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Books > History > History of other lands
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different
American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi.
Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band
of Choctaw Indians. In Mississippi's American Indians, author James
F. Barnett Jr. explores the historical forces and processes that
led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state's native
peoples. The book begins with a chapter on Mississippi's
approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer
societies through the powerful mound building civilizations
encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of
the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies
in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market
economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items.
Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian
slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the
relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases
followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the
French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the
Chickasaw-French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of
client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of
Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi's pro-French tribes to move west
of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas,
Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw
confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi's
remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with
the United States government that ended in destitution and removal.
Despite the intense pressures of European invasion, the Mississippi
tribes survived by adapting and contributing to their rapidly
evolving world.
Few historical chronicles are as informative and eloquent as the
journals written by Prince Maximilian of Wied as a record of his
journey into the North American interior in 1833-34, following the
route Lewis and Clark had taken almost thirty years earlier.
Maximilian's memorable descriptions of topography, Native peoples,
natural history, and the burgeoning fur trade were further brought
to life through the now-familiar watercolors and prints of Karl
Bodmer, the young Swiss artist who accompanied him.
The first two volumes of the "North American Journals" recount
the prince's journey from Europe to St. Louis, then up the Missouri
some 2,500 river miles to the expedition's western endpoint, Fort
McKenzie, in what is today Montana. In this third, and final,
volume, Maximilian vividly narrates his extended stay at Fort Clark
(near today's Bismarck, North Dakota) and his return journey
eastward across America and on to his home in Germany. Despite
subzero temperatures and a shortage of food at Fort Clark during
the winter of 1833-34, Maximilian continued to study and interview
the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians who lived nearby, recording
descriptions of their social customs, religious rituals, languages,
material culture, and art. This handsome, oversize volume not only
reproduces the prince's historic document but also features every
one of his illustrations--nearly 100 in all, including several in
color--from the original journal, along with other watercolors, now
housed at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.
Publication of these journals, fifty years in the making and
complete with extensive annotation, opens the 1830s American West
to modern readers in an indispensable scholarly resource and a work
of lasting beauty."This book is published with the assistance of
the National Historical Publications and Records Commission."
"At the end of the Trail of Tears there was a promise," U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the decision issued on
July 9, 2020, in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma. And that promise,
made in treaties between the United States and the Muscogee (Creek)
Nation more than 150 years earlier, would finally be kept. With the
Court's ruling, the full extent of the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation
was reaffirmed-meaning that 3.25 million acres of land in Oklahoma,
including part of the city of Tulsa, were recognized once again as
"Indian Country" as defined by federal law. A Promise Kept explores
the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely
the most significant Indian law case in well over 100 years.
Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an
in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it
might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other
tribes throughout the United States. For context, Robbie Ethridge
traces the long history of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from its
inception in present-day Georgia and Alabama in the seventeenth
century; through the tribe's rise to regional prominence in the
colonial era, the tumultuous years of Indian Removal, and the Civil
War and allotment; and into its resurgence in Oklahoma in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Against this historical
background, Robert J. Miller considers McGirt v. Oklahoma,
examining important related cases, precedents that informed the
Court's decision, and future ramifications-legal, civil,
regulatory, and practical-for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, federal
Indian law, the United States, the state of Oklahoma, and Indian
nations in Oklahoma and elsewhere. Their work clarifies the stakes
of a decision that, while long overdue, raises numerous complex
issues profoundly affecting federal, state, and tribal relations
and law-and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Poor Atlanta looks at the poor people's campaigns in Atlanta in the
1960s and 1970s, which operated in relationship to Sunbelt city-
building efforts. With these efforts, city leaders aimed to prevent
urban violence, staunch disinvestment, check white flight, and
amplify Atlanta's importance as a business and transportation hub.
As urban leaders promoted Forward Atlanta, a program to, in Mayor
Ivan Allen Jr.'s words, "sell the city like a product," poor
families insisted that their lives and living conditions, too,
should improve. While not always operating within public awareness,
antipoverty campaigns among the poor presented a regular and
sometimes strident critique of inequality and Atlanta's uneven
urban development. With Poor Atlanta, LeeAnn B. Lands demonstrates
that, while eclipsed by the Black freedom movement, antipoverty
organizing (including direct action campaigns, legal actions,
lobbying, and other forms of activism) occurred with regularity
from 1964 through 1976. Her analysis is one of the few citywide
studies of antipoverty organizing in late twentieth-century
America.
