Plains Indians have long occupied a special place in the American imagination. Both the historical reality of such evocative figures and events as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Sacajewea, and the Battle of Little Bighorn and the lived reality of Native Americans today are often confused and conflated with popular representations of Indians in movies, paintings, novels, and on television. Ingrained stereotypes and cultural misconceptions born of late nineteenth– and early twentieth–century images of the romantic nomad and the marauding savage have been surprisingly tenacious, obscuring the extraordinary cultural and linguistic diversity of the dozens of tribes and nations who have peopled the Great Plains. Here in one volume is an indispensable guide to the extensive ethnohistorical research that, in recent decades, has recovered the varied and often unexpected history of Comanche, Cheyenne, Osage, and Sioux Indians, to name only a few of the tribal groups included. From the earliest archaeological evidence to the current experience of Indians living on and off reservations, a wealth of information is presented in a clear and accessible way. The history of the Plains Indians has been a dynamic one of continuous change and adaptation as groups split and recombined to form new social orders and cultural traditions. Contact with Europeans and the introduction of trade in horses, slaves, furs, and guns dramatically altered native societies internally and influenced relations between different groups. In the face of pressures resulting from America's westward expansion throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the extinction of the bison, the imposition of reservation life, and the assimilationist policies of the U.S. federal government—the native peoples of the Great Plains have struggled to preserve their distinct cultures and reorient themselves to a new world on their own terms. The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Great Plains is divided into four parts. Part I presents an overview of the cultures and histories of Plains Indian people and surveys the key scholarly questions and debates that shape this field. Part II serves as an encyclopedia, alphabetically listing important individuals and places of significant cultural or historic meaning. Part III is a chronology of the major events in the history of American Indians in the Plains. The expertly selected resources guide in Part IV includes annotated bibliographies, museum and tribal Internet sites, and films that can be easily accessed by those wishing to learn more. The third in a six-volume reference series, The Columbia Guides to American Indian History and Culture, The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Great Plains is an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and researchers.

"A terrific guide for the novice that offers a wealth of valuable information. This book is academic, yet written in an approachable style. Maureen T. Schwarz, author of Blood and Voice: The Life Courses of Navajo Women Ceremonial Practitioners The Columbia Guide to American Indians History and Culture Also Includte: The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Lorella Fowler The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green A major work on the history and culture of Southwest Indians, The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southwest tells a remarkable story of cultural continuity in the face of migration, displacement, violence, and loss. The Native peoples of the American Southwest are a unique group, for while the arrival of Europeans forced many Native Americans to leave their land behind, those who lived in the Southwest held their ground. Many still reside in their ancestral homes, and their oral histories, social practices, and material artifacts provide revelatory insight into the history of the region and the country as a whole. Trudy Griffin-Pierce incorporates her lifelong passion for the people of the Southwest, especially the Navajo, into an absorbing narrative of pre-and postcontact Native experiences. She finds that, even though the policies of the U.S. government were meant to promote assimilation. Native peoples formed their own response to outside pressures, choosing to adapt rather than submit to external change. Griflin-Pierce provides a chronology of instances that have shaped present-day conditions in the region, as well as an extensive glossary of significant people, places, and events. Setting a precedent for ethical scholarship, she describes different methods for researching the Southwest and cites sources for further archaeological and comparative study. Completing the volume is a selection of key primary documents, literary works, films, Internet resources, and contact information for each Native community, enabling a more thorough investigation into specific tribes and nations.

Even as contact with European cultures eroded indigenous lifestyles across North America, many Native American groups found ways to preserve the integrity of their communities through the arts, customs, languages, and religious traditions that animate Native American life. The ancient cultural legacies that both distinguish and unite these diverse tribes are the subject of this volume. --from publisher description

The use of horses has perhaps most dramatically shaped the way of life for Native American tribes in the Plateau and Plains regions of North America, but the practices and traditions of both culture areas date back to a time long before Europeans ever touched American shores, introducing their animals and customs to the continent’s indigenous peoples. This captivating volume examines the history and cross-cultural interactions that came to be associated with the peoples of the Plateau and the changing settlement patterns of the Plains peoples, as well as the cultural, social, and spiritual practices that have defined the major tribes of each region.

In Shamanism and Vulnerability on the North and South American Great Plains Kathleen Bolling Lowrey provides an innovative and expansive study of indigenous shamanism and the ways in which it has been misinterpreted and dismissed by white settlers, NGO workers, policymakers, government administrators, and historians and anthropologists. Employing a wide range of theory on masculinity, disability, dependence, domesticity, and popular children’s literature, Lowrey examines the parallels between the cultures and societies of the South American Gran Chaco and those of the North American Great Plains and outlines the kinds of relations that invite suspicion and scrutiny in divergent contexts in the Americas: power and autonomy in the case of Amerindian societies and weakness and dependence in the case of settler societies. She also demonstrates that, where stigmatized or repressed in practice, dependence and power manifest and intersect in unexpected ways in storytelling, fantasy, and myth. The book reveals the various ways in which anthropologists, historians, folklorists, and other writers have often misrepresented indigenous shamanism and revitalization movements by unconsciously projecting ideologies and assumptions derived from modern ‘contract societies’ onto ethnographic and historical realities. Lowrey also provides alternative ways of understanding indigenous American communities and their long histories of interethnic relations with expanding colonial and national states in the Americas. A creative historical and ethnographical reevaluation of the last few decades of scholarship on shamanism, disability, and dependence, Shamanism and Vulnerability on the North and South American Great Plains will be of interest to scholars of North and South American anthropology, indigenous history, American studies, and feminism.

2011 Booklist Editor's Choice, reference category The Great Plains, stretching northward from Texas into Canada, is a region that has been understudied and overlooked. The Atlas of the Great Plains, however, brings a new focus to North America’s midcontinent. With more than three hundred original full-color maps, accompanied by extended explanatory text, this collection chronicles the history of the Great Plains, including political and social developments. Far more than simply the geography of the region, this atlas explores a myriad of subjects from Native Americans to settlement patterns, agricultural ventures to voting records, and medical services to crime rates. These detailed and beautifully designed maps convey the significance of the region, capturing the essence of its land and life. The only current and comprehensive atlas of the Great Plains region, it is also the first atlas to include both the United States and Canada, showing the region’s full length and breadth.

The Columbia Guide to American Indian Literatures of the United States Since 1945 is the first major volume of its kind to focus on Native literatures in a postcolonial context. Written by a team of noted Native and non-Native scholars, these essays consider the complex social and political influences that have shaped American Indian literatures in the second half of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on core themes of identity, sovereignty, and land. In his essay comprising part I of the volume, Eric Cheyfitz argues persuasively for the necessary conjunction of Indian literatures and federal Indian law from Apess to Alexie. Part II is a comprehensive survey of five genres of literature: fiction (Arnold Krupat and Michael Elliott), poetry (Kimberly Blaeser), drama (Shari Huhndorf), nonfiction (David Murray), and autobiography (Kendall Johnson), and discusses the work of Vine Deloria Jr., N. Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Sherman Alexie, among many others. Drawing on historical and theoretical frameworks, the contributors examine how American Indian writers and critics have responded to major developments in American Indian life and how recent trends in Native writing build upon and integrate traditional modes of storytelling. Sure to be considered a groundbreaking contribution to the field, The Columbia Guide to American Indian Literatures of the United States Since 1945 offers both a rich critique of history and a wealth of new information and insight.