Bøger udgivet af University of Oklahoma Press

Forming the most important river corridor in the trans-Mississippi West, the Missouri and its navigable tributaries were instrumental in opening the continent-but it took the steamboat to make that possible. The flat-bottomed vessel was the technological marvel of its day and provided access to the West before the railroads' arrival, encouraging settlement and fueling economic growth for decades.The complete and colorful saga of steamboating on the Missouri River is recounted, from its 1819 inception to the removal of the last commercial steamer in 1935. William E. Lass has crafted an engagingly written account that provides a panorama of transportation into and through the West-a story of the fur trade, of Indian relations, and of Euro-American settlement and development.Navigating the Missouri tells of migration and commerce on the Santa Fe Trail, the Platte River Road, and routes to the Montana gold mines. It explores the economic and political milieu of steamboating while savoring the rich social history of life on the Missouri, including the boat captains, who were the heroes of the river. Here too are insights into the operation of the steamboats, and Lass explains how the steamboat companies evolved, exploiting new opportunities and adjusting to change.Because steamboating touched so many dimensions of western expansion, Navigating the Missouri is an essential resource-a cornerstone study that complements nearly every other history of the American West.

Shortly after Custer's defeat in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Colonel Nelson A. Miles and his Fifth Infantry launched several significant campaigns to destroy the Lakota-Northern Cheyenne coalition in the Yellowstone River basin. Miles's expeditions involved relentless pursuit and attack throughout the winter months, culminating in the Lame Deer Fight of May 1877, the last major engagement of the Great Sioux War.Yellowstone Command is the first detailed account of the harrowing 1876-1877 campaigns. Drawing from Indian testimonies and many previously untapped sources, Jerome A. Greene reconstructs the ambitious battles of Colonel Miles and his foot soldiers. This paperback edition of Yellowstone Command features a new preface by the author.

South Texas and northern Mexico formed a seedbed of revolt in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, two decades after he had launched his own successful revolution from South Texas, Mexican president Porfirio Díaz faced a cross-border insurgency intent on toppling his government. The Garza War, so named for the revolutionary firebrand and editor Catarino Erasmo Garza, actually comprised three concerted Texas-based attempts to overthrow Díaz: a June 1890 raid led by Francisco Ruiz Sandoval, the Garza Raid of September 1891, and the San Ignacio Raid of December 1892. In the first detailed military history of the Garza War, Thomas Ty Smith reveals how an armed insurrection against a foreign government, conducted on American soil, drew the US Army into a uniquely complex conflict whose repercussions would be felt on both sides of the US-Mexico border for generations to come.Though not intended as a direct threat to the US, by using Texas as a staging area, the insurgency threatened US neutrality laws, forcing the US to honor its treaty obligations to the Porfirio Díaz government in Mexico City-a proposition further complicated by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevented soldiers from acting as law enforcement. Smith describes how what began as a measured and somewhat limited effort by the United States to enforce the Neutrality Act in Texas eventually escalated into an all-out shooting war between the army and the Garzistas, elevating the counterinsurgency campaign into the highest military, diplomatic, and political echelons of both America and Mexico.The Garza War in South Texas profiles central characters in the conflict-such as Captain John Gregory Bourke, famed for his service with Major General George Crook in the Indian Wars; the biracial, bilingual Shely brothers, former Texas Rangers who ran the army's secret spy network; and Francisco Benavides, aka El Tuerto (One-Eye), leader of the 1892 raid that resulted in the brutal slaughter and burning of a Mexican federal cavalry outpost across the river from San Ygnacio, Texas. These revolutionaries provided a cornerstone ideology, and a historic legacy, for the Mexican Revolution two decades later.

Alex Haley Memorial Award, The Tennessean¿Susan Ford Wiltshire traces the evolution of the doctrine of individual rights from antiquity through the eighteenth century. The common thread through that long story is the theory of natural law. Growing out of Greek political thought, especially that of Aristotle, natural law became a major tenet of Stoic philosophy during the Hellenistic age and later became attached to Roman legal doctrine. It underwent several transformations during the Middle Ages on the Continent and in England, especially in the thought of John Locke, before it came to justify a theory of natural right, claimed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as the basis of the "unalienable rights" of Americans.

