When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today?
Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, settling throughout North America. They describe hunting practices among different tribes, how some made the gradual transition to more settled, agricultural ways of life, the role of kinship and cooperation in Native societies, their varied burial rites and spiritual practices, and many other features of Native American life. Throughout the book, Perdue and Green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. Most importantly, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty--first with European powers and then with the United States--in order to retain their lands, govern themselves, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful.
Going beyond the stereotypes that so often distort our views of Native Americans, this Very Short Introduction offers a historically accurate, deeply engaging, and often inspiring account of the wide array of Native peoples in America.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

2019 National Native American Hall of Fame Inductee This stirring memoir is the story of Ada Deer, the first woman to serve as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Deer begins, 'I was born a Menominee Indian. That is who I was born and how I have lived.' She proceeds to narrate the first eighty-three years of her life, which are characterized by her tireless campaigns to reverse the forced termination of the Menominee tribe and to ensure sovereignty and self-determination for all tribes. Deer grew up in poverty on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, but with the encouragement of her mother and teachers, she earned degrees in social work from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and Columbia University. Armed with a first-rate education, an iron will, and a commitment to justice, she went from being a social worker in Minneapolis to leading the struggle for the restoration of the Menominees' tribal status and trust lands. Having accomplished that goal, she moved on to teach American Indian Studies at UW - Madison, to hold a fellowship at Harvard, to work for the Native American Rights Fund, to run unsuccessfully for Congress, and to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton administration. Now in her eighties, Deer remains as committed as ever to human rights, especially the rights of American Indians. A deeply personal story, written with humor and honesty, this book is a testimony to the ability of one individual to change the course of history through hard work, perseverance, and an unwavering commitment to social justice.

The Cotton States Exposition of 1895 was a world's fair in Atlanta held to stimulate foreign and domestic trade for a region in an economic depression. Theda Perdue uses the exposition to examine the competing agendas of white supremacist organizers and the peoples of color who participated.

White organizers had to demonstrate that the South had solved its race problem in order to attract business and capital. As a result, the exposition became a venue for a performance of race that formalized the segregation of African Americans, the banishment of Native Americans, and the incorporation of other people of color into the region's racial hierarchy.

White supremacy may have been the organizing principle, but exposition organizers gave unprecedented voice to minorities. African Americans used the Negro Building to display their accomplishments, to feature prominent black intellectuals, and to assemble congresses of professionals, tradesmen, and religious bodies. American Indians became more than sideshow attractions when newspapers published accounts of the difficulties they faced. And performers of ethnographic villages on the midway pursued various agendas, including subverting Chinese exclusion and protesting violations of contracts. Close examination reveals that the Cotton States Exposition was as much about challenges to white supremacy as about its triumph.

The Cherokees are one of the largest Indian tribes in the United States. They are often noted for establishing a republican form of government and an 84-character written alphabet to preserve their language.

Mixed Blood Indians looks at a fascinating array of birth- and kin-related issues as they were alternately misunderstood and astutely exploited by both Native and European cultures. Theda Perdue discusses the assimilation of non-Indians into Native societies, their descendants' participation in tribal life, and the white cultural assumptions conveyed in the designation ""mixed blood."" In addition to unions between European men and Native women, Perdue also considers the special cases arising from the presence of white women and African men and women in Indian society.

This volume collects most of the writings published by the accomplished Cherokee leader Elias Boudinot (1804?-1839). Founding editor of the "Cherokee Phoenix," Boudinot is the most ambiguous and puzzling figure in Cherokee history. Although he first struggled against the removal of his people from their native Southeast, Boudinot later reversed his position and signed the Treaty of New Echota, an action that cost him his life.

Together with Theda Perdue's biographical introduction and in-depth annotations, these letters, articles, pamphlets, and editorials document the stages of Boudinot's religious, philosophical, and political growth, from his early optimism that the Cherokees could completely assimilate into white society to his call for a separate nation of "civilized" Cherokees.

2019 National Native American Hall of Fame Inductee This stirring memoir is the story of Ada Deer, the first woman to serve as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Deer begins, ""I was born a Menominee Indian. That is who I was born and how I have lived."" She proceeds to narrate the first eighty-three years of her life, which are characterized by her tireless campaigns to reverse the forced termination of the Menominee tribe and to ensure sovereignty and self-determination for all tribes. Deer grew up in poverty on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, but with the encouragement of her mother and teachers, she earned degrees in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University. Armed with a first-rate education, an iron will, and a commitment to justice, she went from being a social worker in Minneapolis to leading the struggle for the restoration of the Menominees' tribal status and trust lands. Having accomplished that goal, she moved on to teach American Indian Studies at UW-Madison, to hold a fellowship at Harvard, to work for the Native American Rights Fund, to run unsuccessfully for Congress, and to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton administration. Now in her eighties, Deer remains as committed as ever to human rights, especially the rights of American Indians. A deeply personal story, written with humor and honesty, this book is a testimony to the ability of one individual to change the course of history through hard work, perseverance, and an unwavering commitment to social justice.

Annie Heloise Abel describes the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, a bloody disaster for the Confederates but a glorious moment for Colonel Stand Watie and his Cherokee Mounted Rifles. The Indians were soon enough swept by the war into a vortex of confusion and chaos. Abel makes clear that their participation in the conflict brought only devastation to Indian Territory.

Born in England and educated in Kansas, Annie Heloise Abel (1873-1947) was a historical editor and writer of books dealing mainly with the trans-Mississippi West. They include "The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist" (1915), also reprinted as a Bison Book. Abel's distinguished career is noted in an introduction by Theda Perdue, the author of "Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society" (1979), and Michael D. Green, whose "Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis" (1982) was published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Theda Perdue examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. While building on the research of earlier historians, she develops a uniquely complex view of the effects of contact on Native gender relations, arguing that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact. Maintaining traditional gender roles actually allowed Cherokee women and men to adapt to new circumstances and adopt new industries and practices.

