Search results for ""University of Oklahoma Press""

The Indian history of the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and particularly of the Ohio Valley, is so complex that it can be properly clarified only with the visual aid of maps. The Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, in a sequence of thirty-three newly researched maps printed in as many as five colors, graphically displays the movement of Indian communities from 1640 to about 1871, when treaty making between Indian tribes and the United States government came to an end. History was shaped in this part of North America by intertribal warfare, refugee movements, epidemics of European-introduced diseases, French and English wars and trade rivalry, white population advances, Indian resistance, Indian treaties deeding land to state and national governments, and imperfect arrangements for reservations, removal, and allotment of land. The changing pattern of Indian village locations as a result of all these factors is shown on the maps. Each map is highlighted by accompanying text, written as if the author were pointing out specific places on the map. Eighty-one illustrations convey a realistic impression of the land and its people.

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Techniques of the Selling Writer provides solid instruction for people who want to write and sell fiction, not just to talk and study about it. It gives the background, insights, and specific procedures needed by all beginning writers. Here one can learn how to group words into copy that moves, movement into scenes, and scenes into stories; how to develop characters, how to revise and polish, and finally, how to sell the product.No one can teach talent, but the practical skills of the professional writer's craft can certainly be taught. The correct and imaginative use of these kills can shorten any beginner's apprenticeship by years.This is the book for writers who want to turn rejection slips into cashable checks.

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The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers.As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum and, through their labors, combats, and endurance, created the framework of law and order within which settlement and development become possible. We should know more about the common soldier in our military past, and here he is.The rank and file regular, then as now, was psychologically as well as physically isolated from most of his fellow Americans. The people were tired of the military and its connotations after four years of civil war. They arrayed their army between themselves and the Indians, paid its soldiers their pittance, and went about the business of mushrooming the nation's economy.Because few enlisted men were literarily inclined, many barely able to scribble their names, most previous writings about them have been what officers and others had to say. To find out what the average soldier of the post-Civil War frontier thought, Don Rickey, Jr., asked over three hundred living veterans to supply information about their army experiences by answering questionnaires and writing personal accounts. Many of them who had survived to the mid-1950's contributed much more through additional correspondence and personal interviews.Whether the soldier is speaking for himself or through the author in his role as commentator-historian, this is the first documented account of the mass personality of the rank and file during the Indian Wars, and is only incidentally a history of those campaigns.

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Side by side with the westward drift of white Americans in the 1830's was the forced migration of the Five Civilized Tribes from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Both groups were deployed against the tribes of the prairies, both breaking the soil of the undeveloped hinterland. Both were striving in the years before the Civil War to found schools, churches, and towns, as well as to preserve orderly development through government and laws.In this book Grant Foreman brings to light the singular effect the westward movement of Indians had in the cultivation and settlement of the Trans-Mississippi region. It shows the Indian genius at its best and conveys the importance of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles to the nascent culture of the plains. Their achievements between 1830 and 1860 were of vast importance in the making of America.

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Lincolnshire, 1537. Amid England’s religious turmoil, fifteen-year-old Anne Askew is forced to take her dead sister’s place in an arranged marriage. The witty, well-educated gentleman’s daughter is determined to free herself from her abusive husband, harsh in-laws, and the cruel strictures of her married life. But this is the England of Henry VIII, where religion and politics are dangerously entangled. A young woman of Anne’s fierce independence, Reformist faith, uncanny command of plainspoken scripture, and—not least—connections to Queen Katheryn Parr’s court cannot long escape official notice, or censure. In a deft blend of history and imagination, award-winning novelist Rilla Askew brings to life a young woman who defied the conventions of her time, ultimately braving torture and the fire of martyrdom for her convictions. A rich evocation of Reformation England, from the fenlands of Lincolnshire to the teeming religious underground of London to the court of Henry VIII, this gripping tale of defiance is as pertinent today as it was in the sixteenth century. While skillfully portraying a significant historical figure—one of the first female writers known to have composed in the English language—Prize for the Fire renders the inner life of Anne Askew with a depth and immediacy that transcend time.

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Many Anglo-Americans in the nineteenth century regarded Indian tribes as little more than illiterate bands of savages in need of "civilizing." Few were willing to recognize that one of the major Southeastern tribes targeted for removal west of the Mississippi already had an advanced civilization with its own system of writing and rich literary tradition. In Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820–1906, James W. Parins traces the rise of bilingual literacy and intellectual life in the Cherokee Nation during the nineteenth century—a time of intense social and political turmoil for the tribe. By the 1820s, Cherokees had perfected a system for writing their language—the syllabary created by Sequoyah—and in a short time taught it to virtually all their citizens. Recognizing the need to master the language of the dominant society, the Cherokee Nation also developed a superior public school system that taught students in English. The result was a literate population, most of whom could read the Cherokee Phoenix, the tribal newspaper founded in 1828 and published in both Cherokee and English. English literacy allowed Cherokee leaders to deal with the white power structure on their own terms: Cherokees wrote legal briefs, challenged members of Congress and the executive branch, and bargained for their tribe as white interests sought to take their land and end their autonomy. In addition, many Cherokee poets, fiction writers, essayists, and journalists published extensively after 1850, paving the way for the rich literary tradition that the nation preserves and fosters today. Literary and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820–1906 takes a fascinating look at how literacy served to unite Cherokees during a critical moment in their national history, and advances our understanding of how literacy has functioned as a tool of sovereignty among Native peoples, both historically and today.

