It was nearly the turn of the century. Not only was the century changing but the ways of life were changing. Many new inventions were making life easier. Electricity was becoming more and more available. Travel was becoming more comfortable and convenient. The awareness of the plight of the Native American Indians was more widely known. The Wounded Knee Massacre was a recent occurrence. As more and more people were exposed to the manner in which Indians were treated, attitudes changed. The Indian population had declined to its lowest ebb at the turn of the century. The Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha was an opportunity to show off many of the new inventions and to help the rest of the country be aware of the riches West of the Mississippi. One Frank A. Rinehart, the premier photographer in Omaha, was appointed the Official Photographer for the Trans-Mississippi Expo. At the last minute, it was decided to bring about 500 Indians to the Expo to show attendees the human side of this misunderstood people. Rinehart had the unique opportunity to produce photographic portraits of each of the Native Americans in attendance. "The Edge of Extinction" not only highlights some of those portraits of this handsome race, but also gives a view of life in Omaha, the commentary of the national press concerning the Trans-Mississippi, a look at the man who was Rinehart and more so as to help understand this time in the history of the Midwest.

For Teachers and Administrators.

Follow Emilio "Dee" DaBramo's forty-five year career as a teacher and administrator that began in 1948.

During his tenure at the Mamaroneck, N.Y. Union Free School District (1960 to 1978), he solved the high school drop-out problem that was endemic in the socially, culturally and economically-deprived neighborhoods. His alternative school APPLE Program (A Place where People Learn Excellence) and his Summer Co-Op Program designed for the targeted neighborhoods, were a huge success. The APPLE Program garnered a ninety percent graduation rate and a resulting college graduation rate of better than seventy percent. His philosophy of Never Give Up on a Kid, and the organizational structure of these programs are well-documented and translatable to almost any school system.

For WWII Historians. Drafted into the Army Air Corps at age nineteen, Emilio DaBramo served as a Radio Operator on a B-24 bomber during WWII.

Fly along with the crew on their 31 missions over German occupied Europe. The exploits of the crew are well documented, including the disastrous carpet bombing raid at St. Lo, France and the heretofore untold story of the air delivery of 700,000 gallons of fuel to General Patton's Third Army tanks in France during Operation Cobra.

Re-live their crash landing in France after being shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire over Cologne, Germany.

For WWII G.I. Bill Historians. In 1945 Emilio DaBramo enrolled at Cortland State Teachers College under the WWII G.I. Bill. Read about the social and educational challenges that faced the veterans, the college administrators and professors after the WWII veterans arrived on campus.

For Special Olympic Historians. Emilio DaBramo's early work with the mentally and physically challenged individuals, in the late 1940's through the 1960's, caught the attention of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Impressed with his work, she appointed him as a volunteer member of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation's Advisory Committee and as a clinician for the Special Olympics. Read the heretofore untold story of his twelve year tenure (1968-1980) with the foundation during which time he conducted clinics in every state and in several European countries related to organizing and operating Special Olympic Games. He was the Games Director for the State of New York for the first twelve years of the program (1968 through 1980).

In tribute to Emilio "Dee" DaBramo, royalties from this book will be distributed as scholarships through the SUNY Cortland Foundation.

Very few people have lived a life comparable to that of Chickasaw Chief George Colbert; Butch Walker tells the story of this little known Celtic Indian man that lived a life worthy of a Hollywood movie in Chickasaw Chief George Colbert: His Family and His Country. This historic timepiece tells Colbert's story from a son of a Scots father and Chickasaw mother to a decorated military leader, successful ferry operator, plantation owner, businessman, and Chickasaw chief. George Colbert was a relatively unknown historical figure and decorated military hero that led the Chickasaws through Indian removal which was one of the darkest eras of American history. This man was trusted by the Indians, friends to the whites, and respected by local and national figures alike, including former presidents of the United States. Butch Walker has diligently researched the history, family, and overall historical significance of this Chickasaw Chief; Walker spent countless hours researching the life and legacy of George Colbert who was half Celtic (Scots) and half Indian (Chickasaw). George was never defined or limited by his blood quantum; he was a proven leader of the Chickasaw Nation. This book takes the reader from the birth of George's father, through the time of the French-Chickasaw War, beyond the Chickasaw Removal. The tale of the "Half-Blood Prince" of the 17th century is for anyone wanting to increase their knowledge of southeastern Indians, particularly the "Unconquered Unconquerable Chickasaws." The life of George Colbert appears to be taken right from the pages of a Hollywood script. Chickasaw Chief George Colbert: His Family and His Country is a must read for anyone wanting to learn more about the Chickasaw Colbert family.