For the Seneca Iroquois Indians, song is a crucial means of renewing both medicine and heritage. Two or three times a year, the Little Water Medicine Society of western New York meets to renew the potency of its medicine bundles through singing. These bundles have been inherited from eighteenth century Iroquois war parties, handed down from generation to generation. In this long-awaited book, William N. Fenton describes the remarkable ceremonies of one of the least recorded but most significant medicine societies of the Iroquois Indians.Most of the Senecas who were members of the Little Water Society, or Society of Shamans, have passed away, and their knowledge of ceremonial healing and spiritual renewal is fading. Fenton has written this book to preserve knowledge of the ceremonies and songs for the Iroquois people and as a contribution to anthropology, folklore, ethnomusicology, and American Indian studies. In The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas, he presents his original 1933 fieldwork, along with details from the published and unpublished works of other researchers, to describe rituals, poetry, and songs drawn from his more than six decades of research among the Six Nations.

The only religious unit in American military history. The Mormon battalion was unique in federal service, having been recruited solely from one religious body and having a religious title as the unit designation. Serving in the Mexican War, they marched across the Southwest to California. Strangely, though, the battalion's story has not been told from the perspective of the profession of arms. Since it did not engage in battle, military historians have paid little attention to it.Military aspects of the battalion overlooked. The military aspects of this unique battalion usually been ignored. The most common portrayal of the unit has been to treat it as a group of pioneers, rather than soldiers--emigrants who followed a unique path during the Mormon hegira to the Great Basin.A unique military unit. This volunteer unit of five companies was unique in many ways beyond its pioneer experience. Led by regular officers, including Philip St. George Cooke, it served as part of General Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West, invading and occupying what would become New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Formed in July 1846 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the battalion marched to California, where it was discharged from federal service in July 1847, after exactly one year's service. In the process, it did not experience combat, but made one of the most incredible and challenging marches in American military history.The great march across the Southwest. The story of that grueling march across wide prairies, mountains, and deserts is central to the battalion's story. It symbolizes the very essence of the Mormon drama as a frontier epic, and proves more than anything else the men's loyalty, stamina, and sacrifice. In telling that tale, the author also illuminates the battalion's place in the U.S.-Mexican War, as most accounts of its history have ignored its role in the greater campaign.First-hand accounts bring detail and immediacy to the story. More than eighty diaries, journals, memoirs, and typed manuscript copies prepared by battalion members were accessed by the author in the preparation of this work.The journal of Dr. Sanderson: Dr. George B. Sanderson was known in Mormon legend as "Dr. Death," and was feared and loathed by many in the battalion. In the spring of 2003, the Mormon Battalion legacy was greatly enhanced by the discovery of his journal, while serving as a volunteer assistant surgeon assigned to the battalion. This journal, extensively quoted in the book, provides a window to the soul of one of the two most hated characters of the battalion. It joins the other great accounts of Daniel Tyler, Levi Hancock, Henry Standage, William Coray, and others.Maps and illustrations enhance the work. The two appendixes included contain the Army Pay Scale, 1846, and the Mormon Battalion Command and Staff. A thorough bibliography and index complete the book, and add to its value. The book includes a chronology, historical introduction, footnotes, two appendixes, bibliography and index.With thirteen illustrations and three maps.

One of early-twentieth-century America's most fertile grounds for political radicalism, the Pacific Northwest produced some of the most dedicated and successful socialists the country has ever seen. As a radicalized labor force emerged in mining, logging, and other extractive industries, socialists employed intensive organizational and logistical skills to become an almost permanent third party that won elections and shook the confidence of establishment rivals. At the height of Socialist Party influence just before World War I, a Montana member declared, "They are all red out here."In this first book to fully examine the development of the American Socialist Party in the Northwest, Jeffrey A. Johnson draws a sharp picture of one of the most vigorous left-wing organizations of this era. Relying on party newspapers, pamphlets, and correspondence, he allows socialists to reveal their own strategies as they pursued their agendas in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. And he explores how the party gained sizable support in Butte, Spokane, and other cities seldom associated today with left-wing radicalism."They Are All Red Out Here" employs recent approaches to labor history by restoring rank-and-file workers and party organizers as active participants in shaping local history. The book marks a major contribution to the ongoing debate over why socialism never grew deep roots in American soil and no longer thrives here. It is a work of political and labor history that uncovers alternative social and political visions in the American West.