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The general store in late-nineteenth-century America was often the economic heart of a small town. Merchants sold goods necessary for residents' daily survival and extended credit to many of their customers; cash-poor farmers relied on merchants for their economic well-being just as the retailers needed customers to purchase their wares. But there was more to this mutual dependence than economics. Store owners often helped found churches and other institutions, and they and their customers worshiped together, sent their children to the same schools, and in times of crisis, came to one another's assistance.For this social and cultural history, Linda English combed store account ledgers from the 1870s and 1880s and found in them the experiences of thousands of people in Texas and Indian Territory. Particularly revealing are her insights into the everyday lives of women, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities, especially African Americans and American Indians.A store's ledger entries yield a wealth of detail about its proprietor, customers, and merchandise. As a local gathering place, the general store witnessed many aspects of residents' daily lives - many of them recorded, if hastily, in account books. In a small community with only one store, the clientele would include white, black, and Indian shoppers and, in some locales, Mexican American and other immigrants. Flour, coffee, salt, potatoes, tobacco, domestic fabrics, and other staples typified most purchases, but occasional luxury items reflected the buyer's desire for refinement and upward mobility. Recognizing that townspeople often accessed the wider world through the general store, English also traces the impact of national concerns on remote rural areas - including Reconstruction, race relations, women's rights, and temperance campaigns.In describing the social status of store owners and their economic and political roles in both small agricultural communities and larger towns, English fleshes out the fascinating history of daily life in Indian Territory and Texas in a time of transition.

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The Ch’ol Maya who live in the western Mexican state of Chiapas are direct descendants of the Maya of the Classic period. Exploring their history and culture, volume editor Karen Bassie-Sweet and the other authors assembled here uncover clear continuity between contemporary Maya rituals and beliefs and their ancient counterparts. With evocative and thoughtful essays by leading scholars of Maya culture, The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas, the first collection to focus fully on the Ch’ol Maya, takes readers deep into ancient caves and reveals new dimensions of Ch’ol cosmology. In contemporary Ch’ol culture the contributors find a wealth of historical material that they then interweave with archaeological data to yield surprising and illuminating insights. The colonial and twentieth-century descendants of the Postclassic period Ch’ol and Lacandon Ch’ol, for instance, provide a window on the history and conquest of the early Maya. Several authors examine Early Classic paintings in the Ch’ol ritual cave known as Jolja that document ancient cave ceremonies not unlike Ch’ol rituals performed today, such as petitioning a cave-dwelling mountain spirit for health, rain, and abundant harvests. Other essays investigate deities identified with caves, mountains, lightning, and meteors to trace the continuity of ancient Maya beliefs through the centuries, in particular the ancient origin of contemporary rituals centering on the Ch’ol mountain deity Don Juan. An appendix containing three Ch’ol folktales and their English translations rounds out the volume. Charting paths literal and figurative to earlier trade routes, pre-Columbian sites, and ancient rituals and beliefs, The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas opens a fresh, richly informed perspective on Maya culture as it has evolved and endured over the ages.

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Now that the West is no longer so wild, it's easy to dismiss Buffalo Bill Cody's world-famous Wild West shows as promoters of stereotypes and clichés. But looking at this unique American genre from the Native American point of view provides thought-provoking new perspectives. Focusing on the experiences of Native performers and performances, Linda Scarangella McNenly begins her examination of these spectacles with Buffalo Bill's 1880s pageants. She then traces the continuing performance of these acts, still a feature of regional celebrations in both Canada and the United States - and even at Euro Disney. Drawing on interviews with contemporary performers and descendants of twentieth-century performers, McNenly elicits insider perspectives to suggest new interpretations of their performances and experiences; she also uses these insights to analyze archival materials, especially photographs. Some Native performers saw Wild West shows not necessarily as demeaning, but rather as opportunities - for travel, for employment, for recognition, and for the preservation and expression of important cultural traditions. Other Native families were able to guide their own careers and even create their own Wild West shows.Today, Native performers at Buffalo Bill Days in Sheridan, Wyoming, wear their own regalia and choreograph their own performances. Through dancing and music, they express their own vision of a contemporary Native identity based on powwow cultures. Proud of their skills and successes, Native performers at Euro Disney are establishing promising careers. The effects of colonialism are undeniable, yet McNenly's study reveals how these Native peoples have adapted and re-created Wild West shows to express their own identities and to advance their own goals.

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The U.S. Senate is so sharply polarized along partisan and ideological lines today that it’s easy to believe it was always this way. But in the turbulent 1960s, even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed. One key reason: two remarkable leaders who remain giants of the Senate—Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, the longest-serving majority leader in Senate history, so revered for his integrity, fairness, and modesty that the late Washington Post reporter David Broder called him “the greatest American I ever met.” The political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, is the lens through which Marc C. Johnson examines the Senate in that tumultuous time. Working together, with the Democrat often ceding public leadership to his Republican counterpart, Mansfield and Dirksen passed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation, created Medicare, and helped bring about a foundational nuclear arms limitation treaty. The two leaders could not have been more different in personality and style: Mansfield, a laconic, soft-spoken, almost shy college history professor, and Dirksen, an aspiring actor known for his flamboyance and sense of humor, dubbed the “Wizard of Ooze” by reporters. Drawing on extensive Senate archives, Johnson explores the congressional careers of these iconic leaders, their intimate relationships with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and their own close professional friendship based on respect, candor, and mutual affection. A study of politics but also an analysis of different approaches to leadership, this is a portrait of a U.S. Senate that no longer exists—one in which two leaders, while exercising partisan political responsibilities, could still come together to pass groundbreaking legislation—and a reminder of what is possible.

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From its designation in 1926 to the rise of the interstates nearly sixty years later, Route 66 was, in John Steinbeck’s words, America’s Mother Road, carrying countless travelers the 2,400 miles between Chicago and Los Angeles. Whoever they were—adventurous motorists or Dustbowl migrants, troops on military transports or passengers on buses, vacationing families or a new breed of tourists—these travelers had to eat. The story of where they stopped and what they found, and of how these roadside offerings changed over time, reveals twentieth-century America on the move, transforming the nation’s cuisine, culture, and landscape along the way. Author T. Lindsay Baker, a glutton for authenticity, drove the historic route—or at least the 85 percent that remains intact—in a four-cylinder 1930 Ford station wagon. Sparing us the dust and bumps, he takes us for a spin along Route 66, stopping to sample the fare at diners, supper clubs, and roadside stands and to describe how such venues came and went—even offering kitchen-tested recipes from historic eateries en route. Start-ups that became such American fast-food icons as McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Steak ’n Shake, and Taco Bell feature alongside mom-and-pop diners with flocks of chickens out back and sit-down restaurants with heirloom menus. Food-and-drink establishments from speakeasies to drive-ins share the right-of-way with other attractions, accommodations, and challenges, from the Whoopee Auto Coaster in Lyons, Illinois, to the piles of “chat” (mining waste) in the Tri-State District of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma, to the perils of driving old automobiles over the Jericho Gap in the Texas Panhandle or Sitgreaves Pass in western Arizona. Describing options for the wealthy and the not-so-well-heeled, from hotel dining rooms to ice cream stands, Baker also notes the particular travails African Americans faced at every turn, traveling Route 66 across the decades of segregation, legal and illegal. So grab your hat and your wallet (you’ll probably need cash) and come along for an enlightening trip down America’s memory lane—a westward tour through the nation’s heartland and history, with all the trimmings, via Route 66.

