Revised to bring this important chronicle to the end of the millennium, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history of Native American and white relations as seen though Indian eyes and told through Indian voices. Beginning with the Indians' first encounters with European explorers, traders, missionaries, settlers, and soldiers to the challenges confronting Native American culture today, Native American Testimony is a series of powerful and moving documents spanning five hundred years of interchange between the two peoples. Drawing from a wide range of sources--traditional narratives, Indian autobiographies, government transcripts, firsthand interviews, and more--Nabokov has assembled a remarkably rich and vivid collection, representing nothing less than an alternate history of North America.

This is the account of Edward Proctor Hunt, a Pueblo Indian Native American member of many secret societies, who in 1928 broke with his people's social and religious codes to recite the origin myth of the Acoma Indians to scholars. Recounting a classic Native American story of creation, migration and residence, this myth offers a unique window into indigenous cosmology and ancient history, revealing how a pre-modern society addressed existential questions and formed its own narrative of the world. This edition includes an introduction and notes by Peter Nabokov.

From the author of How the World Moves: A revelatory new look at the hallowed, diverse, and threatened landscapes of the American IndianFor thousands of years , Native Americans have told stories about the powers of revered landscapes and sought spiritual direction at mysterious places in their homelands. In this important book, respected scholar and anthropologist Peter Nabokov writes of a wide range of sacred places in Native America. From the "high country" of California to Tennessee's Tellico Valley, from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Rainbow Canyon in Arizona, each chapter delves into the relationship between Indian cultures and their environments and describes the myths and legends, practices, and rituals that sustained them.

Beginning in 1907, the anthropologist Robert H. Lowie visited the Crow Indians at their reservation in Montana. He listened to tales that for many generations had been told around campfires in winter. Vivid tales of Old-Man-Coyote in his various guises; heroic accounts of Lodge-Boy and the Thunderbirds; supernatural stories about Raven-Face and the Spurned Lover; and other tales involving the Bear-Woman, the Offended Turtle, the Skeptical Husband--all these were recorded by Lowie. They were originally published in 1918 in an Anthropological Paper by the American Museum of Natural History.

"Myths and Traditions of the Crow Indians" is now reprinted with a new introduction by Peter Nabokov. These concretely detailed accounts served the Crow Indians as entertainers, moral lessons, cultural records, and guides to the workings of the universe.

'Two Leggings ...was one of the last Crow Warriors. From 1919 to 1923 he told his story of Crow life and wars to William Wildschut, an ethnologist with the Museum of the American Indian ...This is the poignant story of the end of traditional Crow life and attitudes, which Two Leggings saw ending with the last warfare rather than the death of the buffalo' - "Pacific Historian". 'This is the story of Two Leggings' desire for fame, his rise as a warrior, and his efforts to achieve a spiritual vision. He takes us along on buffalo hunts, war parties against the Piegans, and horse stealing raids against the Piegans and Sioux. His obsession to become a chief and famous warrior drove him to repeated forays against enemy tribes for scalps and horses. He relates the religious relationship between vision fasts, medicine bundles, and a war raid's outcome, sun dances in which performers pierced their breast muscles with wooden skewers, and wife stealing between rival warrior societies...It is a remarkable story' - "Chicago Tribune". 'This is a rare piece of Americana - a first-person account of the psychological, religious, and social life of a nineteenth century Indian. The dramatic recital is a real contribution to our native biography, history, and ethnology, and an important treatise in a fascinating but curiously neglected field' - "Baltimore Sun". 'A valuable addition to our knowledge of the life of the Plains Indian' - "New York Times". '"Two Leggings" lifts the curtain on a kind of life it is almost impossible to imagine anywhere in the United States during the second half of the last century. Mr. Nabokov has preserved a priceless document not only for ethnologists bur for plain readers as well...His narrative lays open, as by a surgeon's knife, the inner world of Indian religion and morality' - Mark Van Doren. Peter Nabokov is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology and the American Indian Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of "Native American Architecture" (1988) and editor of "Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian and White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992" (1991).

Placing American Indians in the center of the story, Restoring a Presence relates an entirely new history of Yellowstone National Park. Although new laws have been enacted giving American Indians access to resources on public lands, Yellowstone historically has excluded Indians and their needs from its mission. Each of the other flagship national parks - Glacier, Yosemite, Mesa Verde, and Grand Canyon - has had successful long-term relationships with American Indian groups even as it has sought to emulate Yellowstone in other dimensions of national park administration. In the first comprehensive account of Indians in and around Yellowstone, Peter Nabokov and Lawrence Loendorf seek to correct this administrative disparity. Drawing from archaeological records, Indian testimony, tribal archives, and collections of early artifacts from the Park, the authors trace the interactions of nearly a dozen Indian groups with each of Yellowstone's four geographic regions. Restoring a Presence is illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and maps and features narratives on subjects ranging from traditional Indian uses of plant, mineral, and animal resources to conflicts involving the Nez Perce, Bannock, and Sheep Eater peoples. By considering the many roles Indians have played in the complex history of the Yellowstone region, authors Nabokov and Loendorf provide a basis on which the National Park Service and other federal agencies can develop more effective relationships with Indian groups in the Yellowstone region.