Like some mysterious Paladin, Harry Love seemed to suddenly appear on the California landscape at a time when he was particularly needed. As captain of the California Rangers, Love pursued Joaquin Murrieta and his bandits, and the outlaw was captured and killed. Then, his job done, he again faded into obscurity. Where did he come from? What was his life before, and after, the Murrieta affair?From Texas to California, this enigmatic and shadowy figure has been a figure of myth. Those who wrote of Murrieta, including John Rollin Ridge, knew little about Love. He has been fair game for those who sought to sensationalize his career, or create it out of whole cloth.For the first time the story of Harry Love is now told. Based upon years of research, digging deep into archives and contemporaneous accounts, tracking down obscure legends and lore, California historian Bill Secrest recounts with vitality and long-needed honesty the tale of Love, Murrieta, and the world in which they lived. As an army courier and express rider in Texas, Mexico, and New Mexico during and after the Mexican War, Love was a popular and well-known figure. His 1850 exploration of the Rio Grande and its possibilities for navigation were important and covered in newspapers throughout the U.S. and Mexico.First visiting California by sea in 1839, Love returned in 1850 during the Gold Rush. A vivid picture of the lawlessness of the land and the animosity between Mexicans and Americans is drawn by the author, highlighting the events in which Murrieta and his associates were involved. A detailed history of the Rangers and the bandits they pursued is given.Murrieta looms large in this tale. Without Murrieta, there would not have been a Harry Love as we know him. It was both the high point and the turning point of his life. Thus this biography includes a complete account of California's most famous outlaw, who met his fate in 1853 at the hands of Love and his Rangers.Following the killing of Murrieta, Love settled near Santa Cruz. As a pioneer sawmill operator and farmer, his life became more prosaic. His marriage floundered, his mill was destroyed, his plans came to naught. But the account of his years in the mountains above Santa Cruz offers a unique glimpse into pioneer life after the Gold Rush.

One January day in 1923, a young boy came across the dead body of a twenty-year-old woman on a San Diego beach. When the police arrived on the scene, they found the woman's calling card, which read simply, "I am Fritzie Mann." Yet Fritzie's identity, as revealed in this compelling history, was anything but simple, and her death-eventually ruled a homicide-captured public attention for months. In Fritzie, historian Amy Absher reveals how broader cultural forces, including gendered violence, sexual liberation, and evolving urban conditions in the American West, shaped the course of Mann's life and contributed to her tragic death.Frieda "Fritizie" Mann had several identities during her brief life, and the mysterious circumstances of her death raise as many questions as they do answers. She was born in 1903 near the present border between Poland and Ukraine. She and her family were Jewish immigrants who traveled to San Diego to find security and prosperity.In the last year of her life, Mann became locally famous. She had reinvented herself as a flapper and "Oriental" dancer. She claimed to have friends in Hollywood and a movie contract. On the night of her murder, she said she was going to a party to meet her Hollywood friends; instead she traveled to an isolated roadside hotel where she met her death. An autopsy revealed that she was four and a half months pregnant.Absher guides the reader through the intricacies of this true crime story as it unfolded, from the initial flawed investigation to the sensationalized press coverage and the ultimate failure of the legal system to ensure justice on Mann's behalf. Like other "new women" of her era, Fritzie Mann adopted roles that promised liberation from the control of men. In the end, her life and early death suggest the opposite: she became the victim of a culture that consumed women even as it purported to celebrate them.

