Northern Navajo Frontier 1860 1900

Northern Navajo Frontier 1860 1900
Author: Robert Mcpherson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2001-10
Genre: History
ISBN:

The Navajo nation is one of the most frequently researched groups of Indians in North America. Anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and others have taken turns explaining their views of Navajo history and culture. A recurrent theme throughout is that the U.S. government defeated the Navajos so soundly during the early 1860s that after their return from incarceration at Bosque Redondo, they were a badly shattered and submissive people. The next thirty years saw a marked demographic boom during which the Navajo population doubled. Historians disagree as to the extent of this growth, but the position taken by many historians is that because of this growth and the rapidly expanding herds of sheep, cattle, and horses, the government beneficently gave more territory to its suffering wards. While this interpretation is partly accurate, it centers on the role of the government, the legislation that was passed, and the frustrations of the Indian agents who rotated frequently through the Navajo Agency in Fort Defiance, New Mexico, and ignores or severely limits one of the most important actors in this process of land acquisition-the Navajos themselves. Instead of being a downtrodden group of prisoners, defeated militarily in the 1860s and dependent on the U.S. government for protection and guidance in the 1870s and 80s, they were vigorously involved in defending and expanding the borders of their homelands. This was accomplished not through war and as a concerted effort, but by an aggressive defensive policy built on individual action that varied with changing circumstances. Many Navajos never made the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. Instead they eluded capture in northern and western hinterlands and thereby pushed out their frontier. This book focuses on the events and activities in one part of the Navajo borderlands-the northern frontier-where between 1860 and 1900 the Navajos were able to secure a large portion of land that is still part of the reservation. This expansion was achieved during a period when most Native Americans were losing their lands.

The Far Southwest, 1846-1912

The Far Southwest, 1846-1912
Author: Howard Roberts Lamar
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780826322487

A history of the Four Corners states during their formative territorial years. Newly revised edition.

The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890 [3 volumes]

The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890 [3 volumes]
Author: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 1393
Release: 2011-09-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1851096035

This encyclopedia provides a broad, in-depth, and multidisciplinary look at the causes and effects of warfare between whites and Native Americans, encompassing nearly three centuries of history. The Battle of the Wabash: the U.S. Army's single worst defeat at the hands of Native American forces. The Battle of Wounded Knee: an unfortunate, unplanned event that resulted in the deaths of more than 150 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children. These and other engagements between white settlers and Native Americans were events of profound historical significance, resulting in social, political, and cultural changes for both ethnic populations, the lasting effects of which are clearly seen today. The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Political, Social, and Military History provides comprehensive coverage of almost 300 years of North American Indian Wars. Beginning with the first Indian-settler conflicts that arose in the early 1600s, this three-volume work covers all noteworthy battles between whites and Native Americans through the Battle of Wounded Knee in December 1890. The book provides detailed biographies of military, social, religious, and political leaders and covers the social and cultural aspects of the Indian wars. Also supplied are essays on every major tribe, as well as all significant battles, skirmishes, and treaties.

Navajo Land, Navajo Culture

Navajo Land, Navajo Culture
Author: Robert S. McPherson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780806134109

In Navajo Land, Navajo Culture, Robert S. McPherson presents an intimate history of the Diné, or Navajo people, of southeastern Utah. Moving beyond standard history by incorporating Native voices, the author shows how the Dine's culture and economy have both persisted and changed during the twentieth century. As the dominant white culture increasingly affected their worldview, these Navajos adjusted to change, took what they perceived as beneficial, and shaped or filtered outside influences to preserve traditional values. With guidance from Navajo elders, McPherson describes varied experiences ranging from traditional deer hunting to livestock reduction, from bartering at a trading post to acting in John Ford movies, and from the coming of the automobile to the burgeoning of the tourist industry. Clearly written and richly detailed, this book offers new perspectives on a people who have adapted to new conditions while shaping their own destiny.