Late in April 1861, President Lincoln ordered Federal troops to evacuate forts in Indian Territory. That left the Five Civilized Tribes--Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles--essentially under Confederate jurisdiction and control. "The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866," spans the closing years of the Civil War, when Southern fortunes were waning, and the immediate postwar period. Annie Heloise Abel shows the extreme vulnerability of the Indians caught between two warring sides. "The failure of the United States government to afford to the southern Indians the protection solemnly guaranteed by treaty stipulations had been the great cause of their entering into an alliance with The Confederacy, "she writes. Her classic book, originally published in 1925 as the third volume of "The Slaveholding Indians," makes clear how the Indians became the victims of uprootedness and privation, pillaging, government mismanagement, and, finally, a deceptive treaty for reconstruction.

"[Abel's] story is a tragic one, but leaving it untold would be a greater tragedy. Native American southerners shared the experience of the Civil War with other Americans, and their involvement in that upheaval had as profound an effect on their subsequent history. Abel's was the first serious telling of that story."--Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green.
The secession of southern states in the winter and spring of 1861-62 brought about a crisis for the Five Civilzed Tribes living in present-day Oklahoma, or Indian Territory. Forced out of the South thirty years earlier and relocated there, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles had maintained a relationship with the United States through treaties and resident agents. Now the civil war that threatened the Union also called into question its relationship with the southern Indians, an influential minority of whom owned black slaves. In this volume, originally published in 1915 as the first of a trilogy on slaveholding Indians, Annie Heloise Abel explores the diplomatic manuevers of the Confederacy to secure alliances with these five Indian nations.

The negotiations were an important chapter in American diplomatic history, as Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, professors of history at Dartmouth College, point out in their introduction to this Bison Book. They profile the English-born, Kansas-educated Annie Heloise Abel (1873-1947), a distinguished historical editor and writer whose works include "The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865," also a Bison Book.

Though they speak several different languages and organize themselves into many distinct tribes, the Native American peoples of the Southeast share a complex ancient culture and a tumultuous history. This volume examines and synthesizes their history through each of its integral phases: the complex and elaborate societies that emerged and flourished in the Pre-Columbian period; the triple curse of disease, economic dependency, and political instability brought by the European invasion; the role of Native Americans in the inter-colonial struggles for control of the region; the removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to Oklahoma; the challenges and adaptations of the post-removal period; and the creativity and persistence of those who remained in the Southeast.

Though they speak several different languages and organize themselves into many distinct tribes, the Native American peoples of the Southeast share a complex ancient culture and a tumultuous history. This volume examines and synthesizes their history through each of its integral phases: the complex and elaborate societies that emerged and flourished in the Pre-Columbian period; the triple curse of disease, economic dependency, and political instability brought by the European invasion; the role of Native Americans in the inter-colonial struggles for control of the region; the removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to Oklahoma; the challenges and adaptations of the post-removal period; and the creativity and persistence of those who remained in the Southeast.

In the last few years, popular and scholarly interest in Native women has soared. In SIFTERS, the first volume in the new Viewpoints on American Culture series, Theda Perdue, a recognized Native American and women's historian, has brought together a group of scholars both junior and senior to introduce the reading public and students to the lives of Native American women through individual biographies. Ranging chronologically from colonial times to the present, geographically from New England to the Southwest, this volume includes essays on the well-known Sacajawea and Pocahantas, as well as Native women who made important contributions to American political history, social activism, and cultural achievement, and in the case of Ada Deer, continue to shape the place of Native Americans in the U.S.

In this edited volume, Theda Perdue, a nationally known expert on Indian history and southern women's history, offers a rich collection of biographical essays on Native American women. From Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman of the seventeenth century, to Ada Deer, the Menominee woman who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1990s, the essays span four centuries. Each one recounts the experiences of women from vastly different cultural traditions--the hunting and gathering of Kumeyaay culture of Delfina Cuero, the pueblo society of San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez, and the powerful matrilineal kinship system of Molly Brant's Mohawks. Contributors focus on the ways in which different women have fashioned lives that remain firmly rooted in their identity as Native women. Perdue's introductory essay ties together the themes running through the biographical sketches, including the cultural factors that have shaped the lives of Native women, particularly economic contributions, kinship, and belief, and the ways in which historical events, especially in United States Indian policy, have engendered change.

The five largest southeastern Indian groups-the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles-were forced to emigrate west to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. Here, from WPA interviews are those Indians' own stories of the troubled years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood-a period of extraordinary turmoil.

During this period, Oklahoma Indians functioned autonomously, holding their own elections, enforcing their own laws, and creating their own society from a mixture of old Indian customs and the new ways of the whites. The WPA informants describe the economic realities of the era: a few wealthy Indians, the rest scraping a living out of subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. They talk about education and religion-Native American and Christian-as well as diversions of the time: horse races, fairs, ball games, cornstalk shooting, and traditional ceremonies such as the Green Corn Dance.

The five largest southeastern Indian groups - the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - were forced to emigrate west to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. Here, from WPA interviews, are those Indians' own stories of the troubled years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood - a period of extraordinary turmoil. During this period, Oklahoma Indians functioned autonomously, holding their own elections, enforcing their own laws, and creating their own society from a mixture of old Indian customs and the new ways of the whites. The WPA informants describe the economic realities of the era: a few wealthy Indians, the rest scraping a living out of subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. They talk about education and religion - Native American and Christian - as well as diversions of the time: horse races, fairs, ball games, cornstalk shooting, and traditional ceremonies such as the Green Corn Dance.