Eye Witness Accounts of the Kiowa in Transition


Book Description

"Eye Witness Accounts of the Kiowa in Transition" contains the full original copies of two complete works: "Tahan - Out of Savagery into Civilization" and "Andele, or The Mexican-Kiowa Captive." Both of these works provide important ethnographic information on the Kiowa during a pivotal period in history. At a time when the Kiowa were being forced onto reservations and much of their traditional lands were being colonized towards the end of the 19th century, both Tahan and Andele came to live among the Kiowa. The works published here are the autobiographical and biographical accounts of these two individuals and their lives among the Kiowa, their adoption into the tribe, and their recounting of Kiowa life on the southern Plains. No other works provide first hand ethnographic accounts of the Kiowa during this pivotal period in Kiowa history. Together, "Tahan - Out of Savagery into Civilization" and "Andele, or The Mexican-Kiowa Captive" provide unique, important information on a pivotal period in Kiowa history. Within a short period of time, the Kiowa were forced onto reservations and prevented from practicing much of their traditional lifeway, including their seasonal movements with the buffalo herds. Both Tahan and Andele lived among the Kiowa during this period, and the two books published here provide essential information on this transition. Primary Sources In Native North America This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Bauu Institute's Primary Sources in Native North America Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting important sources on Native North America.




Religious Revitalization Among the Kiowas


Book Description

Framed by theories of syncretism and revitalization, Religious Revitalization among the Kiowas examines changes in Kiowa belief and ritual in the final decades of the nineteenth century. During the height of the horse-and-bison culture, Kiowa beliefs were founded in the notion of daudau, a force permeating the universe that was accessible through vision quests. Following the end of the Southern Plains wars in 1875, the Kiowas were confined within the boundaries of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache (Plains Apache) Reservation. As wards of the government, they witnessed the extinction of the bison herds, which led to the collapse of the Sun Dance by 1890. Though prophet movements in the 1880s had failed to restore the bison, other religions emerged to fill the void left by the loss of the Sun Dance. Kiowas now sought daudau through the Ghost Dance, Christianity, and the Peyote religion. Religious Revitalization among the Kiowas examines the historical and sociocultural conditions that spawned the new religions that arrived in Kiowa country at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as Native and non-Native reactions to them. A thorough examination of these sources reveals how resilient and adaptable the Kiowas were in the face of cultural genocide between 1883 and 1933. Although the prophet movements and the Ghost Dance were short-lived, Christianity and the Native American Church have persevered into the twenty-first century. Benjamin R. Kracht shows how Kiowa traditions and spirituality were amalgamated into the new religions, creating a distinctive Kiowa identity.




Kiowa Belief and Ritual


Book Description

Benjamin Kracht's Kiowa Belief and Ritual, a collection of materials gleaned from Santa Fe Laboratory of Anthropology field notes and augmented by Alice Marriott's field notes, significantly enhances the existing literature concerning Plains religions.




The Gods of Indian Country


Book Description

During the nineteenth century, white Americans sought the cultural transformation and physical displacement of Native people. Though this process was certainly a clash of rival economic systems and racial ideologies, it was also a profound spiritual struggle. The fight over Indian Country sparked religious crises among both Natives and Americans. In The Gods of Indian Country, Jennifer Graber tells the story of the Kiowa Indians during Anglo-Americans' hundred-year effort to seize their homeland. Like Native people across the American West, Kiowas had known struggle and dislocation before. But the forces bearing down on them-soldiers, missionaries, and government officials-were unrelenting. With pressure mounting, Kiowas adapted their ritual practices in the hope that they could use sacred power to save their lands and community. Against the Kiowas stood Protestant and Catholic leaders, missionaries, and reformers who hoped to remake Indian Country. These activists saw themselves as the Indians' friends, teachers, and protectors. They also asserted the primacy of white Christian civilization and the need to transform the spiritual and material lives of Native people. When Kiowas and other Native people resisted their designs, these Christians supported policies that broke treaties and appropriated Indian lands. They argued that the gifts bestowed by Christianity and civilization outweighed the pains that accompanied the denial of freedoms, the destruction of communities, and the theft of resources. In order to secure Indian Country and control indigenous populations, Christian activists sanctified the economic and racial hierarchies of their day. The Gods of Indian Country tells a complex, fascinating-and ultimately heartbreaking-tale of the struggle for the American West.




U S Army in Operation AL FAJR


Book Description

"Eyewitness to war" interviews span a wide spectrum of participants, from commanders and senior non-commissioned officers at all levels to the first-hand accounts of combat and combat service support personnel on the battlefield.




The Things They Carried


Book Description

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.




The Comanche Empire


Book Description

A groundbreaking history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Native American empire. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history. 2009 Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History “Cutting-edge revisionist western history…. Immensely informative, particularly about activities in the eighteenth century.”—Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books “Exhilarating…a pleasure to read…. It is a nuanced account of the complex social, cultural, and biological interactions that the acquisition of the horse unleashed in North America, and a brilliant analysis of a Comanche social formation that dominated the Southern Plains.”—Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815







Eyewitness to War


Book Description




Hunting Marfa Lights


Book Description

"Hunting Marfa Lights" reports the results of an eight-year investigation into mysterious lights seen near Marfa, a small west Texas town. Bunnell finds that while most of the lights can be explained, about three percent are truly mysterious and of unknown origin.