Encompassing the lands immediately surrounding the upper reaches of
the Beaver River from its headwaters at Lake Lila to Beaver Lake at
the settlement of Number Four, Beaver River country is the largest
undisturbed tract of forest in the entire northeastern United
States. During the nineteenth century it was widely considered to
be the very heart of the Adirondacks and was visited by thousands
of tourists seeking outdoor recreation. The area boasted a busy
railroad station, two grand hotels, an exclusive resort, and an
elaborate great camp, as well as dozens of guides camps and
sporting clubs. Pitts traces the generations of people who
inhabited the region, from the ancestors of the Haudenosaunee, to
the early European settlers, to the vacation communities and
seasonal visitors. With each generation, Pitts shows how Beaver
River country escaped the forces that fragmented and destroyed the
wilderness in much of the Northeast. The forest and waters that
attracted the early visitors are still there, preserved by a
combination of happenstance and dedicated effort. Filled with rare
vintage photographs, this book is a vivid portrait of this wild
region, revealing how it came to be and why it survives.
Encompassing the lands immediately surrounding the upper reaches of
the Beaver River from its headwaters at Lake Lila to Beaver Lake at
the settlement of Number Four, Beaver River country is the largest
undisturbed tract of forest in the entire northeastern United
States. During the nineteenth century it was widely considered to
be the very heart of the Adirondacks and was visited by thousands
of tourists seeking outdoor recreation. The area boasted a busy
railroad station, two grand hotels, an exclusive resort, and an
elaborate great camp, as well as dozens of guides camps and
sporting clubs. Pitts traces the generations of people who
inhabited the region, from the ancestors of the Haudenosaunee, to
the early European settlers, to the vacation communities and
seasonal visitors. With each generation, Pitts shows how Beaver
River country escaped the forces that fragmented and destroyed the
wilderness in much of the Northeast. The forest and waters that
attracted the early visitors are still there, preserved by a
combination of happenstance and dedicated effort. Filled with rare
vintage photographs, this book is a vivid portrait of this wild
region, revealing how it came to be and why it survives.
Viola Franziska Muller examines runaways who camouflaged themselves
among the free Black populations in Baltimore, Charleston, New
Orleans, and Richmond. In the urban South, they found shelter,
work, and other survival networks that enabled them to live in
slaveholding territory, shielded and supported by their host
communities in an act of collective resistance to slavery. While
all fugitives risked their lives to escape slavery, those who fled
to southern cities were perhaps the most vulnerable of all. Not
dissimilar to modern-day refugees and illegal migrants, runaway
slaves that sought refuge in the urban South were antebellum
America's undocumented people, forging lives free from bondage but
without the legal status of freedpeople. Spanning from the 1810s to
the start of the Civil War, Muller reveals how urbanization, work
opportunities, and the interconnectedness of free and enslaved
African Americans in each city determined how successfully runaways
could remain invisible to authorities.
Along with Confederate flags, the men and women who recently
gathered before the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts carried signs
proclaiming "Heritage Not Hate." Theirs, they said, was an "open
and visible protest against those who attacked us, ours flags, our
ancestors, or our Heritage." How, Nicole Maurantonio wondered, did
"not hate" square with a "heritage" grounded in slavery? How do
so-called neo-Confederates distance themselves from the actions and
beliefs of white supremacists while clinging to the very symbols
and narratives that tether the Confederacy to the history of racism
and oppression in America? The answer, Maurantonio discovers, is
bound up in the myth of Confederate exceptionalism-a myth whose
components, proponents, and meaning this timely and provocative
book exploresThe narrative of Confederate exceptionalism, in this
analysis, updates two uniquely American mythologies-the Lost Cause
and American exceptionalism-blending their elements with discourses
of racial neoliberalism to create a seeming separation between the
Confederacy and racist systems. Incorporating several methods and
drawing from a range of sources-including ethnographic
observations, interviews, and archival documents-Maurantonio
examines the various people, objects, and rituals that contribute
to this cultural balancing act. Her investigation takes in
"official" modes of remembering the Confederacy, such as the
monuments and building names that drive the discussion today, but
it also pays attention to the more mundane and often subtle ways in
which the Confederacy is recalled. Linking the different modes of
commemoration, her work bridges the distance that believers in
Confederate exceptionalism maintain; while situated in history from
the Civil War through the civil rights era, the book brings
much-needed clarity to the constitution, persistence, and
significance of this divisive myth in the context of our time.
