"More than two hundred years ago, Chickasaws confronted the unrelenting whirlwind of intrigue, treachery, and uncertainty that surrounded the American Revolution. The Spanish, the British, and the colonies that would become the fledgling United States either courted the Chickasaws' favor or plotted against them. The times called for leaders who could find the most certain path toward the Chickasaws' survival and the preservation of their sovereignty. Out of those times, from the ranks of Chickasaw warriors, came Piominko, who rose to a position of leadership, recognition, and trust achieved by few others during that pivotal period in history. In 1794, Piominko met with President George Washington in Philadelphia, an event set down in history's record by future President John Quincy Adams. Their conclave helped forge the relationship between the Chickasaw Nation and the US government that has lasted since and has been an important ingredient in the persistence and renaissance of the Chickasaws as a sovereign people and culture. Piominko: Chickasaw Leader tells the story of a Native American leader whose unwavering dedication in the face of monumental challenges proved crucial to the survival of two nations--his and the United States"--Publisher's description.

"More than two hundred years ago, Chickasaws confronted the unrelenting whirlwind of intrigue, treachery, and uncertainty that surrounded the American Revolution. The Spanish, the British, and the colonies that would become the fledgling United States either courted the Chickasaws' favor or plotted against them. The times called for leaders who could find the most certain path toward the Chickasaws' survival and the preservation of their sovereignty. Out of those times, from the ranks of Chickasaw warriors, came Piominko, who rose to a position of leadership, recognition, and trust achieved by few others during that pivotal period in history. In 1794, Piominko met with President George Washington in Philadelphia, an event set down in history's record by future President John Quincy Adams. Their conclave helped forge the relationship between the Chickasaw Nation and the US government that has lasted since and has been an important ingredient in the persistence and renaissance of the Chickasaws as a sovereign people and culture. Piominko: Chickasaw Leader tells the story of a Native American leader whose unwavering dedication in the face of monumental challenges proved crucial to the survival of two nations--his and the United States"--Publisher's description.

Tells the story of the Chickasaw people through vivid photography and rich essays.

There is no other book on the market that presents broadcollar projects for beaders-a traditional form. Julia S. Pretl, author of Little Bead Boxes and Bead Knitted Bags, has created a collection of beaded neckpieces, inspired by broadcollars, the dramatic jewelry worn by the ancient Egyptians and a well-known form among beadworkers. She has adapted the traditional form-a broad, beaded necklace-to create ten original designs for the modern beadworker, with skill levels ranging from beginner to more advanced. With step-by-step illustrations and easy-to-follow patterns, Julia leads the reader through the techniques for creating the stitched "ladder? -the basic unit that is combined and joined in various ways to create each of the unique designs. She also teaches readers how to build a custom-sized template, choose a color palette, and create decorative fringe, layers, pendants, and netting to add the finishing touch. The introductory chapters present the basic beading and assembly techniques, illustrated with clear, digitally rendered, and color-coded drawings. Four-color photographs of each of the 10 designs and 10 detail photos illustrate each project.

Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is one of the most important intertribal political organizations of the modern era. It has played a crucial role in stimulating Native political awareness and activism, providing a forum for debates on vital issues affecting reservations and tribes, overseeing litigation efforts, and organizing lobbying activities in Washington. Prior to the emergence of other intertribal political groups in the 1960s, the NCAI was the primary political instrument for Native lobbying and resistance. It fought against government efforts to terminate the reservation system, worked to create the Indian Claims Commission, protected the rights of Alaska Natives, and secured voting and Social Security rights for Native peoples. The NCAI continues today, as in the past, to steer a moderate political course, bringing together and representing a wide range of Native peoples. The National Congress of American Indians is the first full-length history of the NCAI. Drawing upon newly available NCAI records and oral interviews with founding members, Thomas W. Cowger tells the story of the founding and critical first two decades of this important organization. He presents the many accomplishments of and great challenges to the NCAI, examines its role in the development of Native political activism, and explores its relationships to contemporaneous events such as the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the civil rights movement.

The book provides new information about the period in Andrew Jackson's life when he battled the general in command of the U.S. Army for control of the Gulf Coast. The general was a spy on an enemy payroll. At the beginning of the War of 1812, Jackson led his Tennessee Volunteers down the Mississippi River and Natchez Trace toward the Gulf, only to be tricked by the general into stopping short of his destination. In overcoming the challenges, Jackson led his troops on foot hundreds of miles back to Tennessee and became "Old Hickory" and the man the U.S. would know as "General Jackson."