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A vast and desolate region, the Texas-New Mexico borderlands have long been an ideal setting for intrigue and illegal dealings-never more so than in the lawless early days of cattle trafficking and trade among the Plains tribes and Comancheros. This book takes us to the borderlands in the 1860s and 1870s for an in-depth look at Union-Confederate skullduggery amid the infamous Comanche-Comanchero trade in stolen Texas livestock. In 1862, the Confederates abandoned New Mexico Territory and Texas west of the Pecos River, fully expecting to return someday. Meanwhile, administered by Union troops under martial law, the region became a hotbed of Rebel exiles and spies, who gathered intelligence, disrupted federal supply lines, and plotted to retake the Southwest. Using a treasure trove of previously unexplored documents, authors James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely trace the complicated network of relationships that drew both Texas cattlemen and Comancheros into these borderlands, revealing the urban elite who were heavily involved in both the legal and illegal transactions that fueled the region’s economy.Confederates and Comancheros deftly weaves a complex tale of Texan overreach and New Mexican resistance, explores cattle drives and cattle rustling, and details shady government contracts and bloody frontier justice. Peopled with Rebels and bluecoats, Comanches and Comancheros, Texas cattlemen and New Mexican merchants, opportunistic Indian agents and Anglo arms dealers, this book illustrates how central these contested borderlands were to the history of the American West.

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Generations of scholars have studied the multifaceted experiences of the Franciscans in Mexico and how the Franciscan order shaped New Spain and the early Mexican republic. Recent scholarship has given long-overdue attention to the evangelized natives. Most of these works focus on a specific region or period, or on a particular aspect of Franciscan ministries in New Spain. A comprehensive account of the Franciscans in Mexico over the long term has been missing, until now. This book analyzes the Franciscans’ engagement with native peoples, creole populations, the viceregal authorities, and the Spanish empire as a whole in order to offer a broad picture of Catholic evangelization in North America while keeping the Franciscans at the center of the story. Published in 2021, during commemoration of the quincentenary of the Spanish-and thus the Franciscan-presence in Mexico, the book brings together the research of junior and senior scholars from Mexico, Spain, and the United States on the long-enduring and far-reaching Franciscan presence in Mexico.

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In this revised and expanded edition of Ancient Rome, author Paul A. Zoch presents the history and mythology of Rome, from its legendary progenitor Aeneas to the death of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 c.e. Zoch guides readers through the military campaigns and political developments that shaped Rome's rise from a small Italian city to the greatest imperial power the world had ever known, and he includes stories about its protagonists - such as Romulus and Remus, Horatius, and Nero - that are often omitted from more specialized studies. In Zoch's retelling, the events and personalities of ancient Rome spring to life. We witness the long struggle against the enemy city of Carthage. We follow Caesar as he campaigns in Britain, and we observe the ebb and flow of Rome's fortunes in the Hellenistic East. Emphasizing both the political and moral lessons to be learned from Roman history - and that remain relevant today - Zoch gives readers a narrative that is both entertaining and informative. An afterword takes the history to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in 476 c.e.

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For members of U.S. Army's ""Task Force Faith"" and the First Marine Division, the Battle of Chosin Reservoir is an epic story of survival, courage, and ingenuity. Their exploits are well known - woven into the storied histories of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Now, for the first time, Attack at Chosin recounts this battle from the Chinese perspective, describing the advance that forced General MacArthur to reorient his strategy, which not only marked a turning point in the Korean War but impacted events in Asia in ways that still resonate today. The Battle of Chosin Reservoir, as the Chinese commanders foretold, determined the fate and length of the Korean War. Author Xiaobing Li describes the fighting that began on November 27, 1950, when 150,000 soldiers from the Chinese Ninth Army Group attacked the First Marines and elements of the 7th Infantry Division in the remote mountains of North Korea. It was a calculated attempt to repel MacArthur's ""home-by-Christmas"" offensive and to deter UN forces from further advances toward the Chinese border. The fierce fighting that followed, combined with the bitter cold, made Chosin one of the deadliest battles of the war. By December 17, after suffering more than 40,000 casualties and failing to achieve their campaign objectives to destroy the American divisions, the Ninth Army Group was forced to withdraw. One day later, on December 18, 1950, the remaining survivors were recalled to China. As the first book to explore the role of command and control, technology, and combat effectiveness from the point of view of the Chinese, and to examine cooperation and friction between Beijing and Pyongyang, Attack at Chosin sheds new light on the ultimate military success of the UN forces during the Korean conflict. Li also provides invaluable insights into Chinese military doctrine, strategy, and tactics that continue to influence foreign policy and American military institutions today.

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In the late 1880s, Pleasant Valley, Arizona, descended into a nightmare of violence, murder, and mayhem. By the time the Pleasant Valley War was over, eighteen men were dead, four were wounded, and one was missing, never to be found. Valley of the Guns explores the reasons for the violence that engulfed the settlement, turning neighbors, families, and friends against one another. While popular historians and novelists have long been captivated by the story, the Pleasant Valley War has more recently attracted the attention of scholars interested in examining the underlying causes of western violence. In this book, author Eduardo Obregón Pagán explores how geography and demographics aligned to create an unstable settlement subject to the constant threat of Apache raids. The fear of surprise attack by day and the theft of livestock by night prompted settlers to shape their lives around the expectation of sudden violence. As the forces of progress strained natural resources, conflict grew between local ranchers and cowboys hired by ranching corporations. Mixed-race property owners found themselves fighting white cowboys to keep their land. In addition, territorial law enforcement officers were outsiders to the community and approached every suspect fully armed and ready to shoot. The combination of unrelenting danger, its accompanying stress, and an abundance of firearms proved deadly. Drawing from history, geography, cultural studies, and trauma studies, Pagán uses the story of Pleasant Valley to demonstrate a new way of looking at the settlement of the West. Writing in a vivid narrative style and employing rigorous scholarship, he creatively explores the role of trauma in shaping the lives and decisions of the settlers in Pleasant Valley and offers new insight into the difficulties of survival in an isolated frontier community.

