Myths of the Cherokee


Book Description

126 myths: sacred stories, animal myths, local legends, many more. Plus background on Cherokee history, notes on the myths and parallels. Features 20 maps and illustrations.




Hollywood's Indian


Book Description

Offering both in-depth analyses of specific films and overviews of the industry's output, Hollywood's Indian provides insightful characterizations of the depiction of the Native Americans in film. This updated edition includes a new chapter on Smoke Signals , the groundbreaking independent film written by Sherman Alexie and directed by Chris Eyre. Taken as a whole the essays explore the many ways in which these portrayals have made an impact on our collective cultural life.




History Of Utah's American Indians


Book Description

This book is a joint project of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and the Utah State Historical Society. It is distributed to the book trade by Utah State University Press. The valleys, mountains, and deserts of Utah have been home to native peoples for thousands of years. Like peoples around the word, Utah's native inhabitants organized themselves in family units, groups, bands, clans, and tribes. Today, six Indian tribes in Utah are recognized as official entities. They include the Northwestern Shoshone, the Goshutes, the Paiutes, the Utes, the White Mesa or Southern Utes, and the Navajos (Dineh). Each tribe has its own government. Tribe members are citizens of Utah and the United States; however, lines of distinction both within the tribes and with the greater society at large have not always been clear. Migration, interaction, war, trade, intermarriage, common threats, and challenges have made relationships and affiliations more fluid than might be expected. In this volume, the editor and authors endeavor to write the history of Utah's first residents from an Indian perspective. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Utah's American Indians and a concluding chapter summarizes the issues and concerns of contemporary Indians and their leaders. Chapters on each of the six tribes look at origin stories, religion, politics, education, folkways, family life, social activities, economic issues, and important events. They provide an introduction to the rich heritage of Utah's native peoples. This book includes chapters by David Begay, Dennis Defa, Clifford Duncan, Ronald Holt, Nancy Maryboy, Robert McPherson, Mae Parry, Gary Tom, and Mary Jane Yazzie. Forrest Cuch was born and raised on the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. He graduated from Westminster College in 1973 with a bachelor of arts degree in behavioral sciences. He served as education director for the Ute Indian Tribe from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994 he was employed by the Wampanoag Tribe in Gay Head, Massachusetts, first as a planner and then as tribal administrator. Since October 1997 he has been director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.




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.




In Defense of the Marfa Lights


Book Description

In Defense of Marfa Lights These days, Marfa, Texas, is a mecca for art and artists. But Mitchell Flat, a vast stretch of ranch land to the east of Marfa, is a much older mecca, not for art, but for lights. Since the 19th century, reports of mysterious or unexplained lights have intrigued people who live in this far west Texas area. Some visitors (and there are many) declare distant, moving lights to be mysterious, while more skeptical visitors may tell you that what they saw were ranch lights and vehicle headlights. Who is right? What are these lights? A major research effort might give answers. But the answer boils down not to a concrete, singular fact, but rather to a choice between two camps. Author James Bunnell is squarely in the camp that rejects the headlights theory and pushes for more scientific investigation because he believes the lights are unusual, natural phenomena that have much to tell us about our own Earth. Unlike the headlight theorists, some of whom have never visited Marfa or Mitchell Flat, Bunnell backs up his conclusions about the lights with ten years of firsthand observations, photographs of many mysterious lights from multiple automatic night cameras, and a unique base of his own photographic evidence taken by him, onsite, in real time. He concludes A VERY SMALL NUMBER of these lights are indeed mysterious natural phenomena. A retired aerospace engineer, Bunnell has no quarrel with light gazers who have come to Mitchell Flat, seen lights, and declared them to be headlights. He understands why: Explainable lights heavily outnumber mysterious lights. A much different matter are those who do not come to Marfa, who question him at length over a series of months and then use, without permission, his copyrighted photographs and data to prove that mysterious lights do not exist. Those are the people who made this book necessary. This book is a closer look at what they did, and what James Bunnell did. You choose.




Night Orbs


Book Description

Comprehensive discussion of nocturnal mystery lights. Contains firsthand accounts, photographic evidence, and detailed discussions regarding possible origins of mystery lights seen near Marfa, Texas, Min Min, Australia and Brown Mountain, NC. Book jacket.




The Iroquois Eagle Dance


Book Description

Originally published as Bulletin 156 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution in 1953, this volume explores the celebration of the Eagle Dance in New York and Canada during the 1930s and its relationship to the widespread Calumet Dance of the 17th century. Also included is Kurath 's detailed analysis of the Eagle Dance music and choreography, based on Fenton's recordings and on her own observations of local performances.




The Ghost Dance


Book Description

First published a century ago, The Ghost Dance is a unique first-hand account of a messianic movement against white subjugation that arose among Native Americans of the West and the Plains in the latter part of the 19th-century.




The History of Mexico


Book Description

The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present traces the last 500 years of Mexican history, from the indigenous empires that were devastated by the Spanish conquest through the election of 2006 and its aftermath. The book offers a straightforward chronological survey of Mexican history from the pre-colonial times to the present, and includes a glossary as well as numerous tables and images for comprehensive study. For additional information and classroom resources please visit The History of Mexico companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/russell.




The American Yawp


Book Description

"I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."—Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass The American Yawp is a free, online, collaboratively built American history textbook. Over 300 historians joined together to create the book they wanted for their own students—an accessible, synthetic narrative that reflects the best of recent historical scholarship and provides a jumping-off point for discussions in the U.S. history classroom and beyond. Long before Whitman and long after, Americans have sung something collectively amid the deafening roar of their many individual voices. The Yawp highlights the dynamism and conflict inherent in the history of the United States, while also looking for the common threads that help us make sense of the past. Without losing sight of politics and power, The American Yawp incorporates transnational perspectives, integrates diverse voices, recovers narratives of resistance, and explores the complex process of cultural creation. It looks for America in crowded slave cabins, bustling markets, congested tenements, and marbled halls. It navigates between maternity wards, prisons, streets, bars, and boardrooms. The fully peer-reviewed edition of The American Yawp will be available in two print volumes designed for the U.S. history survey. Volume I begins with the indigenous people who called the Americas home before chronicling the collision of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans.The American Yawp traces the development of colonial society in the context of the larger Atlantic World and investigates the origins and ruptures of slavery, the American Revolution, and the new nation's development and rebirth through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Rather than asserting a fixed narrative of American progress, The American Yawp gives students a starting point for asking their own questions about how the past informs the problems and opportunities that we confront today.