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.

This book addresses a central question about the Cold War that has never been adequately resolved. Why did the United States go to such lengths, not merely to ""contain"" the People's Republic of China, but to isolate it from all diplomatic, cultural, and economic ties to other nations? Why, in other words, was American policy more hostile to China than to the Soviet Union, at least until President Nixon visited China in 1972? The answer, as set out here, lies in the fear of China's emergence as a power capable of challenging the new Asian order the United States sought to shape in the wake of World War II. To meet this threat, American policy-makers fashioned an ideology that was not simply or exclusively anticommunist, but one that aimed at creating an integrated, cooperative world capitalism under U.S. leadership - an ideology, in short, designed to outlive the Cold War. In building his argument, James Peck draws on a wide variety of little-known documents from the archives of the National Security Council and the CIA. He shows how American officials initially viewed China as a ""puppet"" of the Soviet Union, then as ""independent junior partner"" in a Sino-Soviet bloc, and finally as ""revolutionary model"" and sponsor of social upheaval in the Third World. Each of these constructs revealed more about U.S. perceptions and strategic priorities than about actual shifts in Chinese thought and conduct. All were based on the assumption that China posed a direct threat not just to specific U.S. interests and objectives abroad but to the larger vision of a new global order dominated by American economic and military power. Although the nature of ""Washington's China"" may have changed over the years, Peck contends that the ideology behind it remains unchanged, even today.