A Diné History of Navajoland

A Diné History of Navajoland
Author: Klara Kelley
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816538743

For the first time, a sweeping history of the Diné that is foregrounded in oral tradition. Authors Klara Kelley and Harris Francis share Diné history from pre-Columbian time to the present, using ethnographic interviews in which Navajo people reveal their oral histories on key events such as Athabaskan migrations, trading and trails, Diné clans, the Long Walk of 1864, and the struggle to keep their culture alive under colonizers who brought the railroad, coal mining, trading posts, and, finally, climate change. The early chapters, based on ceremonial origin stories, tell about Diné forebears. Next come the histories of Diné clans from late pre-Columbian to early post-Columbian times, and the coming together of the Diné as a sovereign people. Later chapters are based on histories of families, individuals, and communities, and tell how the Diné have struggled to keep their bond with the land under settler encroachment, relocation, loss of land-based self-sufficiency through the trading-post system, energy resource extraction, and climate change. Archaeological and documentary information supplements the oral histories, providing a comprehensive investigation of Navajo history and offering new insights into their twentieth-century relationships with Hispanic and Anglo settlers. For Diné readers, the book offers empowering histories and stories of Diné cultural sovereignty. “In short,” the authors say, “it may help you to know how you came to be where—and who—you are.”

Native Diasporas

Native Diasporas
Author: Gregory D. Smithers
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 604
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0803255306

The arrival of European settlers in the Americas disrupted indigenous lifeways, and the effects of colonialism shattered Native communities. Forced migration and human trafficking created a diaspora of cultures, languages, and people. Gregory D. Smithers and Brooke N. Newman have gathered the work of leading scholars, including Bill Anthes, Duane Champagne, Daniel Cobb, Donald Fixico, and Joy Porter, among others, in examining an expansive range of Native peoples and the extent of their influences through reaggregation. These diverse and wide-ranging essays uncover indigenous understandings of self-identification, community, and culture through the speeches, cultural products, intimate relations, and political and legal practices of Native peoples. "Native Diasporas" explores how indigenous peoples forged a sense of identity and community amid the changes wrought by European colonialism in the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the mainland Americas from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. Broad in scope and groundbreaking in the topics it explores, this volume presents fresh insights from scholars devoted to understanding Native American identity in meaningful and methodologically innovative ways.

River Flowing From The Sunrise

River Flowing From The Sunrise
Author: James M Aton
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2000-12-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0874213975

The authors recount twelve millennia of history along the lower San Juan River, much of it the story of mostly unsuccessful human attempts to make a living from the river's arid and fickle environment. From the Anasazi to government dam builders, from Navajo to Mormon herders and farmers, from scientific explorers to busted miners, the San Juan has attracted more attention and fueled more hopes than such a remote, unpromising, and muddy stream would seem to merit.

Alien Visions

Alien Visions
Author: Margaret Ziolkowski
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780874139266

There are many parallels and some revealing differences in the encounter between, on the one hand, the Americans and various Indian tribes and, on the other, the Russians and some of the peoples of the Caucasus and Siberia. The enduring cultural consequences of these encounters provide a fruitful area of inquiry for the comparative examination of national images in literatures. The major focus on this study is the perceptions and literary portrayal of the Chechens by the Russians and the Navajos by the Americans. Both the Chechen in Russian literature and the Navajo in American literature are often constructs, images derived from a potent combination of prejudices and received assumptions. In each case a relatively sizable corpus of writings produced over a century or longer exemplifies or attempts to counter persistent and influential modes of cultural stereotyping. The diachronic analysis of the portrayal of either the Chechens or the Navajos illuminates patterns of prejudice that have immense implications for both popular and high culture. The juxtaposition of the discussion of the two groups as they have been treated in Russian and American literature can deepen our understanding of the commonalities present in attempted cultural domination or ethnic idealization. Margaret Ziolkowski is Professor of Russian at Miami University, Ohio.

Captives and Cousins

Captives and Cousins
Author: James F. Brooks
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2011-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807899887

This sweeping, richly evocative study examines the origins and legacies of a flourishing captive exchange economy within and among native American and Euramerican communities throughout the Southwest Borderlands from the Spanish colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century. Indigenous and colonial traditions of capture, servitude, and kinship met and meshed in the borderlands, forming a "slave system" in which victims symbolized social wealth, performed services for their masters, and produced material goods under the threat of violence. Slave and livestock raiding and trading among Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, Navajos, Utes, and Spaniards provided labor resources, redistributed wealth, and fostered kin connections that integrated disparate and antagonistic groups even as these practices renewed cycles of violence and warfare. Always attentive to the corrosive effects of the "slave trade" on Indian and colonial societies, the book also explores slavery's centrality in intercultural trade, alliances, and "communities of interest" among groups often antagonistic to Spanish, Mexican, and American modernizing strategies. The extension of the moral and military campaigns of the American Civil War to the Southwest in a regional "war against slavery" brought differing forms of social stability but cost local communities much of their economic vitality and cultural flexibility.