Native American History
By Tamara Levi and John Wunder

Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).
A work about Indian boarding schools, primarily the institution and policy. Also includes chapters on resistance and accommodation by students and Native communities.

Calloway, Colin G. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999).
Best Indian history text available. Includes documents spanning from pre 1492 through the 1990s, with brief introductions. Also has timelines, references, and suggested readings.

Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
A Native American history of the colonial period focusing on how cross-cultural contacts resulted in new lifestyles. Includes French-Indian, Dutch-Indian, and Spanish-Indian as well as English-Indian relations. Themes include warfare and diplomacy, disease and medicine, trade and material culture.

Clark, Blue. Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock: Treaty Rights and Indian Law at the End of the Nineteenth Century. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
A careful treatment of what many believe is the greatest Supreme Court injustice to Native Americans. Compared to the Dred Scott case decided fifty years earlier.

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983).
Environmental history of colonial New England. Compares ecological relationships of pre-colonial Indians and colonial Europeans, especially conceptions of land ownership.

Deloria, Vine, ed. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985).
Collection of essays examining federal Indian policy in the twentieth century. Includes essays on water rights, voting, tribal government, and self-determination.

Deloria, Vine, and Clifford M. Lytle. The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
History of the Indian Reorganization Act of the Indian New Deal. Focus on Collier's struggles with Congress and tribes, and Native relations with federal and state governments.

Edmunds, R. David, ed. The New Warriors: Native American Leaders Since 1900. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
Includes eleven biographical sketches of modern Indian leaders in government, law, and literature. Contains numerous themes in twentieth-century indigenous history.

Fixico, Donald. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).
Discusses federal policy to end trust status for reservations and relocate Native Americans to cities from 1943-1960. Also deals with the work of the Indian Claims Commission.

Fixico, Donald. The Urban Indian Experience in America. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000).
Focuses on the physical and psychological changes of Native men as they migrated away from rural communities and how they recreated kinship systems and social practices to survive racism and poverty. Begins with men who joined the military and war industries after 1941.

Fowler, Loretta. Arapaho Politics, 1851-1978: Symbols in Crises of Authority. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).
Ethnohistory of Northern Arapaho emphasizing tribal political continuity and adaptation to resolve problems caused by changing relations with white culture. Uses fieldwork, archival materials, federal documents, newspapers, and secondary sources.

Fowler, Loretta. Shared Symbols, Contested Meanings: Gros Ventre Culture and History, 1778-1984. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
History of the Gros Ventres using historical and anthropological methods. Sources include oral history and documentary sources. Focuses on cultural adaptation through non-Indian contact and social reaction to change.

Gibson, Arrell Morgan. The American Indian: Prehistory to the Present. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1980).
Another textbook survey of American Indian-white relations. Mainly concerned with formal encounters such as negotiations, warfare, and trade. Emphasis on diplomacy, war, and Oklahoma tribes.

Hoxie, Frederick E., Peter C. Mancall, and James Hart Merrell, eds. American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present. (New York: Routledge, 2001).
Collection of essays. Basic theme is resistance, adaptation, and survival. Includes sections on resistance to reservation life and assimilation, federal attempt to redefine gender roles, cultural and political awareness and revival in the twentieth century, and contemporary issues.

Hurtado, Albert L., and Peter Iverson, eds. Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co., 1994).
Up-to-date effective collection of essays and documents using various methodological approaches. Most are abridged and notes are omitted. Dates covered include pre-1800, nineteenth century, and twentieth century. Essays focus on historiography, European contact, religion, trade, identity, sovereignty, and federal Indian policy.

Iverson, Peter. We Are Still Here: American Indians in the Twentieth Century. The American History Series. (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1998).
Best treatment of modern Native history. Discusses Native American history and issues throughout the twentieth century. Includes appendix of Native American communities in the United States, bibliographical essay, and map of state and federally recognized US Indian reservations.

Josephy, Alvin M. 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians. (New York: Knopf, 1994).
Historical overview of the Native history of North America. Peoples, leaders, customs, political systems, and lifestyles. Heavily illustrated. Follows the television documentary by the same name. Uses creation stories, oral history, archaeology, federal documents, and secondary sources.

Leary, J.P., comp. Selected Bibliography of American Indian Studies Material for Teachers and Classroom Use. American Indian Studies Program, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Available from http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlsea/equity/pdf/aistch2.pdf.
This bibliography is extensive and contains current material for teaching Native American History. The compiler lists books from a wide spectrum of the discipline. For example, he has general material, books covering the history of Native American education, works describing methodology to teach this subject, and much more.

Prucha, Francis Paul. Atlas of American Indian Affairs. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990).
Includes maps on Indian land cessions, culture and tribal areas, agencies, reservations, and major events in Native American history from the Sioux uprising in 1862 through Wounded Knee. Includes notes and reference chapter and introductory essays on sources, data weaknesses, and statistical explanations.

Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. 2 Vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984).
A history of United States-Indian relations, from the early republic through the 1970s. Primarily a policy and institutional history with little from the Native viewpoint. Useful reference guide.

Sandoz, Mari. Crazy Horse, The Strange Man of the Oglalas. (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1942).
A classic still in print. Recently lauded as still best biography of Crazy Horse, the most well-known Nebraska Indian.

Scherer, Mark. Imperfect Victories: The Legal Tenacity of the Omaha Tribe, 1945-1995. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
A recent treatment of the Omaha Indian struggles to retain their lands in the last half of the twentieth century. Considers complex legal issues in a highly readable, thoughtful manner.

Shoemaker, Nancy, ed. Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women. (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Collection of essays. Themes include gender roles, economic roles, policy, politics, community, and cultural persistence. Focus on how women changed and were changed by events around them. Dates span from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century.

Szasz, Margaret Connell. Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination Since 1928. 3d ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999).
History of policy and attitudes concerning American Indian education. BIA education policy, cross-cultural education, federal control vs. Native control. Uses oral histories and archives. Through 1998.

Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983).
Roll of Indian women, Metis women, and Euro-Canadian women the fur trade society in Canadian west. Examines development of mutual dependence and resulting unique society.

Warhus, Mark. Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).
Centered on collection of historical and contemporary Native American maps. Includes an overview and historical and cultural context of maps to view continent as understood and experienced by Native Americans.

Wilson, Angela Cavender. "American Indian history or Non-Indian Perceptions of American Indian History" In Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing About American Indians. ed. Devon A. Mihesuah, 23-26. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).
Discusses the state of Native American history, including continuing problems within the field. Emphasizes the necessity of consulting Native peoples when conducting research and writing tribal and community histories.

Wishart, David. An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
The best contemporary treatment of the history of the Indians of Nebraska with particular reference to the nineteenth century. Excellent maps document the homelands of Nebraska's Native Americans.

Wunder, John R. "Retained by the People" : A History of American Indians and the Bill of Rights. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
A survey of the constitutional history of Native Americans. Emphasizes the twentieth century, and includes extensive coverage of many federal laws and U.S. Supreme Court opinions.

Wunder, John R., ed. Native Americans and the Law: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on American Indian Rights, Freedoms, and Sovereignty. 6vols. (New York: Routledge Press, 1996).
A six-volume collection of essays. Four volumes provide a historical survey that focus on Native American law and colonialism up to 1903; constitutionalism and Native Americans, 1903-1968; the Indian Bill of Rights, 1968; and recent legal issues for American Indians, 1968 to the present. Two additional volumes concern Native American cultural and religious freedoms and Native American sovereignty.