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A first-rate ornithologist, Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974) pioneered field studies on song sparrows and advocated for women's active role in the sciences. Yet her nontraditional path toward scientific progress, as well as her gender, meant that she had to reach the highest pinnacles of achievement in order to gain prominence in her chosen field. Luckily for Nice, she was more than up to the challenge. In this engaging first book-length biography, Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie sheds light on Nice's intellectual journey. The wife of an academic, Nice pursued her own scholarly interests through self-study and by cultivating and creating work partnerships with colleagues. Talented, ambitious, and creative, she did not define herself solely through her role as wife and mother, nor did her family responsibilities deter her from her professional achievements. From her undergraduate study at Mount Holyoke College to her fieldwork in Norman, Oklahoma, her coauthorship of Birds of Oklahoma and subsequent correspondence with George Sutton to her later years in Columbus, Ohio, Nice's career grew in tandem with her personal life - and in some cases, because of it. Although bridled by social constraints, her work spoke for itself: she produced more than 244 papers, articles, and published letters; seven books and book-length monographs; and 3,000 reviews. This voluminous and field-defining output earned her the respect of some of the most important biological scientists of the day, among them Konrad Lorenz and Ernst Mayr, who declared that she had ""almost singlehandedly"" initiated ""a new era in American ornithology.""For the Birds gives Nice her due recognition, lending compelling insight into her activism promoting conservation and preservation, her field methods, and the role of women in the history of science, particularly in ornithology. Nice's life acts as a looking glass into the various challenges faced by fellow female pioneers, their resolve, and their contributions.

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Shootin' - Lynchin' - Hangin',"" announces the advertisement for Tombstone's Helldorado Days festival. Dodge City's Boot Hill Cemetery sports an ""authentic hangman's tree."" Not to be outdone, Deadwood's Days of '76 celebration promises ""miners, cowboys, Indians, cavalry, bars, dance halls and gambling dens.""The Wild West may be long gone, but its legend lives on in Tombstone, Arizona; Deadwood, South Dakota; and Dodge City, Kansas. In Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City, Kevin Britz and Roger L. Nichols conduct a tour of these iconic towns, revealing how over time they became repositories of western America's defining myth. Beginning with the founding of the communities in the 1860s and 1870s, this book traces the circumstances, conversations, and clashes that shaped the settlements over the course of a century. Drawing extensively on literature, newspapers, magazines, municipal reports, political correspondence, and films and television, the authors show how Hollywood and popular novels, as well as major historical events such as the Great Depression and both world wars, shaped public memories of these three towns. Along the way, Britz and Nichols document the forces - from business interests to political struggles - that influenced dreams and decisions in Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City. After the so-called rowdy times of the open frontier had passed, town promoters tried to sell these towns by remaking their reputations as peaceful, law-abiding communities. Hard times made boosters think again, however, and they turned back to their communities' rowdy pasts to sell the towns as exemplars of the western frontier. An exploration of the changing times that led these towns to be marketed as reflections of the Old West, Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City opens an illuminating new perspective on the crafting and marketing of America's mythic self-image.

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When William F. Cody introduced his Wild West exhibition to European audiences in 1887, the show soared to new heights of popularity and success. With its colorful portrayal of cowboys, Indians, and the taming of the North American frontier, Buffalo Bill's Wild West popularized a myth of American national identity and shaped European perceptions of the United States. The Popular Frontier is the first collection of essays to explore the transnational impact and mass-cultural appeal of Cody's Wild West. As editor Frank Christianson explains in his introduction, for the first four years after Cody conceived it, the Wild West exhibition toured the United States, honing the operation into a financially solvent enterprise. When the troupe ventured to England for its first overseas booking, its success exceeded all expectations. Between 1887 and 1906 the Wild West performed in fourteen countries, traveled more than 200,000 miles, and attracted a collective audience in the tens of millions. How did Europeans respond to Cody's vision of the American frontier? And how did European countries appropriate what they saw on display? Addressing these questions and others, the contributors to this volume consider how the Wild West functioned within social and cultural contexts far grander in scope than even the vast American West. Among the topics addressed are the pairing of William F. Cody and Theodore Roosevelt as embodiments of frontier masculinity, and the significance of the show's most enduring persona, Annie Oakley. An informative and thought-provoking examination of the Wild West's foreign tours, The Popular Frontier offers new insight into late-nineteenth-century gender politics and ethnicity, the development of American nationalism, and the simultaneous rise of a global mass culture.

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Best Art Book and Best of Show - 2018 New Mexico-Arizona Book AwardBorn in San Diego in 1946 and raised in the American Southwest, painter Paul Pletka has created a body of work that owes much to the West of his childhood, and more to the West of his imagination. Infused with an operatic sense of theater and drama, his paintings conjure scenes from the cultures, history, and religions of the American West and Mexico - diffused, as Pletka writes, ""through the lens of personal experiences, dreams, research, and ancestral memory."" In Paul Pletka: Imagined Wests, the first book on this major American artist in over thirty years, readers will encounter the full range of Pletka's oeuvre through more than eighty color reproductions of his best-known and most influential works. Images of warriors and shamans are paired with depictions of George Armstrong Custer, Christian saints, and the lost gods of North and South America, their forms rendered in a distinctive style that mixes classical drawing and expressionist distortion with elements of surrealism and European symbolism. An artist statement and notes on selected paintings provide rare insight into Pletka's creative process, and an introductory essay by art historian Amy Scott discusses how Pletka's studies of indigenous cultures of the American West and Mexico, as well as art historical and critical influences, have informed his work. Complex, mysterious, and mesmerizing, Pletka's paintings are designed to make it almost impossible to look away. In their boldly conceived subject matter, vivid color, and ethnographic detail, these works - and their creator - are true originals in the rich artistic landscape of the American West.

