In a Barren Land: The American Indian Quest for Cultural Survival, 1607 to the Present

$17.99

ISBN: 9780688166335
Dewey: 973.0497
LCC Number: E98.L3
Author: Paula Mitchell Marks
Illustrator:
Pages: 496
Age Group:

With In a Barren Land, award-winning historian Paula Mitchell Marks reconfirms her status as one of the foremost contemporary chronicles of America and the American West. Following her And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight (“should come to be regarded as definitive” — Booklist) and Precious Dust (“far and away our best social history of the gold rush experience” — The Washington Post Book World), she now tells the often appalling yet always engrossing story of American Indian cultures under siege from 1607 to the present.

Marks dramatically illustrates how, across the nation over the course of nearly four centuries, America’s original inhabitants were stripped of both their land and their way of life by a series of broken promises and bloody persecutions. Here are such well-known events as the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Trail of Tears, and the massacre at Wounded Knee. And here, too, are such equally well-known personalities as Chief Joseph, Geronimo, Cochise, and Andrew Jackson, a president whose perfidies to the Indians still retain the power to shock and dismay.

In a Barren Land is an enduring contribution to the endlessly fascinating and controversial story of the settling of America.

Description

Marks dramatically illustrates how, across the nation and over the course of nearly four centuries, America’s original inhabitants were stripped of both their land and their way of life by a series of broken promises and bloody persecutions. Here, of course, are such well-known events as the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Trail of Tears, and the massacre at Wounded Knee. And here, too, are such equally well-known personalities as Chief Joseph, Geronimo, Cochise, and Andrew Jackson, a president whose perfidies to the Indians still retain the power to shock and dismay. But also recounted are such comparable but less famous episodes as the Navajos’ Long Walk of removal from their homelands in the last half of the nineteenth century, the fervent Snake Indian resistance to the allotting of Indian lands early in this century, and the disastrous effects of government dam projects on Indian communities in the 1950s, as well as a discussion of the benefits and draw-backs of legalized gambling on Indian reservations in the past decade. Among the forgotten figures the book brings to life are William McIntosh, who sold the land out from under his fellow Creeks and was subsequently executed by them; John Ross, who led the Cherokee nation throughout its removal and reconstruction, only to see it split apart by the Civil War; and the Oglala Sioux warrior Red Cloud, who forced the U.S. government to abandon its Bozeman Trail forts within his tribe’s territory.

Additional information

Weight 1.24 lbs
Dimensions 9.25 × 6.21 × 1.34 in
Binding Type

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