Empire of Fortune is vintage Jennings. He writes with as much flair and involvement as his predecessors, while challenging their assumptions and research at every turn. No one has done more to demystify the early American wilderness or worked harder to dynamite the anglocentric folktales of colonial history. Peter H. Wood, Duke University"

This in-depth narrative history of the interactions between English settlers and American Indians during the Virginia colony's first century explains why a harmonious coexistence proved impossible. Britain's first successful settlements in America occurred over 400 years ago. Not surprisingly, the historical accounts of these events have often contained inaccuracies. This compelling study of colonial Virginia is based upon the latest research, shedding new light on the tensions between the English and the American Indians and clarifying the facts about storied relationships. In Lethal Encounters: Englishmen and Indians in Colonial Virginia, the author examines why the Anglo settlers were unable to establish a peaceful and productive relationship with the region's native inhabitants. Readers will come to understand how the deep prejudices harbored by both whites and Indians, the incompatibility of their economic and social systems, and the leadership failures of protagonists like John Smith, Powhatan, Opechacanough, and William Berkeley caused this breakdown. Draws extensively on primary source materials such as letters, memoirs, legislative proceedings, and court records Includes John Smith's 1612 map of Virginia, which identifies the location of Indian settlements

What is a babiche? A cradleboard? Who are the Athapascans and the Black Indians? What was the Battle of Little Big Horn? This compendium of vocabulary, people, places, and events is designed to assist the reader in understanding a variety of terms and important events from Native American history that are included in works of classic literature and nonfiction sources. Offering a balanced approach to multicultural study, the text strives to convey a sense of the normal rhythms of Indian life by discussing the daily work and lifestyles of women and children as well as hunters and warriors. It covers North American, Caribbean, and Central and South American Indian groups and Canadian and Alaskan Inuit, including well-known tribes (e.g., Apache, Cherokee, and Sioux) and less familiar ones (e.g., Carrier, Inuit, Pomo, and Kwakiutl). Each entry contains a pronunciation guide, definition, examples, and an illustrative sentence from the literature. Organized alphabetically with frequent cross-references a

Just as few natural species have withstood the test of ever-changing earth environments through time, relatively few human-created systems (e.g., companies, governments, religions, etc.) long survive their creation. What then is the secret of those that continue to defy these odds and what factors have led to the failure of others? This manuscript attempts to answer this question using the Phelps Dodge Corporation, its unions, its Native American and Mexican workforce, the Ajo Inter-tribal Community Council, the Mormon Church, The March of Dimes, and others as examples.

Dr. Larry R. Stucki, from the Preface

In the dense rainforest of the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Somass River (c uuma as) brings sockeye salmon (mi aat) into the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Tseshaht. C uuma as and mi aat are central to the sacred food practices that have been a crucial part of the Indigenous community's efforts to enact food sovereignty, decolonize their diet, and preserve their ancestral knowledge. In A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other, Charlotte Cote shares contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth practices of traditional food revitalization in the context of broader efforts to re-Indigenize contemporary diets on the Northwest Coast. Cote offers evocative stories of her Tseshaht community's and her own work to revitalize relationships to ha um (traditional food) as a way to nurture health and wellness. As Indigenous peoples continue to face food insecurity due to ongoing inequality, environmental degradation, and the Westernization of traditional diets, Cote foregrounds healing and cultural sustenance via everyday enactments of food sovereignty: berry picking, salmon fishing, and building a community garden on reclaimed residential school grounds. This book is for everyone concerned about the major role food plays in physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.

Hugh Lenox Scott, who would one day serve as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, spent a portion of his early career at Fort Sill, in Indian and, later, Oklahoma Territory. There, from 1891 to 1897, he commanded Troop L, 7th Cavalry, an all-Indian unit. From members of this unit, in particular a Kiowa soldier named Iseeo, Scott collected three volumes of information on American Indian life and culture - a body of ethnographic material conveyed through Plains Indian Sign Language (in which Scott was highly accomplished) and recorded in handwritten English. This remarkable resource - the largest of its kind before the late twentieth century - appears here in full for the first time, put into context by noted scholar William C. Meadows. The Scott ledgers contain an array of historical, linguistic, and ethnographic data - a wealth of primary-source material on Southern Plains Indian people. Meadows describes Plains Indian Sign Language, its origins and history, and its significance to anthropologists. He also sketches the lives of Scott and Iseeo, explaining how they met, how Scott learned the language, and how their working relationship developed and served them both. The ledgers, which follow, recount a variety of specific Plains Indian customs, from naming practices to eagle catching. Scott also recorded his informants' explanations of the signs, as well as a multitude of myths and stories. On his fellow officers' indifference to the sign language, Lieutenant Scott remarked: ""I have often marveled at this apathy concerning such a valuable instrument, by which communication could be held with every tribe on the plains of the buffalo, using only one language."" Here, with extensive background information, Meadows's incisive analysis, and the complete contents of Scott's Fort Sill ledgers, this ""valuable instrument"" is finally and fully accessible to scholars and general readers interested in the history and culture of Plains Indians.

