The Best Native Americans Biographies & Memoirs 2024

1. Black Hawk: An Autobiography, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - This story is told in the words of a tragic figure in American history - a hook-nosed, hollow-cheeked old Sauk warrior who lived under four flags while the Mississippi Valley was being wrested from his people.The author is Black Hawk himself - once pursued by an army whose members included Captain Abraham Lincoln and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Perhaps no Indian ever saw so much of American expansion or fought harder to prevent that expansion from driving his people to exile and death.He knew Zebulon Pike, William Clark, Henry Schoolcraft, George Catlin, Winfield Scott, and such figures in American government as President Andrew Jackson and Secretary of State Lewis Cass. He knew Chicago when it was a cluster of log houses around a fort, and he was in St. Louis the day the American flag went up and the French flag came down.He saw crowds gather to cheer him in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York - and to stone the driver of his carriage in Albany - during a fantastic tour sponsored by the government.And at last he dies in 1838, bitter in the knowledge that he had led men, women, and children of his tribe to slaughter on the banks of the Mississippi.After his capture at the end of the Black Hawk War, he was imprisoned for a time and then released to live in the territory that is now Iowa. He dictated his autobiography to a government interpreter, Antoine LeClaire, and the story was put into written form by J. B. Patterson, a young Illinois newspaperman. Since its first appearance in 1833, the autobiography has become known as an American classic.

Black Hawk: An Autobiography, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

2. Lakota Woman, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned -

Lakota Woman, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

3. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned -

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

4. A Dose of Frontier Soldiering: The Memoirs of Corporal E. A. Bode, Frontier Regular Infantry, 1877-1882 [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. "Bode's literary skills matched an inquisitive eye and wry wit and helped make his soldier narrative utterly endearing. . . . With unbridled curiosity, Bode makes sumptuous reading of even the most ordinary experiences."--Montana. "Bode was extraordinary in intelligence, literacy, intellectual curiosity, and skill at writing and mapmaking. Accounts by privates and corporals in the postCivil War infantry are rare; this is one of the best."--True West. "Uncommon and perceptive memoirs, perhaps the best published account by an enlisted infantryman from the era."--Western Historical Quarterly. Emil Adolph Bode, a German immigrant down on his luck, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1877 and served for five years. More literate than most of his fellow soldiers, Bode described western flora and fauna, commenting on the American Indians he encountered as well as the slaughter of the buffalo, the hard and lonely life of the cowboy, and towns and settlements he passed through. His observations, seasoned with wry wit and sympathy, offer a truer picture of the frontier military experience than all the dashing cavalry charges and thundering artillery in Western literature. Thomas T. Smith is a regular army lieutenant colonel of infantry assigned to Fort Bliss, Texas. He is the editor of Mary Leefe Laurence's Daughter of the Regiment (Nebraska 1994).

A Dose of Frontier Soldiering : The Memoirs of Corporal E. A. Bode, Frontier Regular Infantry, 1877-1882, Used [Hardcover]

5. Chief Joseph: Guardian of the People (American Heroes) [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Chief Joseph (1840-1904) became a legend due to his heroic efforts to keep his people in their homeland in Oregon's Wallowa Valley despite a treaty that ordered them onto a reservation in Idaho. In 1877, when the US army forced the Nez Perce away from their lands, Joseph led his tribespeople on a 1,500-mile, four-month flight from western Idaho across Montana, through Yellowstone National Park and Wyoming, toward safety in Canada. During this journey, the Army attacked the Indians several times; in one battle alone, at the Big Hole in western Montana, ninety Indian men, women, and children were killed. The Nez Perces' flight ended at the Bear's Paw mountains in northern Montana, just forty miles from the safety of the Canadian border. There the Army surrounded the Nez Perce, captured their horses, killed all but two of their primary chiefs, and forced their capitulation. When Chief Joseph surrendered to military leaders he told them, "From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever." Promised by military commanders that they would be returned to Idaho, the Nez Perces were instead relocated to Indian Territory in Oklahoma where many died of fever and disease. Chief Joseph began a new fight-for better conditions for his people and the right to return to their home country. His diplomacy and eloquence won public support and ultimately resulted in the Nez Perce's return to Idaho and Washington.