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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.

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According to media reports, Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world - a distinction it held throughout the twentieth century. The authors of Violence and Crime in Latin America contend that perceptions and representations of violence and crime directly impact such behaviors, creating profound consequences for the political and social fabric of Latin American nations. Written by distinguished scholars of Latin American history, sociology, anthropology, and political science, the essays in this volume range from Mexico and Argentina to Colombia and Brazil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, addressing such issues as extralegal violence in Mexico, the myth of indigenous criminality in Guatemala, and governments' selective blindness to violent crime in Brazil and Jamaica. The authors in this collection examine not only the social construction and political visibility of violence and crime in Latin America, but the justifications for them as well. Analytically and historically, these essays show how Latin American citizens have sanctioned criminal and violent practices and incorporated them into social relations, everyday practices, and institutional settings. At the same time, the authors explore the power struggles that inform distinctions between illegitimate versus legitimate violence.Violence and Crime in Latin America makes a substantive contribution to understanding a key problem facing Latin America today. In its historical depth and ethnographic reach, this original and thought-provoking volume enhances our understanding of crime and violence throughout the Western Hemisphere.

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By the time Route 66 received its official numerical designation in 1926, picture postcards had become popular travel souvenirs. At the time, these postcards with colorful images served as advertisements for roadside businesses. While cherished by collectors, these postcard depictions do not always reflect reality. They often present instead a view enhanced for promotional purposes. Portrait of Route 66 lets us see for the first time the actual photographs from which the postcards were made, and in describing how the production process worked, introduces us to an extraordinary archival collection, adding new history to this iconic road. The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, held at the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, contains one of the nation's largest collections of Route 66 images, including thousands of job files for postcards produced by Curt Teich and Company of Chicago. T. Lindsay Baker combed these files to choose the best examples of postcards and their accompanying photographs not only to reflect well-known sites along the route but also to demonstrate the relationships between photographs and their resulting postcards. The photographs show the reality of the locations that customers sometimes wanted ""improved"" for aesthetic purposes in creating the postcards. Such alterations included removing utility poles or automobile traffic and rendering overcast skies partly cloudy. This book will interest historians of art and design as well as the worldwide audiences of Route 66 aficionados and postcard collectors. For its mining of an invaluable and little-known photographic archive and depiction of high-quality photographs that have not been seen before, Portrait of Route 66 will be irresistible to all who are interested in American history and culture.

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Artist-explorer John Mix Stanley (1814-1872), one of the most celebrated chroniclers of the American West in his time, was in a sense a victim of his own success. So highly regarded was his work that more than two hundred of his paintings were held at the Smithsonian Institution - where in 1865 a fire destroyed all but seven of them. This volume, featuring a comprehensive collection of Stanley's extant art, reproduced in full color, offers an opportunity - and ample reason - to rediscover the remarkable accomplishments of this outsize figure of nineteenth-century American culture. Originally from New York State, Stanley journeyed west in 1842 to paint Indian life. During the U.S.-Mexican War, he joined a frontier military expedition and traveled from Santa Fe to California, producing sketches and paintings of the campaign along the way - work that helped secure his fame in the following decades. He was also appointed chief artist for Isaac Stevens's survey of the 48th parallel for a proposed transcontinental railroad. The essays in this volume, by noted scholars of American art, document and reflect on Stanley's life and work from every angle. The authors consider the artist's experience on government expeditions; his solo tours among the Oregon settlers and western and Plains Indians; and his career in Washington and search for government patronage, as well as his individual works. With contributions by Emily C. Burns, Scott Manning Stevens, Lisa Strong, Melissa Speidel, Jacquelyn Sparks, and Emily C. Wilson, the essays in this volume convey the full scope of John Mix Stanley's artistic accomplishment and document the unfolding of that uniquely American vision throughout the artist's colorful life. Together they restore Stanley to his rightful place in the panorama of nineteenth-century American life and art.

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Truscott was one of the really tough generals,"" soldier-cartoonist Bill Mauldin of the 45th Infantry Division once wrote. ""He could have eaten a ham like Patton for breakfast any morning and picked his teeth with the man's pearl-handled pistols."" Not one merely to act the part of commander, Mauldin remembered, ""Truscott spent half his time at the front - the real front - with nobody in attendance but a nervous Jeep driver and a worried aide."" In this biography of Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., author Harvey Ferguson tells the story of how Truscott - despite his hardscrabble beginnings, patchy education, and questionable luck - not only made the rank of army lieutenant general, earning a reputation as one of World War II's most effective officers along the way, but was also given an honorary promotion to four-star general seven years after his retirement. For all his accomplishments and celebrated heroic action, Truscott was not one for self-aggrandizement, which may explain in part why historians have neglected him until now. The Last Cavalryman, drawing on personal papers only recently made available, gives the first full picture of this singular man's extraordinary life and career. Ferguson describes Truscott's near-accidental entry into the U.S. Cavalry (propelled by Pancho Villa's 1916 raids) and his somewhat halting rise through the ranks - aided by fellow cavalryman George S. Patton, Jr., who steered him into the nascent armored force at the right time. The author takes us through Truscott's service in the Second World War, from creating the U.S. Army Rangers to engineering the breakout from Anzio and leading the ""masterpiece"" invasion of southern France. Ferguson finishes his narrative by detailing the general's postwar work with the CIA, where he acted as President Dwight Eisenhower's eyes and ears within the agency. A compelling story in itself, this biography of Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. - a cavalryman to the last - fills out an important chapter in American military history.