A Truly All-American Renaissance ProphetEven without any actual historical references, Lamah contends that the contents of this narrative is a true story in reality. And after all, what is reality?This poignant book is, in essence, a story that is all about the power and significance of love. It begins at the closing years of the 18th century and has its final installment of inspirational spiritual muse manifested during the early to mid-19th Century. The source of this loving tale is an earthbound disembodied soul of unprecedented spiritual substance, who remained in spirit close to the geographic origins of this prophetic story until the end of the 20th Century. It was then that several conspiring, sometimes tragic circumstances brought together two initiate, spiritually gifted Medicine Men whose lives in this Garden of Eden were necessarily separated by the passage of more than a hundred years. They would dedicate their modest lives to the healing of others' spirits through that immutable power of love, a love that was and should always remain necessarily unconditional, and always boundless.

"De Religione," the longest-surviving text in the Huron, or Wendat, language, was written in the seventeenth century to explain the nature of Christianity to the Iroquois people, as well as to justify the Jesuits' missionary work among American Indians. In this first annotated edition of "De Religione," linguist and anthropologist John L. Steckley presents the original Huron text side by side with an English translation.

The Huron language, now extinct, was spoken originally by Huron Indians, who were settled in present-day southern Ontario. One group went to Quebec and another was later removed to the western United States, first to Kansas and then to Oklahoma. In the early 1670s, the author of De Religione, likely a Jesuit priest named Phillipe Pierson, chose to write his doctrine in Huron because it was a language understood by all five Iroquois nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. For today's readers, the text offers valuable insight into how the missionaries actually communicated with American Indians.

Amplified by Steckley's in-depth introduction and his fully annotated translation, "De Religione" provides a firsthand account of Catholic missionization among the Iroquois during the colonial period.

A valuable and major contribution to its field and to the associated interdisciplinary debates.
--Jim PhillipUniversity of Essex

American mainstream culture has always been fascinated with the notion of the primitive, particularly as embodied by Native Americans. In Inventing the American Primitive, Helen Carr illustrates how responses to the existence of Native American traditions have shaped ideas of American identity and American literature.

Inventing the American Primitive examines a body of work, both literary and anthropological, that describes, inscribes, translates and transforms Native American myths and poetry. Drawing on post-colonial and feminist theory, as well as ethnography's recent textual turn, Carr reveals the conflicts and ambivalence in these texts. Through their writings, the writers and anthropologists studied were attempting to preserve a culture which their country, with their help or connivance, sought to destroy. The contradictions and tensions of this position run throughout their work. Although there is no simple narrative of progress in this story, as it moves from the eighteenth-century primitivism to twentieth-century modernism, the book shows the process by which the richness and complexity of Native American traditions came to be acknowledged.

Inventing the American Primitive offers a radical new reading of American literary history, as well as fresh insights into the powerful pull of primitivism in United States culture, and into the interactions of gender and race ideologies.

What are the answers to the unanswerable? The question is as old as time, as is the journey of those who have chosen to set their feet on various and diverse pathways to true understanding. Wachetecuma's personal path to Native American spirituality unfolded over a span of more than 60 years, though dreams, visions, and inspiration. The story of her journey is told both in her own words and in the words of the Old Ones. Eleven years ago, she met a Shaman, who became her mentor. For three years their paths were as one; they served the Old Ones as Hollow Bones Healers, growing through ever-greater insight and understanding, to a powerful sense of purpose, a connection to the Universal All. Wachetecuma encourages others to trust that still small voice within, to open to their hearts, to disregard detractors, and to faithfully follow their true path, 'walking their talk.' Never doubt that the path you are traveling - whether a path of your personal understanding, or the Good Red Road - is not just the right path for you; it is the only path for you.