Disease and discrimination are processes linked to class in the early American colonies. Many early colonists fell victim to mass sickness as Old and New World systems collided and new social, political, economic, and ecological dynamics allowed disease to spread. Dale Hutchinson argues that most colonists, slaves, servants, and nearby Native Americans suffered significant health risks due to their lower economic and social status. With examples ranging from indentured servitude in the Chesapeake to the housing and sewage systems of New York to the effects of conflict between European powers, Hutchinson posits that poverty and living conditions, more so than microbes, were often at the root of epidemics.

The first published record of Florida Seminole herbal medicine and ancient healing practices, Healing Plants is a colorfully illustrated compendium of knowledge and practices passed down orally to Alice Snow from generations of her Native American ancestors. The authors' overview of Seminole history, native medicine, and the life of Snow, a Seminole herbalist (illustrated with personal photographs) places the healing practices in their cultural context and describes actual treatments. Charts with plant names in Creek, Mikasuki, and English and lists of plant properties with their common and botanical names offer easy reference. Color photographs provide clear illustrations of many of the plants. Herbal treatments include those intended for babies, for people who have had a hysterectomy, a stroke, blackouts or shortness of breath, ""monkey sickness,"" alligator bites, or a speeding heart, people who have pain or have been ill for a long time, who like to sleep all the time or can't sleep because of worry or bad dreams, who are pregnant or ""on the wagon"" or have lost wives or husbands. Alice Snow is both a traditional Seminole and a cultural innovator who combines old and new methods of preserving and teaching ""Indian medicine."" Her record of medicinal plants and remedies is her contribution toward helping the Seminoles to hold onto their past while living in the present and moving toward the future. Though the book does not reveal the tribal doctors' secret healing songs, believed to empower the plants, it provides Seminoles with a reference handbook of plants; it also offers medical professionals, herbalists, and the general public an understanding of the world of Seminole medicine.

Throughout our Cherokee history,"" writes Joyce Dugan, former principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, ""our ancient stories have been the essence of who we are."" These traditional stories embody the Cherokee concepts of Gadugi, working together for the good of all, and Duyvkta, walking the right path, and teach listeners how to understand and live in the world with reverence for all living things. In Eastern Cherokee Stories, Sandra Muse Isaacs uses the concepts of Gadugi and Duyvkta to explore the Eastern Cherokee oral tradition, and to explain how storytelling in this tradition - as both an ancient and a contemporary literary form - is instrumental in the perpetuation of Cherokee identity and culture. Muse Isaacs worked among the Eastern Cherokees of North Carolina, recording stories and documenting storytelling practices and examining the Eastern Cherokee oral tradition as both an ancient and contemporary literary form. For the descendants of those Cherokees who evaded forced removal by the U.S. government in the 1830s, storytelling has been a vital tool of survival and resistance - and as Muse Isaacs shows us, this remains true today, as storytelling plays a powerful role in motivating and educating tribal members and others about contemporary issues such as land reclamation, cultural regeneration, and language revitalization. The stories collected and analyzed in this volume range from tales of creation and origins that tell about the natural world around the homeland, to post-Removal stories that often employ Native humor to present the Cherokee side of history to Cherokee and non-Cherokee alike. The persistence of this living oral tradition as a means to promote nationhood and tribal sovereignty, to revitalize culture and language, and to present the Indigenous view of history and the land bears testimony to the tenacity and resilience of the Cherokee people, the Ani-Giduwah.

Before American History juxtaposes Mexico City's famous carved Sun Stone with the mounded earthworks found throughout the Midwestern states of the U.S. to examine the project of settler nationalism from the 1780s to the 1840s in two North American republics usually studied separately. As the U.S. and Mexico transformed from European colonies into independent nations-and before war scarred them both-antiquarians and historians compiled and interpreted archives meant to document America's Indigenous pasts. These settler-colonial understandings of North America's past deliberately misappropriated Indigenous histories and repurposed them and their material objects as "American antiquities," thereby writing Indigenous pasts out of U.S. and Mexican national histories and national lands and erasing and denigrating Native peoples living in both nascent republics.Christen Mucher creatively recovers the Sun Stone and mounded earthworks as archives of nationalist power and Indigenous dispossession as well as objects that are, at their material base, produced by Indigenous people but settler controlled and settler interpreted. Her approach renders visible the foundational methodologies, materials, and mythologies that created an American history out of and on top of Indigenous worlds and facilitated Native dispossession continent-wide. By writing Indigenous actors out of national histories, Mexican and U.S. elites also wrote them out of their lands, a legacy of erasure and removal that continues when we repeat these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century settler narratives and that reverberates in discussions of immigration, migration, and Nativism today.