FLC Staff Picks Blog

Shelf Browsing E - Native American History

For the display this week, I took all the books from one of our shelves in section E to demonstrate “shelf browsing” ...  specifically, E70s – E90s, Native American History.

Book lovers love to speak about serendipity.  In our book journals, we devote part of our reviews to how we came across our recent catch, usually waxing poetic about picking up the book on vacation after a long discussion with someone we met while waiting in line.  You get the idea.  Long before internet, we were browsing used books stands, library book sales, and bookstore shelves, much like we browse Twitter or GoodReads today:  Chance encounters based on our desire to discover something interesting.

Certainly, we go home with some lemons. 

But, shelf browsing at our library is a best bet practice.  Our faculty are active in the process of choosing items for our collection that are engaging and beneficial to student research.  We select award-winning, scholarly research from university and other academic publishers.  Chance encounters on our shelves lead to deeper reading on a subject.

We organize “related” books to sit together on our library shelves.  As in this example, E70 – E90 are devoted to Native Americans.  Coordinated with catalog searching, shelf browsing is a more thorough approach to finding sources.  We may go into the stacks to find one book we found in the catalog, but come out with a stack of others.  It is letting your curiosity lead your research.

I challenge our BC community.  Try to look at any of the books on display E70s-E90s without looking at its neighboring content.  Impossible.  -- Vickie

note: Follow the title links to get a full description or to the "place a hold". We'll pull it for you!
 

Why You Can't Teach United States History Without American Indians

Call Number: E 76.6 .W49 2015

The uniqueness of Indigenous history, as interwoven more fully in the American story, will challenge us to think in new ways about larger themes in U.S. history, such as settlement and colonization, economic and political power, citizenship and movements for equality, and the fundamental question of what it means to be an American.

 

 

Native American Almanac by Yvonne Wakim Dennis; Arlene Hirschfelder; Shannon Rothenberger Flynn

Call Number: E 77 .D46 N38 2016

Capturing the stories and voices of the American Indian of yesterday and today, it provides a range of information on Native American history, society, and culture.

American Indians in U. S. History by Roger L. Nichols

Call Number: E 77 .N53 A44 2014

Brief biographies of important Native figures, an overall chronology, and updated suggested readings for each period of the past four hundred years.
 

 

 

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

Call Number: E 77 .T74 H43 2019

The story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir.
 

 

 

Ancient America by Kenneth L. Feder

Call Number: E 77.9 .F43 A53 2017

Kenneth Feder invites us to explore the stunning technological, architectural, engineering, and artistic achievements of America's first peoples. Ancient America showcases fifty iconic and publicly-accessible sites located across the contiguous United States--including monumental pyramids of earth, "castles" ensconced in cliff niches, and vast rock art galleries.

 

Middle Atlantic Prehistory by Heather A. Wholey; Carole L. Nash

Call Number: E 78 .M65 M53 2018

This volume is a regional, historic overview of important themes, topics, and approaches in Middle Atlantic prehistory; covering major practical and theoretical debates and controversies in the region and in the discipline.

 

 

 

Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs

Call Number: E 77.9 .C45 A85 2018

From the author of Apocalyptic Planet comes a vivid travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the first people in North America at least twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that tell of their lives and fates.

 

 

 

Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands

Call Number: E 78 .E2 N38 1979

A representative collection of the major spiritual texts from the North American peoples of the East Coast, the Iroquois, Winnibego, Fox, Menominee, Delaware, Cherokee and others.

Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes by George I. Quimby

Call Number: E 78 .G7 Q56 1960

Survey for the layman of the prehistoric Indians and their culture in the changing environment from the end of the Ice Age to the coming of the Europeans.

 

 

 

Indians of the Plains by Robert H. Lowie

Call Number: E 78 .G73 L69 1982

First published in 1954, Robert H. Lowie's Indians of the Plains surveys in a lucid and concise fashion the history and culture of the Indian tribes between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The author visited various tribes from 1906 to 1931, observing them carefully, participating in their lifeways, studying their languages, and listening to their legends and tales. After a half century of study, Lowie wrote this book, praised by anthropologists as the synthesis of a lifetime's work.

