The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America (P.S.)
by Walter R. Borneman
from Harper Perennial
In the summer of 1754, deep in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a very young George Washington suffered his first military defeat, and a centuries-old feud between Great Britain and France was rekindled. The war that followed would be fought across virgin territories, from Nova Scotia to the forks of the Ohio River, and it would ultimately decide the fate of the entire North American continent—not just for Great Britain and France but also for the Spanish and Native American populations.
Noted historian Walter R. Borneman brings to life an epic struggle for a continent—what Samuel Eliot Morison called "truly the first world war"—and emphasizes how the seeds of discord sown in its aftermath would take root and blossom into the American Revolution.
They Never Surrendered: The Lakota Sioux Band That Stayed In Canada
by Ron Papandrea
from BookSurge Publishing
Painstakingly researched with an eye for detail, They Never Surrendered: The Lakota Sioux Band That Stayed in Canada by Ron Papandrea covers a topic long neglected in the United States and Canada. After the defeat of General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Great Sioux War of 1876, Sitting Bull and thousands of Lakota Sioux escaped the American army by going to Canada. Crazy Horse was killed while in American custody and many of his followers also went to Canada. The disappearance of the buffalo on the Canadian plains forced most of the Lakota Sioux in Canada to return to the United States within five years; they surrendered and settled on American reservations. More than 250 brave souls remained in Canada and never surrendered. This is their story.
White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America
by Colin G. Calloway
from Oxford University Press, USA
In nineteenth century paintings, the proud Indian warrior and the Scottish Highland chief appear in similar ways--colorful and wild, righteous and warlike, the last of their kind. Earlier accounts depict both as barbarians, lacking in culture and in need of civilization. By the nineteenth century, intermarriage and cultural contact between the two--described during the Seven Years' War as cousins--was such that Cree, Mohawk, Cherokee, and Salish were often spoken with Gaelic accents.
In this imaginative work of imperial and tribal history, Colin Calloway examines why these two seemingly wildly disparate groups appear to have so much in common.
Both Highland clans and Native American societies underwent parallel experiences on the peripheries of Britain's empire, and often encountered one another on the frontier. Indeed, Highlanders and American Indians fought, traded, and lived together. Both groups were treated as tribal peoples--remnants of a barbaric past--and eventually forced from their ancestral lands as their traditional food sources--cattle in the Highlands and bison on the Great Plains--were decimated to make way for livestock farming. In a familiar pattern, the cultures that conquered them would later romanticize the very ways of life they had destroyed.
White People, Indians, and Highlanders illustrates how these groups alternately resisted and accommodated the cultural and economic assault of colonialism, before their eventual dispossession during the Highland Clearances and Indian Removals. What emerges is a finely-drawn portrait of how indigenous peoples with their own rich identities experienced cultural change, economic transformation, and demographic dislocation amidst the growing power of the British and American empires.
No Man's River
by Farley Mowat
from Da Capo Press
The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic (Vintage)
by Melanie Mcgrath
from Vintage
In 1932, the Canadian government forcibly relocated three dozen Inuit from their flourishing home on the Hudson Bay to the barren, arctic landscape of Ellesmere Island, the most northerly landmass on the planet. Among this group was Josephie Flaherty, the unrecognized, half-Inuit son of filmmaker Robert Flaherty, director of Nanook of the North. In a narrative rich with human drama, Melanie McGrath follows three generations of the Flaherty family—Robert, Josephie, and Josephie's daughters—to bring this extraordinary tale of deception and harsh deprivation to life.
People of the Deer (Death of a People)
by Farley Mowat
from Da Capo Press
Walking on the Land
by Farley Mowat
from Steerforth
Using one of his own trips through the Eastern Arctic as a starting point, Farley Mowat interweaves the stories of the Barren Ground Inuit with stunning, lyrical descriptions of the Northern landscape.
With great beauty and terrible anguish, Mowat traces the history of the Inuit, revealing how the arrival of the Kablunait — white man — in the early part of the century and the subsequent obliteration of the caribou herds combined to unleash a series of famines and epidemics that virtually wiped out the Barren Ground Inuit population.
Full of larger-than-life characters — old-time Hudson's Bay company men, eccentric priests, wild bush pilots and well-meaning interlopers — Walking on the Land is an unforgettable account by one of Canada's most committed and impassioned voices.
Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and D)
by Carolyn Podruchny
from University of Nebraska Press
Making the Voyageur World shows that the voyageurs created distinct identities shaped by their French-Canadian peasant roots, the Aboriginal peoples they met in the Northwest, and the nature of their employment as indentured servants in diverse environments. Voyageurs’ identities were also shaped by their constant travels and by their own masculine ideals that emphasized strength, endurance, and daring. Although voyageurs left few conventional traces of their own voices in the documentary record, an astonishing amount of information can be found in descriptions of them by their masters, explorers, and other travelers. By examining their lives in conjunction with the metaphor of the voyage, Podruchny not only reveals the everyday lives of her subjects—what they ate, their cosmology and rituals of celebration, their families, and, above all, their work—but also underscores their impact on the social and cultural landscape of North America.
Medicinal and Other Uses of North American Plants: A Historical Survey with Special Reference to the Eastern Indian Tribes
by Charlotte Erichsen-Brown
from Dover Publications
Halfbreed
by Maria Campbell
from University of Nebraska Press
For Maria Campbell, a Métis ("Halfbreed") in Canada, the brutal realities of poverty, pain, and degradation intruded early and followed her every step. Her story is a harsh one, but it is told without bitterness or self-pity. It is a story that begins in 1940 in northern Saskatchewan and moves across Canada's West, where Maria roamed in the rootless existence of day-to-day jobs, drug addiction, and alcoholism. Her path strayed ever near hospital doors and prison walls.
It was Cheechum, her Cree great-grandmother, whose indomitable spirit sustained Maria Campbell through her most desperate times. Cheechum's stubborn dignity eventually led the author to take pride in her Métis heritage, and Cheechum's image inspired her in her drive for her own life, dignity; and purpose.
+++