The Garden District of New Orleans has enthralled residents and
visitors alike since it arose in the 1830's with its stately
white-columned Greek Revival mansions and double-galleried
Italianate houses decorated with lacy cast iron. Photographer West
Freeman evokes the romance of this elegant neighborhood with lovely
images of private homes, dazzling gardens, and public structures.
Author Jim Fraiser vividly details the historical significance and
architectural styles of more than a hundred structures and
chronicles both the political and cultural evolution of the
neighborhood.The Garden District, unlike the French Quarter,
evolved under the auspices of predominantly Anglo-American
architects hired by newly arriving, and newly wealthy, Americans.
Beyond these wealthy homeowners, the Garden District also offers a
startlingly diverse and freewheeling history teeming with African
American slaves, free men and women of color, French, Italians,
Germans, Jews, and Irish, all of whom helped fashion it into one of
America's first suburbs and most extraordinary neighborhoods.
Fraiser animates the Garden District's story with such notables as
Mark Twain; Jefferson Davis; occupying Union general Benjamin
Butler; flamboyant steamboat captain Thomas Leathers; crusading
Reverend Theodore Clapp; Confederate generals Jubal Early and
Leonidas Polk; jazzmen Joe ""King"" Oliver and Nate ""Kid"" Ory;
champion pugilist John L. Sullivan; local authors Grace King,
George Washington Cable, and Anne Rice; Mayor Joseph Shakespeare;
architects Henry Howard, Lewis Reynolds, and Thomas Sully; cotton
magnate Henry S. Buckner; and Louisiana Lottery co-founder John A.
Morris.In words and photographs, Fraiser and Freeman explore the
unexpected evolution of this district and reveal how war, plagues,
politics, religion, cultural conflict, and architectural innovation
shaped the incomparable Garden District.
In "Storm of the Century: The Regina Tornado of 1912," author
Sandra Bingaman recounts one of the worst natural disasters in
Canadian history--the rare F4 tornado that obliterated a broad
swatch of Regina, Saskatchewan 100 years ago. With wind speeds up
to 400 kilometres per hour, the death dance of the Great Regina
Cyclone changed lives, and the city, forever. It remains the worst
tornado in the nation to date, both in terms of lives lost and
property damanged. Skillfully mixing riveting narrative with dozens
of compelling, historical photographs, Bingaman brings this tragic
event back to life.
Many fictionalized accounts of the tornado exist but this is the
first complete account of the devastation and loss. An important
addition to Regina's recorded history and published to coincide
with the 100th anniversary of the storm, "Storm of the Century"
will serve as an important testament to the heroic rebuilding of
our city.
The eighteen articles selected for this third volume of the History
of the Prairie West series all focus on the agricultural history of
the Canadian Plains. Early First Nations practices are examined, as
are subsequent evolutions in farming, ranching, and marketing.
The articles cover a wide range of topics: First Nations'
agricultural practices; agriculture during the fur trade era; the
history of ranching and the industry's evolution as fenced-in farm
settlements supplanted the open range; the wheat boom at the turn
of the twentieth century, which led the Prairie Provinces to become
known as the "breadbasket of the world"; mechanization and other
adaptations to dryland farming; how Prairie cattle and crops were
transported and marketed abroad; and the emergence of farmers'
organizations who fought for fair prices for their products.
During the formative years of jazz (1890-1917), the Creoles of
Color-as they were then called-played a significant role in the
development of jazz as teachers, bandleaders, instrumentalists,
singers, and composers. Indeed, music penetrated all aspects of the
life of this tight-knit community, proud of its French heritage and
language. They played and/or sang classical, military, and dance
music, as well as popular songs and cantiques that incorporated
African, European, and Caribbean elements decades before early jazz
appeared. In Jazz a la Creole: French Creole Music and the Birth of
Jazz, author Caroline Vezina describes the music played by the
Afro-Creole community since the arrival of enslaved Africans in La
Louisiane, then a French colony, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, emphasizing the many cultural exchanges that led to the
development of jazz. Vezina has compiled and analyzed a broad scope
of primary sources found in diverse locations from New Orleans to
Quebec City, Washington, DC, New York City, and Chicago. Two
previously unpublished interviews add valuable insider knowledge
about the music on French plantations and the danses Creoles held
in Congo Square after the Civil War. Musical and textual analyses
of cantiques provide new information about the process of their
appropriation by the Creole Catholics as the French counterpart of
the Negro spirituals. Finally, a closer look at their musical
practices indicates that the Creoles sang and improvised music
and/or lyrics of Creole songs, and that some were part of their
professional repertoire. As such, they belong to the Black American
and the Franco-American folk music traditions that reflect the rich
cultural heritage of Louisiana.