 

Chesapeake Prehistory by Richard J. Dent

Call Number: E 78 .M3 D46 1995

The volume examines prehistoric culture and history of the entire region and includes supporting lists of radiocarbon assays. A unique feature is a reconstruction of the dramatic transformation of the regional landscape over the past 10-15,000 years.

 

 

Indians in the Family by Dawn Peterson

Call Number: E 78 .S65 P48 2017

In 1813, Andrew Jackson invaded the Creek Indian Nation and, in the aftermath, sent a Creek boy home to his plantation household. Jackson's eventual adoption of this child opens a window into a forgotten story of adoption in the early nineteenth century.

 

 

Red Dreams, White Nightmares by Robert M. Owens

Call Number: E 81 .O94 R43 2015

From the end of Pontiac's War in 1763 through the War of 1812, fear--even paranoia--drove Anglo-American Indian policies. This fear was so pervasive--and so useful for unifying whites--that Americans exploited it long after the threat of a general Indian alliance had passed. As the nineteenth century wore on, and as slavery became more widespread and crucial to the American South, fears shifted to Indian alliances with former slaves, and eventually to slave rebellion in general.

 

The Earth Is Weeping by Peter Cozzens

Call Number: E 83.866 .C69 E27 2016

After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies.

 

Thunder in the Mountains by Daniel J. Sharfstein

Call Number: E 83.877 .S53 T48 2018

After the Civil War / Reconstruction, a new struggle raged in the Northern Rockies. In the summer of 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard, a champion of African American civil rights, ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families who resisted moving onto a reservation. Standing in his way was Chief Joseph, a young leader who never stopped advocating for Native American sovereignty and equal rights. Thunder in the Mountains is the spellbinding story of two legendary figures and their epic clash of ideas about the meaning of freedom and the role of government in American life.

 

Policing American Indians by Laurence Armand French

Call Number: E 93 .F74 P65 2016

Bias, prejudice, and corruption riddle the history of US jurisprudence. Policing American Indians: A Unique Chapter in American Jurisprudence explores these injustices, specifically the treatment of American Indians. A mix of academic research as well as field experience, this book draws on author Laurence French's more than 40 years of experience with American Indian individuals and groups.

 

Surviving Genocide by Jeffrey Ostler

Call Number: E 93 .O88 S87 2019

In the first part of this sweeping two-volume history, Jeffrey Ostler investigates how American democracy relied on Indian dispossession and the federally sanctioned use of force to remove or slaughter Indians in the way of U.S. expansion. He charts the losses that Indians suffered from relentless violence and upheaval and the attendant effects of disease, deprivation, and exposure. This volume centers on the eastern United States from the 1750s to the start of the Civil War.

 

Planning the American Indian Reservation by Nicholas Christos Zaferatos

Call Number: E 93 .Z34 P53 2015

American Indian reservation planning is one of the most challenging and poorly understood specializations within the American planning profession. Charged with developing a strategy to protect irreplaceable tribal homelands that have been repeatedly diminished over the ages through unjust public policy actions, it is also one of the most imperative.

 

 

The Heathen School by John Demos

Call Number: E 97.6 .F65 D46 2014

Award-winning historian John Demos tells the astonishing story of a unique missionary project, which probes the very roots of American identity. Near the start of the nineteenth century, as the United States looked outward to the wider world, a group of eminent Protestant ministers devised a grand scheme for gathering the rest of mankind into the redemptive fold of Christianity and "civiization."  However, when two Cherokee students courted and married local women public resolve and fundamental ideals were put to a severe test.  
 

note: unless otherwise noted, descriptions were edited from publisher information.

Have fun exploring the stacks.  Remember, come to the Learning and Research Suite with questions; we’re happy to take you on tour of where our books reside.