A Forest of Time is the first introduction for undergraduates and graduates, Western and Indian history buffs, and general readers to the notion that American Indian societies had vital interests in interpreting and transmitting their own ways for themselves. Through separate discussions of legends and oral histories, creation stories and folktales, it illustrates how various Indian peoples related and commented upon their changing times. Drawing upon his own varied research as well as sampling the latest in scholarship from ethnohistory, anthropology, folklore and Indian Studies, Dr. Nabokov offers dramatic examples of how native peoples put rituals and material culture, landscape, prophecies, and even the English language to the urgent task of keeping the past alive and relevant. Throughout these lively chapters, we also witness the American Indian historical imagination deployed as a coping skill and survival strategy. This book surveys the latest integrating ideas while offering a useful bibliography that opens up, and demands that we engage with, alternative chronicles for America's multi-cultural past. Peter Navokov is Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures and American Indian Studies Program at UCLA. He is the author of several books, including Native American Architecture, (Oxford, 1991, co-author Robert Easton) which won the American Institue of Architects honor award and the Bay Area Book Reviewer Association Award. His book Native American Testimony (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978) was named the American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults and Library School Journal Best Book 1978 in addition to receiving the Carter G. Woodson Award. His work as a journalist in 1967 earned him prizes from the Albuquerque Press Association and the New Mexico Press Association.

A Forest of Time is the first introduction for undergraduates and graduates, Western and Indian history buffs, and general readers to the notion that American Indian societies had vital interests in interpreting and transmitting their own ways for themselves. Through separate discussions of legends and oral histories, creation stories and folktales, it illustrates how various Indian peoples related and commented upon their changing times. Drawing upon his own varied research as well as sampling the latest in scholarship from ethnohistory, anthropology, folklore and Indian Studies, Dr. Nabokov offers dramatic examples of how native peoples put rituals and material culture, landscape, prophecies, and even the English language to the urgent task of keeping the past alive and relevant. Throughout these lively chapters, we also witness the American Indian historical imagination deployed as a coping skill and survival strategy. This book surveys the latest integrating ideas while offering a useful bibliography that opens up, and demands that we engage with, alternative chronicles for America's multi-cultural past. Peter Navokov is Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures and American Indian Studies Program at UCLA. He is the author of several books, including Native American Architecture, (Oxford, 1991, co-author Robert Easton) which won the American Institue of Architects honor award and the Bay Area Book Reviewer Association Award. His book Native American Testimony (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978) was named the American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults and Library School Journal Best Book 1978 in addition to receiving the Carter G. Woodson Award. His work as a journalist in 1967 earned him prizes from the Albuquerque Press Association and the New Mexico Press Association.

"I became what the Crows call "kaalisbaapite"--a 'grandmother's grandchild.' That means that I was always with my Grandma, and I learned from her. I learned how to do things in the old ways."--Alma Hogan Snell

"Grandmother's Grandchild" is the remarkable story of Alma Hogan Snell (1923-2008), a Crow woman brought up by her grandmother, the famous medicine woman Pretty Shield. Snell grew up during the 1920s and 1930s, part of the second generation of Crows to be born into reservation life. Like many of her contemporaries, she experienced poverty, personal hardships, and prejudice and left home to attend federal Indian schools.

What makes Snell's story particularly engaging is her exceptional storytelling style. She is frank and passionate, and these qualities yield a memoir unlike those of most Native women. The complex reservation world of Crow women--harsh yet joyous, impoverished yet rich in meaning--unfolds for readers. Snell's experiences range from the forging of an unforgettable bond between grandchild and grandmother to the flowering of an extraordinary love story that has lasted more than five decades.

A compelling portrait of cultural transition and assimilation via the saga of one Acoma Pueblo Indian family Born in 1861 in New Mexico's Acoma Pueblo, Edward Proctor Hunt lived a tribal life almost unchanged for centuries. But after attending government schools he broke with his people's ancient codes to become a shopkeeper and controversial broker between Indian and white worlds. As a Wild West Show Indian he travelled in Europe with his family, and saw his sons become silversmiths, painters, and consultants on Indian Lore. In 1928, in a life-culminating experience, he recited his version of the origin myth of Acoma Pueblo to Smithsonian Institution scholars. Nabokov narrates the fascinating story of Hunt's life within a multicultural and historical context. Chronicling Pueblo Indian life and Anglo/Indian relations over the last century and a half, he explores how this entrepreneurial family capitalized on the nation's passion for Indian culture. In this rich book, Nabokov dramatizes how the Hunts, like immigrants throughout history, faced anguishing decisions over staying put or striking out for economic independence, and experienced the pivotal passage from tradition to modernity.