In August 1676 Nathaniel Bacon brought his campaign to "ruin and extirpate all Indians in general" to the Green Dragon Swamp on the upper Pamunkey River. While there, he attacked and massacred nearly fifty Pamunkey Indians, who had been at peace with the government of Virginia for thirty years. Having once formed the backbone of the…

Americans in the East were great fans of Black Hawk, whose popularity on tour overtook that of Andrew Jackson's parallel tour of the Northeast. Undoubtedly, then, Black Hawk was a celebrity. He remained popular even in 1837, when he attended Catlin's gallery opening in New York, which included his 1832 painting of Black Hawk. Black Hawk may also…

In the early 1940s Dakota anthropologist Ella Deloria began talking to her mentor, feminist anthropologist Ruth Benedict, about the possibility of transforming her ethnographic research into a novel that would bring Plains Indian culture to life for the American reading public. In writing Waterlily, a historical novel that documented early…

American Indian ethnographer and linguist Ella Cara Deloria and African American folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston did fieldwork for Franz Boas, the father of modern anthropology. Both were shocked by how American racism empowered white people's historical actions. By correcting stereotypes through their work, they reasserted the role of…