Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier

Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier
Author: John N. Mack
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-01-07
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0786470291

As the Civil War ended, thousands of Union veterans imagined Kansas as a place to make a new beginning. Many veterans settled in the southeastern part of the state. In their struggle to establish lawful, ordered communities the settlers came into conflict with railroads intent on building through southeast Kansas to reach warm-water ports in Texas. To the settlers the railroads represented both a promise and a threat. By linking farmers and businessmen with eastern markets, the railroads guaranteed the prospects of economic gain. However, when they claimed rights to the land that settlers had already claimed, railroad monopolies were identified as a new manifestation of the same threat to republican values they had fought against in the recently concluded War. This book tells the story of the settlers' opposition to and victory over railroads and the impact on the evolution of political thought in Kansas and the American west.

The Ioway Indians

The Ioway Indians
Author: Martha Royce Blaine
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806127286

This account is the first extensive ethnohistory of the Ioway Indians, whose influence - out of all proportion to their numbers - stemmed partly from the strategic location of their homeland between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Beginning with archaeological sites in northeast Iowa, Martha Royce Blaine traces Ioway history from ancient to modern times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French, Spanish, and English traders vied for the tribe's favor and for permission to cross their lands. The Ioways fought in the French and Indian War in New York, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, but ultimately their influence waned as they slowly lost control of their sovereignty and territory. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ioways were separated in reservations in Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory. A new preface by the author carries the story to modern times and discusses the present status of and issues concerning the Oklahoma and the Kansas and Nebraska Ioways.

Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride

Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride
Author: Michael Wallis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2008-03-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393075435

"This might be the best Billy the Kid book to date." —Fritz Thompson, Albuquerque Journal In this revisionist biography, award-winning historian Michael Wallis re-creates the rich anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859–1881), a young man who became a legend in his time and remains an enigma to this day. In an extraordinary evocation of the legendary Old West, Wallis demonstrates why the Kid has remained one of our most popular folk heroes. Filled with dozens of rare images and period photographs, Billy the Kid separates myth from reality and presents an unforgettable portrait of this brief and violent life.

The Kansa Indians

The Kansa Indians
Author: William E. Unrau
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1986-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806119656

After their first contacts with whites in the seventeenth century, the Kansa Indians began migrating from the eastern United States to what is now eastern Kansas, by way of the Missouri Valley. Settling in villages mostly along the Kansas River, they led a semi-sedentary life, raising corn and a few vegetables and hunting buffalo in the spring and fall. It was an idyllic existence-until bad, and then worse, things began to happen. William E. Unrau tells how the Kansa Indians were reduced from a proud people with a strong cultural heritage to a remnant forced against their will to take up the whites' ways. He gives a balanced but hard-hitting account of an important and tragic chapter in American history.

Monthly Checklist of State Publications

Monthly Checklist of State Publications
Author: Library of Congress. Exchange and Gift Division
Publisher:
Total Pages: 618
Release: 1926
Genre: State government publications
ISBN:

June and Dec. issues contain listings of periodicals.

The Burial Complexes of the Knight and Norton Mounds in Illinois and Michigan

The Burial Complexes of the Knight and Norton Mounds in Illinois and Michigan
Author: James B. Griffin
Publisher: U OF M MUSEUM ANTHRO ARCHAEOLOGY
Total Pages: 397
Release: 1970-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0932206646

In this volume, the authors collect data from various sources on the excavations of two groups of prehistoric burial mounds: the Knight Mound Group in Calhoun County, Illinois, and the Norton Mound Group in Kent County, Michigan. Includes more than 200 b&w maps, illustrations, and photographs.

