Russell P. Strange "Book of the Year" Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2012. On the eve of the War of 1812, the Illinois Territory was a new land of bright promise. Split off from Indiana Territory in 1809, the new territory ran from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north to the U.S. border with Canada, embracing the current states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Michigan. The extreme southern part of the region was rich in timber, but the dominant feature of the landscape was the vast tall grass prairie that stretched without major interruption from Lake Michigan for more than three hundred miles to the south. The territory was largely inhabited by Indians: Sauk, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and others. By 1812, however, pioneer farmers had gathered in the wooded fringes around prime agricultural land, looking out over the prairies with longing and trepidation. Six years later, a populous Illinois was confident enough to seek and receive admission as a state in the Union. What had intervened was the War of 1812, in which white settlers faced both Indians resistant to their encroachments and British forces poised to seize control of the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes. The war ultimately broke the power and morale of the Indian tribes and deprived them of the support of their ally, Great Britain. Sometimes led by skillful tacticians, at other times by blundering looters who got lost in the tall grass, the combatants showed each other little mercy. Until and even after the war was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there were massacres by both sides, laying the groundwork for later betrayal of friendly and hostile tribes alike and for ultimate expulsion of the Indians from the new state of Illinois. In this engrossing new history, published upon the war's bicentennial, Gillum Ferguson underlines the crucial importance of the War of 1812 in the development of Illinois as a state. The history of Illinois in the War of 1812 has never before been told with so much attention to the personalities who fought it, the events that defined it, and its lasting consequences. Endorsed by the Illinois Society of the War of 1812 and the Illinois War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.

Historian Frederick E. Hoxie presents the story of two hundred years of Native American political activism. Highlighting the activists -- some famous and some unknown beyond their own communities -- who have sought to bridge the distance between indigenous cultures and the U.S. republic through legal and political campaigns, Hoxie weaves a narrative connecting the individual to the tribe, the tribe to the nation, and the nation to broader historical processes and progressive movements.

The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. Louis While Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Built around a sprawling central plaza and known as Cahokia, the site has drawn the attention of generations of archaeologists, whose work produced evidence of complex celestial timepieces, feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of human sacrifice. Drawing on these fascinating finds, Cahokia presents a lively and astonishing narrative of prehistoric America.

From the beginnings of colonial settlement in Illinois Country, the region was characterized by self-determination and collaboration that did not always align with imperial plans. The French in Quebec established a somewhat reluctant alliance with the Illinois Indians while Jesuits and fur traders planted defiant outposts in the Illinois River Valley beyond the Great Lakes. These autonomous early settlements were brought into the French empire only after the fact. As the colony grew, the authority that governed the region was often uncertain. Canada and Louisiana alternately claimed control over the Illinois throughout the eighteenth century. Later, British and Spanish authorities tried to divide the region along the Mississippi River. Yet Illinois settlers and Native people continued to welcome and partner with European governments, even if that meant playing the competing empires against one another in order to pursue local interests. Empire by Collaboration explores the remarkable community and distinctive creole culture of colonial Illinois Country, characterized by compromise and flexibility rather than domination and resistance. Drawing on extensive archival research, Robert Michael Morrissey demonstrates how Natives, officials, traders, farmers, religious leaders, and slaves constantly negotiated local and imperial priorities and worked purposefully together to achieve their goals. Their pragmatic intercultural collaboration gave rise to new economies, new forms of social life, and new forms of political engagement. Empire by Collaboration shows that this rugged outpost on the fringe of empire bears central importance to the evolution of early America.

Five centuries before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, indigenous North Americans had already built a vast urban center on the banks of the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. This is the story of North America's largest archaeological site, told through the lives, personalities, and conflicts of the men and women who excavated and studied it. At its height the metropolis of Cahokia had twenty thousand inhabitants in the city center with another ten thousand in the outskirts. Cahokia was a precisely planned community with a fortified central city and surrounding suburbs. Its entire plan reflected the Cahokian's concept of the cosmos. Its centerpiece, Monk's Mound, ten stories tall, is the largest pre-Columbian structure in North America, with a base circumference larger than that of either the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt or the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Nineteenth-century observers maintained that the mounds, too sophisticated for primitive Native American cultures, had to have been created by a superior, non-Indian race, perhaps even by survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis. Melvin Fowler, the "dean" of Cahokia archaeologists, and Biloine Whiting Young tell an engrossing story of the struggle to protect the site from the encroachment of interstate highways and urban sprawl. Now identified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and protected by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Cahokia serves as a reminder that the indigenous North Americans had a past of complexity and great achievement.

Sometimes called "The Chivington Massacre" by those who would emphasize his responsibility for the attack and "The Battle of Sand Creek" by those who would imply that it was not a massacre, this event has become one of our nation’s most controversial Indian conflicts. The subject of army and Congressional investigations and inquiries, a matter of vigorous newspaper debates, the object of much oratory and writing biased in both directions, the Sand Creek Massacre very likely will never be completely and satisfactorily resolved. This account of the massacre investigates the historical events leading to the battle, tracing the growth of the Indian-white conflict in Colorado Territory. The author has shown the way in which the discontent stemming from the treaty of Fort Wise, the depredations committed by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes prior to the massacre, and the desire of some of the commanding officers for a bloody victory against the Indians laid the groundwork for the battle at Sand Creek.

In the summer of 1912 Hopi runner Louis Tewanima won silver in the 10,000-meter race at the Stockholm Olympics. In that same year Tewanima and another champion Hopi runner, Philip Zeyouma, were soundly defeated by two Hopi elders in a race hosted by members of the tribe. Long before Hopis won trophy cups or received acclaim in American newspapers, Hopi clan runners competed against each other on and below their mesas—and when they won footraces, they received rain. Hopi Runners provides a window into this venerable tradition at a time of great consequence for Hopi culture. The book places Hopi long-distance runners within the larger context of American sport and identity from the early 1880s to the 1930s, a time when Hopis competed simultaneously for their tribal communities, Indian schools, city athletic clubs, the nation, and themselves. Author Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert brings a Hopi perspective to this history. His book calls attention to Hopi philosophies of running that connected the runners to their villages; at the same time it explores the internal and external forces that strengthened and strained these cultural ties when Hopis competed in US marathons. Between 1908 and 1936 Hopi marathon runners such as Tewanima, Zeyouma, Franklin Suhu, and Harry Chaca navigated among tribal dynamics, school loyalties, and a country that closely associated sport with US nationalism. The cultural identity of these runners, Sakiestewa Gilbert contends, challenged white American perceptions of modernity, and did so in a way that had national and international dimensions. This broad perspective linked Hopi runners to athletes from around the world—including runners from Japan, Ireland, and Mexico—and thus, Hopi Runners suggests, caused non-Natives to reevaluate their understandings of sport, nationhood, and the cultures of American Indian people.

"With a new preface by the author"--P. [1] of cover.

"More than an outgrowth of public policy implemented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the exodus of American Indians from reservations to cities was linked to broader patterns of social and political change after World War II. Indian Metropolis places the Indian people within the context of many of the twentieth century's major themes, including rural to urban migration, the expansion of the wage labor economy, increased participation in and acceptance of political radicalism, and growing interest in ethnic nationalism."--Jacket.