Chief Joseph : Guardian of the People, Used [Hardcover]

6. Edmund Pickens (Okchantubby) : First Elected Chickasaw Chief, His Life and Times, Used [Hardcover]

Edmund Pickens lived through a crucial period in Chickasaw history. During Removal in 1836, he traveled with his wife and children on the sad journey from the Chickasaw homelands to Indian Territory. Like other Chickasaws, he faced many hardships after settling in the new territory. But as Juanita J. Keel Tate shows in this first book-length account of Pickens's life and times, he persevered and triumphed as a statesman and tribal leader. Tate devoted forty-seven years to researching and writing about Pickens, visiting many courthouses in the Chickasaw homelands to locate early homesteads and Pickens family records. In Edmund Pickens (Okchantubby): First Elected Chickasaw Chief, His Life and Times , Tate describes Pickens's service as a representative on several Chickasaw commissions that negotiated important treaties in Washington, D.C., and his work as a member of the delegation that signed the Treaty of Doaksville with Choctaw leaders in 1837. Pickens helped develop the 1856 Chickasaw Constitution and served in the Chickasaw Senate from 1857 to 1861. He signed the treaty of alliance with the Confederate States of America in 1861 and lived through the tumultuous period of the Civil War. Afterward, he served as a commissioner, negotiating the Reconstruction Treaty of 1866. Respected by the Chickasaw people for his devotion and trustworthiness, Pickens was the first elected chief of the Chickasaw Nation. With this insightful biography, Tate provides the testimony to Pickens's character that this great leader has long deserved. Juanita J. Keel Tate, ninety-eight-year-old Chickasaw elder, is noted for her considerable knowledge of tribal history and culture. A great-granddaughter of Edmund Pickens, Tate has been inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame and the Chilocco Indian School Hall of Fame.

Edmund Pickens (Okchantubby) : First Elected Chickasaw Chief, His Life and Times, Used [Hardcover]

7. Tatanka-Iyotanka: A Biography of Sitting Bull [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Everyone knows who he was, but what else do you know about him? Sitting Bull, known as Tatanka-Iyotanka in his own language, was and is a symbol of American Indian resistance to European-American culture. This biography shows you the man and the prominent events in his life.

Tatanka-Iyotanka: A Biography of Sitting Bull, Used [Paperback]

8. Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The story and teachings of Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950), first recorded by John G. Neihardt in Black Elk Speaks , have played a critical role in shaping the way in which Native Americans and others view the past, present, and future of Native America. These conversations with the descendents of Black Elk offer an intimate look at life on the Pine Ridge Reservation and fresh perspectives on the religious, economic, and political opportunities and challenges facing the Lakota people today. In addition to revealing more about Black Elk the healer, the family also provides glimpses of Black Elk as a family man, teacher, and influential ancestor.

Black Elk Lives : Conversations with the Black Elk Family, Used [Hardcover]

9. The Story of Geronimo (Cornerstones of Freedom), Used [Paperback]

A biography of the Apache warrior who led attacks on settlers and soldiers in Mexico and the Southwestern United States during the 1870's and 1880's.

The Story of Geronimo (Cornerstones of Freedom), Used [Paperback]

10. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge: A Lakota Odyssey [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Joe Starita tells the triumphant and moving story of a Lakota-Northern Cheyenne family. In 1878, the renowned Chief Dull Knife, who fought alongside Crazy Horse, escaped from forced relocation in Indian Territory and led followers on a desperate six-hundred-mile freedom flight back to their homeland. His son, George Dull Knife survived the Wounded Knee Massacre and later toured in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Guy Dull Knife Sr. fought in World War I and took part in the Siege of Wounded Knee in 1973. Guy Dull Knife Jr. fought in Vietnam and is now an accomplished artist. Starita updates the Dull Knife family history in his new afterword for this Bison Books edition.

The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge: A Lakota Odyssey [Paperback - Used]