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In the decade after the death of their revered chief Cochise in 1874, the Chiricahua Apaches struggled to survive as a people and their relations with the U.S. government further deteriorated. In From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney builds on his previous biographies of Chiricahua leaders Cochise and Mangas Coloradas to offer a definitive history of the turbulent period between Cochise's death and Geronimo's surrender in 1886.Sweeney shows that the cataclysmic events of the 1870s and 1880s stemmed in part from seeds of distrust sown by the American military in 1861 and 1863. In 1876 and 1877, the U.S. government proposed moving the Chiricahuas from their ancestral homelands in New Mexico and Arizona to the San Carlos Reservation. Some made the move, but most refused to go or soon fled the reviled new reservation, viewing the government's concentration policy as continued U.S. perfidy. Bands under the leadership of Victorio and Geronimo went south into the Sierra Madre of Mexico, a redoubt from which they conducted bloody raids on American soil.Sweeney draws on American and Mexican archives, some only recently opened, to offer a balanced account of life on and off the reservation in the 1870s and 1880s. From Cochise to Geronimo details the Chiricahuas' ordeal in maintaining their identity despite forced relocations, disease epidemics, sustained warfare, and confinement. Resigned to accommodation with Americans but intent on preserving their culture, they were determined to survive as a people.

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From the earliest days of European settlement, Americans have cherished the sight of a windmill - an instantly recognizable feature of the American landscape. Boasting nearly two hundred striking images, this book is the first devoted to photographs illustrating historic wind machines throughout North America.T. Lindsay Baker, an expert historian on windmills, has written about wind-power history for twenty-five years. His album contains historic images captured by professional windmiller B. H. ""Tex"" Burdick and from corporate archives of windmill manufacturers. It depicts windmills in a wide range of settings and uses - not only on ranches and farms but also alongside railroads, in industry, and even in urban areas.The photos chosen for this book illustrate windmill manufacture, distribution, and use in all regions of the United States, with an emphasis on the Great Plains. They take us into the factories to show how commercial windmills were mass-produced and marketed - and also into rural America to show how inventive individuals designed their own homemade wind machines.An introduction by photography historian John Carter provides an overview of the importance of windmills in rural life and Americans' compulsion for photographing them.

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Political image-making - especially from the Age of Augustus, when the Roman Republic evolved into a system capable of governing a vast, culturally diverse empire - is the focus of this masterful study of Roman culture. Distinguished art historian and classical archaeologist John Pollini explores how various artistic and ideological symbols of religion and power, based on Roman Republican values and traditions, were taken over or refashioned to convey new ideological content in the constantly changing political world of imperial Rome. Religion, civic life, and politics went hand in hand and formed the very fabric of ancient Roman society. Visual rhetoric was a most effective way to communicate and commemorate the ideals, virtues, and political programs of the leaders of the Roman State in an empire where few people could read and many different languages were spoken. Public memorialization could keep Roman leaders and their achievements before the eyes of the populace, in Rome and in cities under Roman sway. A leader's success demonstrated that he had the favor of the gods - a form of legitimation crucial for sustaining the Roman Principate, or government by a ""First Citizen.""Pollini examines works and traditions ranging from coins to statues and reliefs. He considers the realistic tradition of sculptural portraiture and the ways Roman leaders from the late Republic through the Imperial period were represented in relation to the divine. In comparing visual and verbal expression, he likens sculptural imagery to the structure, syntax, and diction of the Latin language and to ancient rhetorical figures of speech.Throughout the book, Pollini's vast knowledge of ancient history, religion, literature, and politics extends his analysis far beyond visual culture to every aspect of ancient Roman civilization, including the empire's ultimate conversion to Christianity. Readers will gain a thorough understanding of the relationship between artistic developments and political change in ancient Rome.

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More college students than ever are majoring in Outdoor Recreation, Outdoor Education, or Adventure Education, but fewer and fewer Americans spend any time in thoughtful, respectful engagement with wilderness. While many young people may think of adrenaline-laced extreme sports as prime outdoor activities, with Outdoors in the Southwest, Andrew Gulliford seeks to promote appreciation for and discussion of the wild landscapes where those sports are played.Advocating an outdoor ethic based on curiosity, cooperation, humility, and ecological literacy, this essay collection features selections by renowned southwestern writers including Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, Craig Childs, and Barbara Kingsolver, as well as scholars, experienced guides, and river rats. Essays explain the necessity of nature in the digital age, recount rafting adventures, and reflect on the psychological effects of expeditions. True-life cautionary tales tell of encounters with nearly disastrous flash floods, 900-foot falls, and lightning strikes. The final chapter describes the work of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, and other exemplars of ""wilderness tithing"" - giving back to public lands through volunteering, stewardship, and eco-advocacy.Addressing the evolution of public land policy, the meaning of wilderness, and the importance of environmental protection, this collection serves as an intellectual guidebook not just for students but for travelers and anyone curious about the changing landscape of the West.

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The Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest inhabit a vast region extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and from California to British Columbia. For more than two decades, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest has served as a standard reference on these diverse peoples. Now, in the wake of renewed tribal self-determination, this revised edition reflects the many recent political, economic, and cultural developments shaping these Native communities.From such well-known tribes as the Nez Perces and Cayuses to lesser-known bands previously presumed ""extinct,"" this guide offers detailed descriptions, in alphabetical order, of 150 Pacific Northwest tribes. Each entry provides information on the history, location, demographics, and cultural traditions of the particular tribe.Among the new features offered here are an expanded selection of photographs, updated reading lists, and a revised pronunciation guide. While continuing to provide succinct histories of each tribe, the volume now also covers such contemporary - and sometimes controversial - issues as Indian gaming and NAGPRA. With its emphasis on Native voices and tribal revitalization, this new edition of the Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest is certain to be a definitive reference for many years to come.

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Although most Romans lived outside urban centers, the core of Roman civilization lay in its cities. Throughout the empire these cities--modeled as they were after Rome--were strikingly alike. In Gregory Aldrete's exhaustive account, readers can peer into the inner workings of daily life in ancient Rome and examine the history, infrastructure, government, and economy of Rome; its emperors; and its inhabitants--their life and death, dangers and pleasures, entertainment, and religion.Aldrete also shows how Roman cities differed. To accomplish this comparison, in addition to Rome, he explores Ostia, an industrial port town, and Pompeii, the doomed playground of the rich. Daily Life in the Roman City includes a chronology, maps, numerous illustrations, useful appendices (on names, the Roman calendar, clothing and appearance, and construction techniques), a bibliography, and an index.This volume is ideal for high school and college students and for others wishing to examine the realities of life in ancient Rome.

