuminates the battalion's place in the U.S.-Mexican War, as most accounts of its history have ignored its role in the greater campaign.First-hand accounts bring detail and immediacy to the story. More than eighty diaries, journals, memoirs, and typed manuscript copies prepared by battalion members were accessed by the author in the preparation of this work.The journal of Dr. Sanderson: Dr. George B. Sanderson was known in Mormon legend as "Dr. Death," and was feared and loathed by many in the battalion. In the spring of 2003, the Mormon Battalion legacy was greatly enhanced by the discovery of his journal, while serving as a volunteer assistant surgeon assigned to the battalion. This journal, extensively quoted in the book, provides a window to the soul of one of the two most hated characters of the battalion. It joins the other great accounts of Daniel Tyler, Levi Hancock, Henry Standage, William Coray, and others.Maps and illustrations enhance the work. The two appendixes included contain the Army Pay Scale, 1846, and the Mormon Battalion Command and Staff. A thorough bibliography and index complete the book, and add to its value. The book includes a chronology, historical introduction, footnotes, two appendixes, bibliography and index.With thirteen illustrations and three maps.

One of early-twentieth-century America's most fertile grounds for political radicalism, the Pacific Northwest produced some of the most dedicated and successful socialists the country has ever seen. As a radicalized labor force emerged in mining, logging, and other extractive industries, socialists employed intensive organizational and logistical skills to become an almost permanent third party that won elections and shook the confidence of establishment rivals. At the height of Socialist Party influence just before World War I, a Montana member declared, "They are all red out here."In this first book to fully examine the development of the American Socialist Party in the Northwest, Jeffrey A. Johnson draws a sharp picture of one of the most vigorous left-wing organizations of this era. Relying on party newspapers, pamphlets, and correspondence, he allows socialists to reveal their own strategies as they pursued their agendas in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. And he explores how the party gained sizable support in Butte, Spokane, and other cities seldom associated today with left-wing radicalism."They Are All Red Out Here" employs recent approaches to labor history by restoring rank-and-file workers and party organizers as active participants in shaping local history. The book marks a major contribution to the ongoing debate over why socialism never grew deep roots in American soil and no longer thrives here. It is a work of political and labor history that uncovers alternative social and political visions in the American West.

Like some mysterious Paladin, Harry Love seemed to suddenly appear on the California landscape at a time when he was particularly needed. As captain of the California Rangers, Love pursued Joaquin Murrieta and his bandits, and the outlaw was captured and killed. Then, his job done, he again faded into obscurity. Where did he come from? What was his life before, and after, the Murrieta affair?From Texas to California, this enigmatic and shadowy figure has been a figure of myth. Those who wrote of Murrieta, including John Rollin Ridge, knew little about Love. He has been fair game for those who sought to sensationalize his career, or create it out of whole cloth.For the first time the story of Harry Love is now told. Based upon years of research, digging deep into archives and contemporaneous accounts, tracking down obscure legends and lore, California historian Bill Secrest recounts with vitality and long-needed honesty the tale of Love, Murrieta, and the world in which they lived. As an army courier and express rider in Texas, Mexico, and New Mexico during and after the Mexican War, Love was a popular and well-known figure. His 1850 exploration of the Rio Grande and its possibilities for navigation were important and covered in newspapers throughout the U.S. and Mexico.First visiting California by sea in 1839, Love returned in 1850 during the Gold Rush. A vivid picture of the lawlessness of the land and the animosity between Mexicans and Americans is drawn by the author, highlighting the events in which Murrieta and his associates were involved. A detailed history of the Rangers and the bandits they pursued is given.Murrieta looms large in this tale. Without Murrieta, there would not have been a Harry Love as we know him. It was both the high point and the turning point of his life. Thus this biography includes a complete account of California's most famous outlaw, who met his fate in 1853 at the hands of Love and his Rangers.Following the killing of Murrieta, Love settled near Santa Cruz. As a pioneer sawmill operator and farmer, his life became more prosaic. His marriage floundered, his mill was destroyed, his plans came to naught. But the account of his years in the mountains above Santa Cruz offers a unique glimpse into pioneer life after the Gold Rush.