The arrival of Spaniards in 1769 served as a defining moment for
California's future. They described the First Peoples and their
cultures and provided a window into the evolution of California's
Camino Real. In an effort to establish the Camino Real de
California as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Joseph P. Sanchez
explores the rich history of the path running from San Diego to San
Francisco in this significant study. While records capture the
stories and legends of the Camino Real there is little information
on the exact ground route. Sanchez utilizes historical and
archaeological literature and the documentation from Spanish and
Mexican archives to begin the much-needed process of authentication
of this braided corridor to further establish the Camino Real de
California's integrity and valuable history, which is shared with
Spain, Mexico, and Native American tribes. Their story is part of
the patrimony of the Camino Real de California, which ought to be
authenticated, preserved, and protected for future generations to
enjoy.
On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South
Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands-almost
all African American. But the devastating storm is only the
beginning of this story. The hurricane's long effects intermingled
with ongoing processes of economic downturn, racial oppression,
resistance, and environmental change. In the Lowcountry, the
political, economic, and social conditions of Jim Crow were
inextricable from its environmental dimensions. This narrative
history of a monumental disaster and its aftermath uncovers how
Black workers and politicians, white landowners and former
enslavers, northern interlocutors and humanitarians all met on the
flooded ground of the coast and fought to realize very different
visions for the region's future. Through a telescoping series of
narratives in which no one's actions were ever fully triumphant or
utterly futile, Hurricane Jim Crow explores with nuance this
painful and contradictory history and shows how environmental
change, political repression, and communal traditions of
resistance, survival, and care converged.
When Hannah, a seventy-three-year-old widow, finds the
semiconscious body of a fourteen-year-old Mexican national in a
ditch along a remote central Texas road, she has no idea someone is
watching. Not until the girl's brutal attacker arrives at Hannah's
door in the middle of the night, threatening not just the girl's
but Hannah's very survival. Ultimately the question of justice for
a victim of human trafficking and the woman who helps her lies in
the hands of a biracial border patrol officer and an unconventional
small-town sheriff. The I-10 corridor of Texas connects saints,
demons, and victims as the ultimate question of life and death is
decided by two strangers fate has bound together. They must make a
hard choice in order to survive: either follow the law or follow
their consciences.
Pantex was built during World War II near the town of Amarillo,
Texas. The site was converted early in the Cold War to assemble
nuclear weapons and produce high explosives. For nearly fifty years
Pantex has been the sole assembly and disassembly plant for nuclear
weapons in the United States. Today, most of the activities of the
plant consist of the manufacture of high explosive components and
the dismantlement or life extension of weapons. Unlike the much
more famous nuclear-weapons-production sites at Los Alamos, Oak
Ridge, Hanford, and Rocky Flats, the Pantex plant has drawn little
attention, hidden under a metaphoric "cap of invisibility." Lucie
Genay now lifts that invisibility cap to give the world its first
in-depth look at Pantex and the people who have spent their lives
as neighbors and employees of this secretive industry. The book
investigates how Pantex has impacted local identity by molding
elements of the past into the guaranty of its future and its
concealment. It further examines the multiple facets of Pantexism
through the voices of native and adoptive Panhandlers.