The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes

The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes
Author: Stan Hoig
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1990-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806122625

A Plains tribe that subsisted on the buffalo, the Cheyennes depended for survival on the valor and skill of their braves in the hunt and in battle. The fiery spirit of the young warriors was balanced by the calm wisdom of the tribal headmen, the peace chiefs, who met yearly as the Council of the Forty-four. "A Cheyenne chief was required to be a man of peace, to be brave, and to be of generous heart," writes Stan Hoig. "Of these qualities the first was unconditionally the most important, for upon it rested the moral restraint required for the warlike Cheyenne Nation." As the Cheyennes began to feel the westward crush of white civilization in the nineteenth century, a great burden fell to the peace chiefs. Reconciliation with the whites was the tribe's only hope for survival, and the chiefs were the buffers between their own warriors and the United States military, who were out to "win the West." The chiefs found themselves struggling to maintain the integrity of their people-struggling against overwhelming military forces, against disease, against the debauchery brought by "firewater," and against the irreversible decline of their source of livelihood, the buffalo. They were trapped by history in a nearly impossible position. Their story is a heroic epic and, oftentimes, a tragedy. No single book has dealt as intensively as this one with the institution of the peace chiefs. The author has gleaned significant material from all available published sources and from contemporary newspapers. A generous selection of photographs and extensive quotations from ninteteenth-century observers add to the authenticity of the text. Following a brief analysis of the Sweet Medicine legend and its relation to the Council of the Forty-four, the more prominent nineteenth-century chiefs are treated individually in a lucid, felicitous style that will appeal to both students and lay readers of Indian history. As adopted Cheyenne chief Boyce D. Timmons says in his preface to this volume, "Great wisdom, intellect, and love are expressed by the remarkable Cheyenne chiefs, and if you enter their tipi with an open heart and mind, you might have some understanding of the great 'Circle of Life.'"

The Status of World History Instruction in American Secondary Schools

The Status of World History Instruction in American Secondary Schools
Author: William E. Pulliam
Publisher:
Total Pages: 108
Release: 1972
Genre: History
ISBN:

The one-year course in world history, popular in some quarters, does not seem to have made much headway. High school level courses on world-history are one of the many responses to the World Wars, yet said courses have never been recommended by a committee of national scope on which there were any historians. Opinion surveys among teachers and students indicate that no other part of the typical social studies program is more criticized than the tenth grade level one year elective world history course. These courses are increasing in number, textbooks are multiplying, and a few interesting experiments are being worked out--yet there is no general agreement on organization, scope, objectives, teaching strategies, or assessment in these courses. This document is a summary of historical and recent surveys on curricular trends in social studies with regard to world history, to help educators assess what impact they may have on the teaching of world history in the 1970s.

The Civil War and the West

The Civil War and the West
Author: Carol L. Higham
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN:

Between 1800 and the Civil War, the American West evolved from a region to territories to states. This book depicts the development of the antebellum West from the perspective of a resident of the Western frontier. What happened in the West in the lead-up to and during the American Civil War? The Civil War and the West: The Frontier Transformed provides a clear and complete answer to this question. The work succinctly overviews the West during the antebellum period from 1800 to 1862, supplying thematic chapters that explain how key elements and characteristics of the West created conflict and division that differed from those in the East during the Civil War. It looks at how these issues influenced the military, settlement, and internal territorial conflicts about statehood in each region, and treats the Cherokee and other Indian nations as important actors in the development of a national narrative.

Peopling the Plains

Peopling the Plains
Author: James R. Shortridge
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN:

This engaging and richly annotated atlas illustrates the distribution of Kansas settlers from diverse cultural and ethnic origins in America and around the world. James R. Shortridge explores how frontier settlement patterns were influenced by railroad routes and promotion; land prices and speculation practices; homesteading laws; U.S. and international social, economic, and political conditions; terrain; weather; and pioneer perseverance. He also demonstrates that many legacies of the original settlers have endured and are apparent today in social, political, agricultural, and religious customs throughout the state. Providing new and enlightening insight into a unique cultural heritage, Peopling the Plains is an invaluable building block for anyone interested in the people and places of Kansas, past and present.