One January day in 1923, a young boy came across the dead body of a twenty-year-old woman on a San Diego beach. When the police arrived on the scene, they found the woman's calling card, which read simply, "I am Fritzie Mann." Yet Fritzie's identity, as revealed in this compelling history, was anything but simple, and her death-eventually ruled a homicide-captured public attention for months. In Fritzie, historian Amy Absher reveals how broader cultural forces, including gendered violence, sexual liberation, and evolving urban conditions in the American West, shaped the course of Mann's life and contributed to her tragic death.Frieda "Fritizie" Mann had several identities during her brief life, and the mysterious circumstances of her death raise as many questions as they do answers. She was born in 1903 near the present border between Poland and Ukraine. She and her family were Jewish immigrants who traveled to San Diego to find security and prosperity.In the last year of her life, Mann became locally famous. She had reinvented herself as a flapper and "Oriental" dancer. She claimed to have friends in Hollywood and a movie contract. On the night of her murder, she said she was going to a party to meet her Hollywood friends; instead she traveled to an isolated roadside hotel where she met her death. An autopsy revealed that she was four and a half months pregnant.Absher guides the reader through the intricacies of this true crime story as it unfolded, from the initial flawed investigation to the sensationalized press coverage and the ultimate failure of the legal system to ensure justice on Mann's behalf. Like other "new women" of her era, Fritzie Mann adopted roles that promised liberation from the control of men. In the end, her life and early death suggest the opposite: she became the victim of a culture that consumed women even as it purported to celebrate them.

The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on to persevere through centuries of change? In this engaging narrative, acclaimed historian R. David Edmunds combines careful research with creative storytelling to give voice to indigenous individuals and families and to illustrate the impact of pivotal events on their lives. A nonfiction account accompanies each narrative to provide necessary historical and cultural context.Voices in the Drum features nine stories, each of which focuses on a fictional character who is a composite, or representation, of historical people. This series of portrayals takes the reader on an epic journey through time, beginning in the early 1400s with the Mound Builder cultures and ending with the modern-day urbanization of Native people. Along the way, we observe fictional characters interacting with real historical figures, such as Anthony Wayne, Tecumseh, and John Sutter, and taking part in actual events, such as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the Trail of Tears, the California gold rush, and the forced removal of Native children to off-reservation boarding schools.The people portrayed in these pages belong to various tribes, including Potawatomis, Lakotas, Oneidas, and Cherokees. Their individual stories, ranging from humorous to tragic, give readers a palpable sense of how tribal peoples reacted to the disruptive changes forced on them by European colonizers and U.S. government policies.Both entertaining and insightful, the stories in this volume traverse a range of time periods, events, themes, and genres. As such, they reverberate like voices in the drum, inviting readers of all backgrounds to engage anew with the rich history and cultures of indigenous peoples.

This is the story of the antebellum frontier in Texas, from the Red River to El Paso, a raw and primitive country punctuated by chaos, lawlessness, and violence. During this time, the federal government and the State of Texas often worked at cross-purposes, their confused and contradictory policies leaving settlers on their own to deal with vigilantes, lynchings, raiding American Indians, and Anglo-American outlaws. Before the Civil War, the Texas frontier was a sectional transition zone where southern ideology clashed with western perspectives and where diverse cultures with differing worldviews collided.This is also the tale of the Butterfield Overland Mail, which carried passengers and mail west from St. Louis to San Francisco through Texas. While it operated, the transcontinental mail line intersected and influenced much of the region's frontier history. Through meticulous research, including visits to all the sites he describes, Glen Sample Ely uncovers the fascinating story of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas.Until the U.S. Army and Butterfield built West Texas's infrastructure, the region's primitive transportation network hampered its development. As Ely shows, the Overland Mail Company and the army jump-started growth, serving together as both the economic engine and the advance agent for European American settlement. Used by soldiers, emigrants, freighters, and stagecoaches, the Overland Mail Road was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the modern interstate highway system, stimulating passenger traffic, commercial freighting, and business.Although most of the action takes place within the Lone Star State, this is in many respects an American tale. The same concerns that challenged frontier residents confronted citizens across the country. Written in an engaging style that transports readers to the rowdy frontier and the bustle of the overland road, The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail offers a rare view of Texas's antebellum past.