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The U.S. Army in the West, 1870-1880, Douglas C. McChristian describes the development of army uniforms, equipment, and small arms during a pivotal decade of experimentation and against the backdrop of a highly influential military operation-the Indian campaigns in the West.McChristian discusses the evolution of military clothing, equipment, and arms throughout the decade and fully describes each type of item and its modifications. Drawing much new information from the records of the Ordnance and Quartermaster departments, he also adds the human perspective with excerpts from previously unpublished 1875 field reports.Lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred photographs gathered from public and private collections across the nation, this book is an invaluable reference for collectors, curators, and students of militaria and of the colorful frontier era.

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Crazy Horse was as much feared by tribal foes as he was honored by allies. His war record was unmatched by any of his peers, and his rout of Custer at the Little Bighorn reverberates through history. Yet so much about him is unknown or steeped in legend.Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life corrects older, idealized accounts - and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies - to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety. Kingsley M. Bray has plumbed interviews of Crazy Horse's contemporaries and consulted modern Lakotas to fill in vital details of Crazy Horse's inner and public life.Bray places Crazy Horse within the rich context of the nineteenth-century Lakota world. He reassesses the war chief's achievements in numerous battles and retraces the tragic sequence of misunderstandings, betrayals, and misjudgments that led to his death. Bray also explores the private tragedies that marred Crazy Horse's childhood and the network of relationships that shaped his adult life.To this day, Crazy Horse remains a compelling symbol of resistance for modern Lakotas. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life is a singular achievement, scholarly and authoritative, offering a complete portrait of the man and a fuller understanding of his place in American Indian and United States history.

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In the decades preceding the Civil War, few figures in the United States were as influential or as controversial as Sam Houston. In Sam Houston, James L. Haley explores Houston's momentous career and the complex man behind it. Haley's fifteen years of research and writing have produced possibly the most complete, most personal, and most readable Sam Houston biography ever written. Drawn from personal papers never before available as well as the papers of others in Houston's circle, this biography will delight anyone intrigued by Sam Houston, Texas history, Civil War history, or America's tradition of rugged individualism.

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Chief Daniel Bread (1800-1873) played a key role in establishing the Oneida Indians' presence in Wisconsin after their removal from New York, yet no monument commemorates his deeds as the community's founder. Laurence M. Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester, III, redress that historical oversight, connecting Bread's life story with the nineteenth-century history of the Oneida Nation.Bread was often criticized for his support of acculturation and missionary schools as well as for his working relationship with Indian agents; however, when the Federal-Menominee treaties slashed Oneida lands, he fought back, taking his people's cause to Washington and confronting President Andrew Jackson. The authors challenge the long-held views about Eleazer Williams's leadership of the Oneidas and persuasively show that Bread's was the voice vigorously defending tribal interests.

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This comprehensively researched, well-written book represents the definitive account of Robert E. Lee's triumph over Union leader John Pope in the summer of 1862. . . . Lee's strategic skills, and the capabilities of his principal subordinates James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, brought the Confederates onto the field of Second Manassas at the right places and times against a Union army that knew how to fight, but not yet how to win.""-Publishers Weekly

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John H. Holliday, D. D. S., better known as Doc Holliday, has become a legendary figure in the history of the American West. In Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner reveals the real man behind the legend. Shedding light on Holliday's early years, in a prominent Georgia family during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she examines the elements that shaped his destiny: his birth defect, the death of his mother and estrangement from his father, and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which led to his journey west. The influence of Holliday's genteel upbringing never disappeared, but it was increasingly overshadowed by his emerging western personality. Holliday himself nurtured his image as a frontier gambler and gunman.Using previously undisclosed family documents and reminiscences as well as other primary sources, Tanner documents the true story of Doc's friendship with the Earp brothers and his run-ins with the law, including the climactic shootout at the O. K. Corral and its aftermath.This first authoritative biography of Doc Holliday should appeal both to historians of the West and to general readers who are interested in his poignant story.

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Pioneer Women provides a rare look at frontier life through the eyes of the pioneer women who settled the American West. Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith vividly describe the hardships such women endured journeying west and making homes and communities on the frontier. Their hopes and fears and, most of all, their courage in the face of adversity are revealed in excerpts from journals, letters, and oral histories. Illustrated with a fascinating collection of seldom-seen photographs, Pioneer Women reveals the faces as well as the voices of women who lived on the frontier. The authors portray a wide variety of women, from those who found liberty and confidence in undertaking ""men's work"" to those who felt burdened by the wind, the weather, and the struggle of frontier life.

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Teachers have found The Call of the Wild--from the very earliest days of its publication in 1903--to be a novella rich in instructional possibilities in history, geography, and ethics as well as literature. In this resource book for teachers, Daniel Dyer provides an array of activities--traditional and nontraditional--to accommodate a wide range of students, teachers, schools and communities.Dyer's instructional ideas will stimulate exploration of such subjects as California and Klondike history and geography; tranportation by rail, ferry, steamship, and dog teams; techniques of gold mining; breeds of dogs; and subarctic flora and fauna--as well as the novel's great literary themes.

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Many thousands of persons here and abroad have been introduced to authentic Indian dancing through the Laubin's dance concerts, lectures, and seminars. Their admirers, as well as other dancers, anthropologists, historians, students of Indian culture, and Indians themselves, will welcome this informative and richly illustrated book. It is based upon a lifetime of study and research, including years the authors spent living with the Indians on or near their reservations (they are adopted Sioux). The authors have been told by the old chiefs, "You know exactly the real Indian ways." These survivors of the Buffalo Days appreciated the Laubins' interest and asked them to learn and preserve the rituals, since their own young people no longer knew all their traditions. This book is the result. In addition to descriptions of the dances, the costumes, the body decorations, and the musical accompaniment, the Laubins give the cultural background of Indian dancing and a wealth of related detail. They enrich their text with many personal experiences and observations. They may have been the first non-Indians to appreciate fully the integral role of dancing in the traditional life patterns of the Indians, a role only recently recognize by scholars in the field. Through their deep understanding of their adopted people the Laubins clear way through misinterpretation and prejudice to a new appreciation of the American Indian.