A groundbreaking study situating the Mississippi River valley at the heart of the early American republic’s political economy Shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, twenty-two-year-old Andrew Jackson pledged his allegiance to the king of Spain. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase, imperial control of the North American continent remained an open question. Spain controlled the Mississippi River, closing it to American trade in 1784, and western men on the make like Jackson had to navigate the overlapping economic and political forces at work with ruthless pragmatism. In Empire of Commerce, Susan Gaunt Stearns takes readers back to a time when there was nothing inevitable about the United States’ untrammeled westward expansion. Her work demonstrates the centrality of trade on and along the Mississippi River to the complex development of the political and economic structures that shaped the nascent American republic. Stearns’s perspective-shifting book reconfigures our understanding of key postrevolutionary moments—the writing of the Constitution, the outbreak of the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Louisiana Purchase—and demonstrates how the transatlantic cotton trade finally set the stage for transforming an imagined west into something real.

During the years of the Early Republic, prominent Native leaders regularly traveled to American cities--Albany, Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, Montreal, Quebec, New York, and New Orleans--primarily on diplomatic or trade business, but also from curiosity and adventurousness. They were frequently referred to as "the Chiefs now in this city" during their visits, which were sometimes for extended periods of time. Indian people spent a lot of time in town. Colin Calloway, National Book Award finalist and one of the foremost chroniclers of Native American history, has gathered together the accounts of these visits and from them created a new narrative of the country's formative years, redefining what has been understood as the "frontier." Calloway's book captures what Native peoples observed as they walked the streets, sat in pews, attended plays, drank in taverns, and slept in hotels and lodging houses. In the Eastern cities they experienced an urban frontier, one in which the Indigenous world met the Atlantic world. Calloway's book reveals not just what Indians saw but how they were seen. Crowds gathered to see them, sometimes to gawk; people attended the theatre to watch "the Chiefs now in this city" watch a play. Their experience enriches and redefines standard narratives of contact between the First Americans and inhabitants of the American Republic, reminding us that Indian people dealt with non-Indians in multiple ways and in multiple places. The story of the country's beginnings was not only one of violent confrontation and betrayal, but one in which the nation's identity was being forged by interaction between and among cultures and traditions.

Ill-Fated Frontier is at once a pioneer adventure and a compelling narrative of the frictions that emerged among entrepreneurial pioneers and their sixty slaves, Indians fighting to preserve their land, and Spanish colonials with their own agenda. Here is a lively and visceral portrait of the wild and enduring American frontier in 1789. The melting pot America would become was barely simmering when an ill-fated attempt to settle land near Natchez in brought together a volatile mix of ambitious Northern pioneers and their slaves, Spanish colonists, and Native Americans who had claimed the land as theirs for hundreds of years. This illuminating episode in American history comes to life in this account of an expedition gone wrong. It began with an optimistic plan to settle and expand in the new territory. It ended ignominiously, with the body of one of the expedition’s leaders returning to New Jersey stored in a pickle barrel. What happened in between—a cautionary tale of greed, incompetence, and hubris—lies at the center of this fascinating account by Harvard historian Samuel A. Forman. Endorsed by New York Times best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick, it is a startling and frank portrait of a young America that examines the dream of an inclusive American experience and its reality—a debate that continues today. Imperious General David Forman, a terror to his Monmouth County, New Jersey, Loyalist neighbors, during the Revolutionary War obtained a large land grant in Natchez, then part of Spanish West Florida. His charge was to establish a plantation that would lure settlers and establish a new American presence. Staying behind in New Jersey David Forman appointed his rotund and gouty older brother Ezekiel as leader of the expedition, his young cousin Samuel S. Forman as its business manager, and a former military aide as overseer of the enslaved African Americans who accompanied them. It did not go well. When the expedition finally reached the new territory it found waiting Spanish colonials who felt the land was theirs and Native Americans who still maintained their sovereignty over the contested lands. When Ezekiel Forman died unexpectedly, David Forman stormed from New Jersey into Natchez to take control of the unraveling situation. He would find on his arrival that those awaiting him had other ideas about who the land actually belonged to. He would return to New Jersey quite dead and pickled in a barrel of rum. Lively, impeccably researched, and rich in details that have escaped the usual tales of American growth and enterprise, Ill-Fated Frontier shines new and entertaining light on what it means to be an American.

"A balanced and readable account of the 1791 battle between St. Clair's US forces and an Indian coalition in the Ohio Valley, one of the most important and under-recognized events of its time"--