On Christmas Day 1975, Marcia Marie Summers was born to Charlene Summers, a member and resident of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota. A few months later, a white couple from Indiana approached the young mother and offered to care for her infant while Summers attended school. Summers realized that the couple intended to permanently…

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…

What is the value or perceived necessity--for an Indian or for a white man--of changing Northern Cheyenne history? How are a reader's conclusions affected by her perception of the race of the person altering that history? Why is it acceptable to sell but not tell American Indian history? An examination of the visual and discursive rhetoric of "The…

This article examines the ways American Indian authors, particularly three contemporary Anishinaabeg writers, engaged with the question of Native American origins during the racially polarized project of "imagining" the nation of the United States throughout the 19th century. In this article, the author argues that American Indian…

The Ozark Mountains occupy a large area within the state boundaries of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and northeastern Oklahoma as well as the southeastern-most tip of Kansas. Missouri and Arkansas make up the bulk of the Ozarks, while Oklahoma and Kansas straddle their outer rim. From 1800 to 1865 the Ozarks region was in constant flux, as…

The term "first contact" usually conjures up an image of a group of European soldiers landing on a beach in the New World, their ship anchored just offshore, while a large group of Natives approaches the soldiers. On both sides there is caution but also curiosity. Beyond the physical collision of two different peoples there is also a…

One of the most colorful examples of the reflection of identities in heritage sites involves the historical U.S.-Native relationship. In exploring the topic of U.S.-Native memories, this article focuses on the cultural identities represented at the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park (HBNMP), a heritage site that commemorates the Creek War of…

It is a point well documented in American history, and well remembered, that the firearm has been a favorite tool wielded by Euroamericans to subdue, colonize, and silence Native Americans since the two groups first met. Anyone exercising a modicum of intellect can easily compile their own mental count of past atrocities by racist-minded,…