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In the past 150 years as many as two thousand Oklahoma hamlets, villages, towns, and even cities have bloomed and then died. Some have faded away, with not even a fallen chimney to mark their location. Others have left ghostly marks of their past--mounds of rubble grown over with grass or crumbling walls of buildings. A few still cling tenaciously to life, with a few inhibitants left to call them home.In these pages John W. Morris tells about 130 of the towns. He describes how and why each was established, the activities of its people in its heyday, and the conditions that cuased it to fade away. Of course, to tell about the towns is also to tell about the people who built them and lived in them--and once had high hopes for their success.

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De Religione, the longest-surviving text in the Huron, or Wendat, language, was written in the seventeenth century to explain the nature of Christianity to the Iroquois people, as well as to justify the Jesuits' missionary work among American Indians. In this first annotated edition of De Religione, linguist and anthropologist John L. Steckley presents the original Huron text side by side with an English translation.The Huron language, now extinct, was spoken originally by Huron Indians, who were settled in present-day southern Ontario. One group went to Quebec and another was later removed to the western United States, first to Kansas and then to Oklahoma. In the early 1670s, the author of De Religione, likely a Jesuit priest named Phillipe Pierson, chose to write his doctrine in Huron because it was a language understood by all five Iroquois nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. For today's readers, the text offers valuable insight into how the missionaries actually communicated with American Indians.Amplified by Steckley's in-depth introduction and his fully annotated translation, De Religione provides a firsthand account of Catholic missionization among the Iroquois during the colonial period.

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While political history has plenty to say about the impact of Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency in 1980, four Senate races that same year have garnered far less attention - despite their similarly profound political effect. Tuesday Night Massacre looks at those races. In examining the defeat in 1980 of Idaho's Frank Church, South Dakota's George McGovern, John Culver of Iowa, and Birch Bayh of Indiana, Marc C. Johnson tells the story of the beginnings of the divisive partisanship that has become a constant feature of American politics. The turnover of these seats not only allowed Republicans to gain control of the Senate for the first time since 1954 but also fundamentally altered the conduct of American politics. The incumbents were politicians of national reputation who often worked with members of the other party to accomplish significant legislative objectives - but they were, Johnson suggests, unprepared and ill-equipped to counter nakedly negative emotional appeals to the 'politically passive voter.' Such was the campaign of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the organization founded by several young conservative political activists who targeted these four senators for defeat. Johnson describes how such groups, amassing a great amount of money, could make outrageous and devastating claims about incumbents - 'baby killers' who were 'soft on communism,' for example - on behalf of a candidate who remained above the fray. Among the key players in this sordid drama are NCPAC chairman Terry Dolan; Washington lobbyist Charles Black, a top GOP advisor to several presidential campaigns and one-time business partner of Paul Manafort; and Roger Stone, self-described 'dirty trickster' for Richard Nixon and confidant of Donald Trump. Connecting the dots between the Goldwater era of the 1960s and the ascent of Trump, Tuesday Night Massacre charts the radicalization of the Republican Party and the rise of the independent expenditure campaign, with its divisive, negative techniques, a change that has deeply - and perhaps permanently - warped the culture of bipartisanship that once prevailed in American politics.

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The first catalogue of the permanent collection of the Museum of the Southwest, based in Midland, Texas. The volume's introduction details the history of Midland and the genesis of the Museum of the Southwest, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2016.

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David Ross Boyd stepped off the train in Norman, Oklahoma, on August 6, 1892, and looked toward the southwest. ""There was not a tree or shrub in sight,"" wrote the former Kansas school superintendent just hired to serve as the University of Oklahoma's first president. ""Behind me was a crude little town of 1,500 people, and before me was a stretch of prairie on which my helpers and I were to build an institution of culture."" By 1895, five years after the University's official founding, the school boasted four faculty members (three men and one woman) and 100 students. Today the campus is home to more than 30,000 students and 2,700 full-time faculty and is one of the most respected public universities in the nation, with twenty-one colleges offering hundreds of majors at the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral level. OU's remarkable journey from that treeless prairie to its present standing as a world-class institution of learning unfolds in The Sooner Story. Arriving upon the university's 125th anniversary, the book updates a history that last left off in 1980, when William Slater Banowsky was at the helm. Author Anne Barajas Harp examines the school's history through the lens of each presidential administration from the beginning of David Ross Boyd's tenure to the present moment in David Lyle Boren's presidency, now in its third decade. In describing what each president encountered in his turn, she captures the unique character, challenges, and accomplishments of each administration, as these reflect the university's growth and progress through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. ""Discouraged?"" Boyd wrote at his arrival in 1892. ""Not a bit. The sight was a challenge."" The Sooner Story conveys the inspiration and excitement of meeting and renewing that challenge over the past 125 years.

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Volume 1: Headgear, Clothing, and FootwearVolume 2: Weapons and AccoutermentsThe definitive two-volume survey of military clothing and equipment during the final years of the U.S.-Indian warsBuilding on the success of his best-selling The U.S. Army in the West, 1870-1880:Uniforms, Arms, and Equipment, Douglas C. McChristian here presents a two-volume comprehensive account of the evolution of military arms and equipment during the years 1880-1892. The volumes are set against the backdrop of the final decade of the Indian campaigns - a key period of transition in United States military history.In Volume 1, McChristian shows how the Quartermaster Department modified the design and manufacturing of uniforms and other clothing to meet the developing needs of troops in the American West. In Volume 2, he focuses on weapons and other accouterments, recounting in detail the army's quest to find a repeating rifle that would serve the needs of both cavalry and infantry across the plains.Drawing on extensive research in public and private collections throughout the United States and lavishly illustrated with more than four hundred color and black-and-white illustrations, these volumes will serve as invaluable references for collectors, curators, and students of militaria and of the frontier era.

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Tells the story of two larger-than-life figures - George Harrison met Muhammad Ali - at a momentous time. A unique blend of biography and cultural history, this book goes to the very heart of the zeitgeist that each man inhabited and reinvented in profound and enduring ways.

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