The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on to persevere through centuries of change? In this engaging narrative, acclaimed historian R. David Edmunds combines careful research with creative storytelling to give voice to indigenous individuals and families and to illustrate the impact of pivotal events on their lives. A nonfiction account accompanies each narrative to provide necessary historical and cultural context.Voices in the Drum features nine stories, each of which focuses on a fictional character who is a composite, or representation, of historical people. This series of portrayals takes the reader on an epic journey through time, beginning in the early 1400s with the Mound Builder cultures and ending with the modern-day urbanization of Native people. Along the way, we observe fictional characters interacting with real historical figures, such as Anthony Wayne, Tecumseh, and John Sutter, and taking part in actual events, such as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the Trail of Tears, the California gold rush, and the forced removal of Native children to off-reservation boarding schools.The people portrayed in these pages belong to various tribes, including Potawatomis, Lakotas, Oneidas, and Cherokees. Their individual stories, ranging from humorous to tragic, give readers a palpable sense of how tribal peoples reacted to the disruptive changes forced on them by European colonizers and U.S. government policies.Both entertaining and insightful, the stories in this volume traverse a range of time periods, events, themes, and genres. As such, they reverberate like voices in the drum, inviting readers of all backgrounds to engage anew with the rich history and cultures of indigenous peoples.

"Narrates the social and environmental history of Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park with a focus on climbing and hiking the summit. It offers a greater historical understanding to help mitigate and overcome the harms to this natural treasure"--

This is the story of the antebellum frontier in Texas, from the Red River to El Paso, a raw and primitive country punctuated by chaos, lawlessness, and violence. During this time, the federal government and the State of Texas often worked at cross-purposes, their confused and contradictory policies leaving settlers on their own to deal with vigilantes, lynchings, raiding American Indians, and Anglo-American outlaws. Before the Civil War, the Texas frontier was a sectional transition zone where southern ideology clashed with western perspectives and where diverse cultures with differing worldviews collided.This is also the tale of the Butterfield Overland Mail, which carried passengers and mail west from St. Louis to San Francisco through Texas. While it operated, the transcontinental mail line intersected and influenced much of the region's frontier history. Through meticulous research, including visits to all the sites he describes, Glen Sample Ely uncovers the fascinating story of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas.Until the U.S. Army and Butterfield built West Texas's infrastructure, the region's primitive transportation network hampered its development. As Ely shows, the Overland Mail Company and the army jump-started growth, serving together as both the economic engine and the advance agent for European American settlement. Used by soldiers, emigrants, freighters, and stagecoaches, the Overland Mail Road was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the modern interstate highway system, stimulating passenger traffic, commercial freighting, and business.Although most of the action takes place within the Lone Star State, this is in many respects an American tale. The same concerns that challenged frontier residents confronted citizens across the country. Written in an engaging style that transports readers to the rowdy frontier and the bustle of the overland road, The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail offers a rare view of Texas's antebellum past.

The Great Basin, a stark and beautiful desert filled with sagebrush deserts and mountain ranges, is the epicenter for public lands conflicts. Arising out of the multiple, often incompatible uses created throughout the twentieth century, these struggles reveal the tension inherent within the multiple use concept, a management philosophy that promises equitable access to the region's resources and economic gain to those who live there.Multiple use was originally conceived as a way to legitimize the historical use of public lands for grazing without precluding future uses, such as outdoor recreation, weapons development, and wildlife management. It was applied to the Great Basin to bring the region, once seen as worthless, into the national economic fold. Land managers, ranchers, mining interests, wilderness and wildlife advocates, outdoor recreationists, and even the military adopted this ideology to accommodate, promote, and sanction a multitude of activities on public lands, particularly those overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Some of these uses are locally driven and others are nationally mandated, but all have exacted a cost from the region's human and natural environment.In The Size of the Risk, Leisl Carr Childers shows how different constituencies worked to fill the presumed "empty space" of the Great Basin with a variety of land-use regimes that overlapped, conflicted, and ultimately harmed the environment and the people who depended on the region for their livelihoods. She looks at the conflicts that arose from the intersection of an ever-increasing number of activities, such as nuclear testing and wild horse preservation, and how Great Basin residents have navigated these conflicts.Carr Childers's study of multiple use in the Great Basin highlights the complex interplay between the state, society, and the environment, allowing us to better understand the ongoing reality of living in the American West.