After World War II, Atlanta and Charlotte emerged as leading urban
centers in the South, redefining the region through their competing
metropolitan identities. Both cities also served as home to queer
communities who defined themselves in accordance with their urban
surroundings and profited to varying degrees from the emphasis on
economic growth. Uniting southern women's history with urban
history, La Shonda Mims considers an imaginatively constructed
archive including feminist newsletters and queer bar guides
alongside sources revealing corporate boosterism and political
rhetoric to explore the complex nature of lesbian life in the
South. Mims's work reveals significant differences between gay
men's and lesbian women's lived experiences, with lesbians often
missing out on the promises of prosperity that benefitted some
members of gay communities. Money, class, and race were significant
variables in shaping the divergent life experiences for the lesbian
communities of Atlanta and Charlotte; whiteness especially bestowed
certain privileges. In Atlanta, an inclusive corporate culture
bolstered the city's queer community. In Charlotte, tenacious
lesbian collectives persevered, as many queer Charlotteans leaned
on Atlanta's enormous Pride celebrations for sanctuary when similar
institutional community supports were lacking at home.
Winner of the 2019 Mark E. Mack Community Engagement Award from the
Society for Historical Archaeology, the collaborative archaeology
project at the former Stewart Indian School documents the
archaeology and history of a heritage project at a boarding school
for American Indian children in the Western United States. In
Collaborative Archaeology at Stewart Indian School, the team's
collective efforts shed light on the children's education,
foodways, entertainment, health, and resilience in the face of the
US government's attempt to forcibly assimilate Native populations
at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as school life in
later years after reforms. This edited volume addresses the theory,
methods, and outcomes of collaborative archaeology conducted at the
Stewart Indian School site and is a genuine collective effort
between archaeologists, tribal members, and former students of the
school including University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada Indian
Commission, and Washoe Tribal Historic Preservation Office. With
more than twenty contributing authors, over half of which are
tribal members (Washoe, Paiute, and Shoshone), this rich case study
is strongly influenced by previous work in collaborative and
Indigenous archaeologies. It elaborates on these efforts by
applying concepts of governmentality (legal instruments and
practices that constrain and enable decisions, in this case,
regarding the management of historical populations and modern
heritage resources) as well as social capital (valued relations
with others, in this case, between Native and non-Native
stakeholders). As told through the trials, errors, shared
experiences, sobering memories, and stunning accomplishments of a
group of students, archaeologists, and tribal members, this rare
gem humanizes archaeological method and theory and bolsters
collaborative archaeological research.
The activists and victories that made Florida a leader in land
preservation. Despite Florida's important place at the beginning of
the American conservation movement and its notable successes in the
fight against environmental damage, the full story of land
conservation in the state has not yet been told. In this
comprehensive history, Clay Henderson celebrates the individuals
and organizations who made the Sunshine State a leader in
state-funded conservation and land preservation. Starting with
early naturalists like William Bartram and John Muir who inspired
the movement to create national parks and protect the country's
wilderness, Forces of Nature describes the efforts of familiar
heroes like Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and May Mann Jennings and
introduces lesser-known champions like Frank Chapman, who helped
convince Theodore Roosevelt to establish Pelican Island as the
first national wildlife refuge in the United States. Henderson
details how many of Florida's activists, artists, philanthropists,
and politicians have worked to designate threatened land for use as
parks, preserves, and other conservation areas. Drawing on
historical sources, interviews, and his own long career in
environmental law, Henderson recounts the many small victories over
time that helped Florida create several units of the national park
system, nearly thirty national wildlife refuges, and one of the
best state park systems in the country. Forces of Nature will
motivate readers to join in defending Florida's natural wonders.
When thousands of working-class Barbadians left for Cuba in search
of better economic opportunities during the early twentieth
century, most of them did so with the expectation that they would
eventually return to their home. They maintained many of the
cultural traditions of their homeland, and they immersed their
Cuba-born children in Barbadian culture by exposing them to the
type of education which they themselves had received in Barbados
and teaching them English to prepare them for life "back home".
Although many of the migrants were not able to achieve this dream
of returning home, some of their children and grandchildren have
managed to retrace their ancestors' journey and find their roots in
Barbados. This "reverse migration" is driven as much by economics
as by sentiment for the ancestral homeland. The basis of that
sentiment has sometimes been called into question, since these
"CuBajans" have not always been regarded as true Barbadians by some
among the local population. The CuBajans themselves have a sense of
pride in what they have been able to achieve in Cuba, and they
count themselves fortunate in having two homelands. With relatives
still in Cuba, they maintain links through frequent communication,
remittances and travel back to the island. In A Return to Roots:
"CuBajans" in Barbados, these migrants tell their own stories
through oral testimonies, which Sharon Milagro Marshall frames
within the context of Barbadian and Cuban history.
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