Throughout the nineteenth century, the land known as ""Indian Territory"" was populated by diverse cultures, troubled by shifting political boundaries, and transformed by historical events that were colorful, dramatic, and often tragic. Beyond its borders, most Americans visualized the area through the pictures produced by non-Native travelers, artists, and reporters - all with differing degrees of accuracy, vision, and skill. The images in Picturing Indian Territory, and the eponymous exhibit it accompanies, conjure a wildly varied vision of Indian Territory's past. Spanning nearly nine decades, these artworks range from the scientific illustrations found in English naturalist Thomas Nuttall's journal to the paintings of Frederic Remington, Henry Farny, and Charles Schreyvogel. The volume's three essays situate these works within the historical narratives of westward expansion, the creation of an ""Indian Territory"" separate from the rest of the United States, and Oklahoma's eventual statehood in 1907. James Peck focuses on artists who produced images of Native Americans living in this vast region during the pre-Civil War era. In his essay, B. Byron Price picks up the story at the advent of the Civil War and examines newspaper and magazine reports as well as the accounts of government functionaries and artist-travelers drawn to the region by the rapidly changing fortunes of the area's traditional Indian cultures in the wake of non-Indian settlement. Mark Andrew White then looks at the art and illustration resulting from the unrelenting efforts of outsiders who settled Indian and Oklahoma Territories in the decades before statehood. Some of the artworks featured in this volume have never before been displayed; some were produced by more than one artist; others are anonymous. Many were completed by illustrators on-site, as the events they depicted unfolded, while other artists relied on written accounts and vivid imaginations. Whatever their origin, these depictions of the people, places, and events of ""Indian Country"" defined the region for contemporary American and European audiences. Today they provide a rich visual record of a key era of western and Oklahoma history - and of the ways that art has defined this important cultural crossroads.

Between May 1804 and September 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery explored a new expanse of America known as the Louisiana Purchase. They encountered lands, rivers, and peoples previously unknown Americans east of the Mississippi. During the next sixty-five years, Lewis and Clark's journey was followed by other explorations of the West, from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada to Mexico.Artists often accompanied explorers as they encountered the unexpected and unique subjects of the American West. Inspired by the thrill of adventure and the majesty of high mountains, great chasms, and wide-open spaces, artists became eyewitnesses and visual commentators of the changing shape of the frontier - and the tragic displacement of American Indian tribes. As these artists sought to capture on paper and canvas what they saw during their explorations and travels, they gave birth to American western art. After Lewis and Clark highlights more than sixty paintings, drawings, and prints in the collection of one of America's finest museums of American art, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This richly illustrated book presents and places in aesthetic and historical context many of the priceless portraits, striking scenes, and grand landscapes inspired during the sixty-five years after the Corps of Discovery completed its epic journey. It features the works of notable artists of the nineteenth-century American West, including George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Alfred Jacob Miller, Charles Bird King, Paul Kane, Seth Eastman, Carl Wimar, John Mix Stanley, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran.

"In Cooperation with the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum"

A cowboy's life is more than steers, saddles, and spurs. There is also food, and lots of it, cooked out in the open after a rugged day on the range. The tradition lives on in the West and at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Here genuine chuck wagon cooks gather each spring to share recipes, stories, and real cowboy fare. This cookbook features their recipes along with a colorful history of ranch and range cooking.

Modern cowboy cooking blends simple, down-to-earth flavors with current tastes for a style that retains a distinct Western flavor. All the recipes included here have been adapted for home kitchens, but just in case, there are plenty of tips for preparing meals over an open fire. Ranging from classic cowboy favorites to the avant-garde in Western cuisine, these recipes demonstrate ranch-style cooking at its best.

In the spring of 1874 a handful of men and one woman set out for the Texas Panhandle to seek their fortunes in the great buffalo hunt. They intended to establish a trading post to serve the hunters, or "hide men, " and at a place called Adobe Walls they dug blocks from the sod and built their center of operations.

After only a few months, angry members of several Plains Indian tribes, whose survival depended on the rapidly shrinking bison herd, attacked the post. Initially defeated, the attacking Indians retreated. But the defenders also retreated, and intent on erasing all traces of the white man's presence, the Indians burned the deserted post. Nonetheless, tracings did remain, and in the ashes were buried minute details of the hide men's lives.

Adobe Walls tells us much about the dying of the Plains Indian culture and the march of white commerce across the frontier.

'Jim Gober was not simply a witness to early Texas Panhandle, New Mexico and Oklahoma history; he was involved in it up to his neck' - Elmer Kelton. '""Cowboy Justice"" is a bonanza for all readers and historians who love the real West. The book is authentic as a Porter saddle...as down to earth as the birth of a longhorn calf, and gives you the uncanny feeling of being there. An honest Cracker Jack read. Rare indeed!' - Max Evans. 'Jim Gober['s] memoirs provide more wisdom and insight into Texas lawmen and law enforcement than anything I've read...This is a narrative of cattle empires, of goodness and harshness, loyalty, family and politics. It defines the wages of life' - Leon C. Metz. 'A valuable contribution to the literature of the West. It brings a too often forgotten time vividly to life in a narrative which belongs on the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in and a love for the people and places that constitute our western heritage' - Norman Zollinger. 'A rare treasure...""Cowboy Justice"" relates the common man's struggle while brushing against the lives of frontier legends such as Sam Bass, Pat Garret, Charlie Siringo, and Temple Houston. An ordinary citizen swept through extraordinary times...' - Mike Blakely. 'From the badlands of Texas in the late nineteenth century, Jim Gobercowboy, lawman, gambler, saloon keeper, homesteader, horse-race promoter, private detective both hunter and hunted...a real-life hero. Jim Gober had a code of ethics that he adhered to throughout his life. His code made him the man he was, and it cost him dearly. It was an ethic based in loyalty, and it was the central force in his life story. It compelled him to leave home at fifteen. It drove him to cowboying on the ranges of West Texas. It catapulted him into politics as the youngest elected sheriff in the US. It made him the target of hired assassins.

In the spring of 1874 a handful of men and one woman set out for the Texas Panhandle to seek their fortunes in the great buffalo hunt. They intended to establish a trading post to serve the hunters, or "hide men, " and at a place called Adobe Walls they dug blocks from the sod and built their center of operations.

After only a few months, angry members of several Plains Indian tribes, whose survival depended on the rapidly shrinking bison herd, attacked the post. Initially defeated, the attacking Indians retreated. But the defenders also retreated, and intent on erasing all traces of the white man's presence, the Indians burned the deserted post. Nonetheless, tracings did remain, and in the ashes were buried minute details of the hide men's lives.

Adobe Walls tells us much about the dying of the Plains Indian culture and the march of white commerce across the frontier.