Charles Deas (1818-67), an enigmatic figure on the edge of mainstream artistic circles in mid-nineteenth-century New York, went west to explore new opportunities and subjects in 1840. From his adopted hometown of St. Louis, Deas sent his iconic paintings of fur trappers and Indians back east for exhibition and sale, briefly winning the recognition that had earlier eluded him.

This handsome volume--featuring more than 150 illustrations, 70 in color--is the first book exclusively devoted to Deas. In two major essays, Carol Clark presents Deas's haunting biography and complex art--works that embodied Americans' uncertainty about the future of their rapidly expanding nation, especially in the contested spaces of the West. Ranging from Indian genre scenes to more violent and bizarre themes drawn from literature and his own imagination, Deas's images reverberate with the racial tensions and cut-throat economic competition of the period. Three additional essayists examine the historical, political, and social context of Deas's art and discuss in detail two of his major paintings, "Walking the Chalk and Long Jakes, "the Rocky Mountain Man.""

The volume also includes Clark's catalogue of Deas's paintings, watercolors, and drawings--the most extensive recovery and documentation to date of the work of this important but little-known artist. "Charles Deas and 1840s America" will constitute the definitive reference on the painter for years to come.

"This is an important book. In the latter nineteenth century, diverse and influential elements in white America combined forces to settle the 'Indian question' through assimilation. . . . The results were the essentially treaty-breaking Dawes Act of 1887, related legislation, and dubious court decisions. Schoolteachers and missionaries were dispatched to the reservations en masse. Eventual 'citizenship' without functional rights was given Native Americans; the Indians lost two-thirds of reservation land as it had existed before the assimilationist campaign. . . . With insight and skill that go well beyond craft, Hoxie has admirably defined issues and motives, placed economic/political/social interaction into cogent perspective, brought numerous Anglo and Indian individuals and organizations to life, and set forth important lessons."-Choice. "This significant study of Indian-white relations during a complex time in national politics deserves close attention."-American Indian Quarterly. "Important and intellectually challenging . . . This volume goes far to fill a large gap in the history of United States Indian policy."-Journal of American History. Frederick E. Hoxie is director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library. He coedited (with Joan Mark) E. Jane Gay's With the Nez Percs: Alice Fletcher in the Field, 1889-92 (Nebraska 1981).

At the 1795 treaty council that sealed Anthony Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers in northwest Ohio, the Wyandot leader Tarhe spoke for the assembled Native leaders when he admonished the American emissaries: "Take care of your little ones; an impartial father equally regards all his children." Spoken two decades after the minutemen's shots had echoed across Lexington Green, Tarhe's words compel historians to reconsider the rosy truisms that customarily encircle the age of the Early Republic. The essays in this volume begin to perform this important reexamination of the Native American experience in the post-Revolutionary period. Tarhe's eloquent words and similar evidence quoted by the volume's contributors show that American Indians were not defeated refugees who dutifully stood aside in the wake of the British defeat, nor were they passive victims of American expansion. The book's three parts reflect the dynamic nature of the Native Americans' struggle: the first provides broad discussions of the interaction between Native Americans and the United States in the postwar era; the second traces histories of specific tribal communities; and the third explores the powerful repertoire of stories and pictures that Americans used to describe Native Americans to themselves during an era of national expansion. These essays open up for consideration a more complex history of the Early Republic. Contributors Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College * R. David Edmunds, University of Texas at Dallas * Vivien Green Fryd, Vanderbilt University * Reginald Horsman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee * Elise Marienstras, University of Paris * Joel W. Martin, Franklin and Marshall College * James H. Merrell, Vassar College * Theda Perdue, University of North Carolina * Daniel K. Richter, Dickinson College * Daniel H. Usner Jr., Cornell University * Richard White, Stanford University

This history of the Crow Indians links their nineteenth-century nomadic life and their modern existence. The Crows not only withstood the dislocation and conquest visited on them after 1805, but acted in the midst of these events to construct a modern Indian community--a nation. Their efforts sustained the pride and strength reflected in Chief Plenty Coups' statement in 1925 that he did "not care at all what historians have to say about Crow Indians," as well as their community's faith in the beauty of its traditions and its inventions. Frederick E. Hoxie demonstrates that contact with outsiders drew the Crows together and tested their ability to adapt their traditions to new conditions. He emphasizes political life, but also describes changes in social relations, religious beliefs, and economic activities. His final chapter discusses the significance of the Crow experience for American history in general.

In 1889 the U.S. government sent the anthropologist Alice Fletcher to Idaho to allot the Nez Perce Reservation. She was accompanied by E. Jane Gay, who served as cook, housekeeper, photographer, and general factotum. In this collection of her letters, Gay describes in sprightly fashion their encounters with feuding agents, hostile white squatters, and a Nez Perce tribe divided over and puzzled by this latest government program.

The founding of the university in 1867 created a unique community in what had been a prairie. Within a few years, this creative mix of teachers and scholars produced innovations in agriculture, engineering and the arts that challenged old ideas and stimulated dynamic new industries. Projects ranging from the Mosaic web browser to the discovery of Archaea and pioneering triumphs in women's education and wheelchair accessibility have helped shape the university's mission into a double helix of innovation and real-world change. These essays explore the university's celebrated accomplishments and historic legacy, candidly assessing both its successes and its setbacks. Experts and students tell the eye-opening stories of campus legends and overlooked game-changers, of astonishing technical and social invention, of incubators of progress as diverse as the Beckman Institute and Ebertfest. Contributors: James R. Barrett, George O. Batzli, Claire Benjamin, Jeffrey D. Brawn, Jimena Canales, Stephanie A. Dick, Poshek Fu, Marcelo H. Garcia, Lillian Hoddeson, Harry Liebersohn, Claudia Lutz, Kathleen Mapes, Vicki McKinney, Elisa Miller, Robert Michael Morrissey, Bryan E. Norwood, Elizabeth H. Pleck, Leslie J. Reagan, Susan M. Rigdon, David Rosenboom, Katherine Skwarczek, Winton U. Solberg, Carol Spindel, William F. Tracy, and Joy Ann Williamson-Lott.

This narrative takes an ethnographic approach to American Indian history from the arrival of humans on the American continent to the present day. The text provides balanced coverage of political, economic, cultural and social aspects of Indian history. While conveying the effects of European invasion on American Indian communities, the text gives greater attention to the impact of Native actions on the American environment. The authors' Indian-centered point of view treats Indians as actors in their own right, existing in a larger society. As a result, some events in American history loom larger than they would in a general survey, while others, such as Reconstruction, receive minimal coverage. The People demonstrates that the active participation of American Indians in a modern, democratic society has shaped--and will continue to shape--national life.