The Civilization of the American Indian
2 total works
The Plains Indian of the Upper Missouri in the nineteenth-century buffalo days remains the widely recognized symbol of primitive man par excellence-and the persistent image of the North American Indian at his most romantic. Fifteen cultural highlights, each a chapter made from research for a particular subject and enriched by contemporary illustrations, provide a sensitive interpretation of tribes such as the Blackfeet, the Crows, and the Mandans from the decades before Lewis and Clark up to the present.
In an attempt to understand and record the old culture of the Indians, the author has developed, over the past 30 years, a special ethnohistorical approach. The results, as seen here, are enlightening both for other ethnohistorians and for historians of more or less conventional bent. This book is abundantly illustrated from historical sources.
The Blackfeet were the strongest military power on the northwestern plains throughout the eighteenth century. But the near extinction of buffalo in the late nineteenth century brought dire poverty to the tribe, forcing them to rely in part on the U.S. government for sustenance. In this history of the Blackfeet, historian John C. Ewers relied on his own experience living among the Blackfeet as well as archival research to tell of not only the events that have so drastically affected the Blackfeet way of life, but also the ways the Blackfeet have responded, adapting and preserving their culture in the face of a changing landscape.