Col. George Wright's campaign against the Yakima, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Palouse, and other Indian peoples of eastern Washington Territory was intended to punish them for a recent attack on another U.S. Army force. Wright had once appeared to respect the Indians of the Upper Columbia Plateau, but in 1858 he led a brief war noted for its violence, bloodshed, and summary trials and executions. Today, many critics view his actions as war crimes, but among white settlers and politicians of the time, Wright was a patriotic hero who helped open the Inland Northwest to settlement. "Hang Them All" offers a comprehensive account of Wright's campaigns and explores the controversy surrounding his legacy.Over thirty days, Wright's forces defeated a confederation of Plateau warriors in two battles, destroyed their food supplies, slaughtered animals, burned villages, took hostages, and ordered the hanging of sixteen prisoners. Seeking the reasons for Wright's turn toward mercilessness, Cutler asks hard questions: If Wright believed he was limiting further bloodshed, why were his executions so gruesomely theatrical and cruel? How did he justify destroying food supplies and villages and killing hundreds of horses? Was Wright more violent than his contemporaries, or did his actions reflect a broader policy of taking Indian lands and destroying Native cultures?Stripped of most of their territory, the Plateau tribes nonetheless survived and preserved their cultures. With Wright's reputation called into doubt, some northwesterners question whether an army fort and other places in the region should be named for him. Do historically based names honor an undeserving murderer, or prompt a valuable history lesson? In examining contemporary and present-day treatments of Wright and the incident, "Hang Them All" adds an important, informed voice to this continuing debate.

""Documents the triumphs and missteps of the singer's fledgling record company, Rising Son Records, and traces the chronology of Guthrie's mid- to-late career. Also examines Guthrie's role in preserving and shaping his father's contributions to American culture and his long-lasting partnership with Pete Seeger"-Provided by publisher"--

Today, Peru is rightly recognized as the number one food destination on the planet. But twenty-five years ago, the world's culinary critics were focusing their attention elsewhere. Fortunately, wine merchant-turned-archaeologist and art historian Robert C. Bradley was in Peru. This delightful book is the product of twenty-five years of exquisite digressions from what Bradley might call his "real job"-the culmination of decades of personal discoveries about the food of Peru and the history that led to its current culinary florescence.Bradley's book is a tour of the most delicious facts and foods revealed to him while he traveled Peru, with several recipes thrown in for good measure. Journeying from coasts to highlands and back, the intrepid author introduces us to the most interesting aspects of Peruvian cuisine that he encounters along the way: How the tomato got to Italy. Why Tabasco sauce is misnamed. What the superfoods of Peru are. Where the potato rose and fell. And of course, when coca leaves gave real meaning to Coca-Cola's "pause that refreshes." Bradley sizzles about Peruvian ceviche, pisco and the pisco sour, and the country's best restaurants, all the while sampling food lore, Andean anthropology, history, linguistics, and the pleasures and perils of travel. He makes a knowledgeable, congenial guide, and his book, a generous companion.For the armchair tourist or the actual traveler, the gourmet and the gourmand, and the merely curious, Eating Peru offers a welcome break from everyday fare, and a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to a taste of Peru.

Non-Indians have amassed extensive records of Shawnee leaders dating back to the era between the French and Indian War and the War of 1812. But academia has largely ignored the stories of these leaders' descendants-including accounts from the Shawnees' own perspectives. The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma focuses on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century experiences of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, presenting a new brand of tribal history made possible by the emergence of tribal communities' own research centers and the resources afforded by the digital age.Offering various perspectives on the history of the Eastern Shawnees, this volume combines essays by leading and emerging scholars of Shawnee history with contributions by Eastern Shawnee citizens and interviews with tribal elders. Editor Stephen Warren introduces the collection, acknowledging that the questions and concerns of colonizers have dominated the themes of American Indian history for far too long. The essays that follow introduce readers to the story of the Eastern Shawnees and consider treaties with the U.S. government, laws impacting the tribe, and tribal leadership. They analyze the Eastern Shawnees' ways of telling the tribe's stories, detail Shawnee experiences of federal boarding schools, and recount stories of their chiefs. The book concludes with five tribal members' life histories, told in their own words.The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma is the culmination of years of collaboration between tribal citizens and Native as well as non-Native scholars. Providing a fuller, more nuanced, and more complete portrayal of Native American historical experiences, this book serves as a resource for both future scholars and tribal members to reconstruct the Eastern Shawnee past and thereby better understand the present.This book was made possible through generous funding from the Administration for Native Americans.