Books on relationships between American Indian Tribes

[Nimble Fingers SASS# 25439]

I would like to research a theory of mine, that American Incdian tribes were just as mean to each other as the white man was supposedly mean to them. I am under the impression that the various tribes would take land away from each other, have wars with each other and treat certain tribes as "second class citizens". I am thinking this as I believe that was the case with the Mayan tribes in Guatemala, based on what I have learned from my wife's country's history. I am proud of my son's heritage being half Mayan. And don't get me wrong, I think man's inhumanity to man is also wrong. But I am getting tired of hearing about how the Indians suffered at the hands of the white man, when I again believe during the French Indian war, there were Indian tribes suffering at the hands of each other. So I would like to start reading on the subject since if the new Lone Ranger movie does come out, I would like to be very knowledgeable about how it was before the white man came to the North American continent. Thanks in advance for the help.

[stepnmud#33546]

Not a book,but 8 part mini series documentaty called 500 Nations.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111868/

 

I acquired DVD set in used condition pretty cheap cost or rent from Netflix.

If ya want, I could ship "500 Nations" DVD set to ya for the cost of shipping and just send back to me when done reviewing it.

 

 

Also have a book about George Catlin and may be of some interest to ya.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Catlin

[Ventura Slim, SASS #35690]

As you know a little Mayan history, you know how bad stuff could be.

At the same time know that word of the white man coming over on boats traveled across the continent relatively quickly which would imply there was enough communication aka trading that went across geographic boundaries and cultures coast to coast.

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

Howdy

 

Historians tend to group Indian tribes together by the languages they spoke. Before the coming of Europeans, there were over a thousand different languages (yes 1000) spoken by the Native Americans. This means there were around a thousand different tribes. If you start to research it, you will find that these tribes were no 'meaner' to each other, than the thousands of different tribes who once inhabited Europe. Yes, warfare and slaving were common among the Native Americans. Just as warfare and the taking of slaves was common between the many different tribes that inhabited Europe, or Asia, or anywhere else in the world.

 

There is also plenty of evidence that as time progressed, some tribes displaced others from their lands.

 

But you cannot dispute that with the coming of Europeans, entire tribes were wiped out by European diseases that the natives had no natural immunity to. Diseases such as measles and smallpox just to name two. Entire tribes were decimated, particularly in the East, where the natives had no time to build up natural immunity.

 

And you cannot dispute the fact that Europeans steadily displaced Indians from their land. Look up Manifest Destiny and see what the consequences were for the Indians.

 

One very good book that gives a real bird's eye view of the relationships between Indians and settlers in the East is Chesapeake, by James Michener. The first couple of chapters talk about a man fleeing from his own tribe to start a new life on the Chesapeake, and how his land is eventually stolen by Europeans.

[Steel-eye Steve SASS #40674]

Somewhat depends on what level you want to research it. On a general level you'll most likely be able to find works that will support whatever view your looking for. The trick comes on how much further you want to go. Some works dealing with archaeology on some sites as Aztalan in Wisconsin or the Anistazi sites in the southwest are interesting. Part of the problem comes from the fact that for the most part Native American cultures left no primary records of their own prior to contact and early European sources are very biased. After contact many tribes disappeared from disease and many others migrated. Many of what we today think of as plains tribes, actually had more eastern origins. Also after they acquired the horse, these tribes radically changed after the mid-1700s.

[Yellowhouse Sam # 25171]

The Iroquis Confederacy were pretty tough on those that weren't with the program.

 

The Comanche drove the Apache and others off the Southern High Plains and weren't real kind about it.

 

The Crow were age old enemies with the Lakota and Blackfeet.

 

Just about all of them fought the Pawnee.

 

These are just a few examples. People are people no matter what...harmony rarely existed then as now.

 

Read Allan Eckerts series of novels on the eastern woodland indians. Heavily researched and annotated.

 

Fehrenbachs book on the Comanches is about as good as it gets.

 

Many books out there refer in passing to relationships. Some infer that european invasion was a major factor to warfare among the tribes. Perhaps, but the emnity was already present.

[Utah Bob #35998]

But I am getting tired of hearing about how the Indians suffered at the hands of the white man,

 

You may want to read Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains by Stan Hoig. It is a comprehensive account of the Indian conflicts between the Platte River and the Rio Grande including the intertribal wars that had gone on since before the panish expeditions.

 

Your theory about inter tribal warfare is well documented. However the depredations suffered by Indians at the hands of the Europeans and their progeny is equally well documented.

Hollywood and some other people focus on the white vs Indian aspect rather that tell the other story.

 

However as bad as tribal warfare could be it pales in comparison to the genocidal actions taken by whites. That's just historical fact. Telling the story of Indian inter tribal warfare does not lesson the devastation brought by the whites.

[Nimble Fingers SASS# 25439]

Gentlemen, thank you all for your thoughts and especially the offer of the DVD, but I want to stay with books at the moment. I was trying to get enough information on the other side of what will become the discussion, and yes, by the left that whites were terrible to the Indians. I wanted to have some "ammo" that would also show that the Indians also committed inhummane acts to other tribes, that it wasn't "one-sided"! I see some very good starting points and while I am not going for a doctorate I will have more substantial information than just my "beliefs". Thanks to all of you for your suggestions.

[Bad Hombre #23212]

Try to find Turner Publishing's "The Native Americans"...maybe a used one (Amazon Books).

A collaboration of authors, David Hurst Thomas, Jay Miller, Richard White, Peter Nabokov, and Philip J Deloria.

All of these authors have written many of their own books also.

An interesting quote from the book "When Columbus discovered America, the population of the Americas was 75 million, with 2000 distinct languages."

I think a lot was going on before the Europeans ever arrived!!

 

BH

[Yellowhouse Sam # 25171]

Gentlemen, thank you all for your thoughts and especially the offer of the DVD, but I want to stay with books at the moment. I was trying to get enough information on the other side of what will become the discussion, and yes, by the left that whites were terrible to the Indians. I wanted to have some "ammo" that would also show that the Indians also committed inhummane acts to other tribes, that it wasn't "one-sided"! I see some very good starting points and while I am not going for a doctorate I will have more substantial information than just my "beliefs". Thanks to all of you for your suggestions.

 

Google Rainy Mountain Massacre. The Osage left a lot of Kiowa heads in cookpots for returning hunters to see. Another coming to mind is the idiots who let the Sioux leave the reservation to hunt...at the same time as the Pawnee. Sioux boxed them up and slaughtered them wholesale.

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

I read a book a few years back, can't remember the name, but it dealt with the populations of the America's and the impact they had on the ecology of the regions they lived.

 

I remember a few things that stuck. Disease killed more native people than war and genocide. When explorers sailed along our east coast they commented on how many fires they could see at night. Meaning locals living near the shore. 10 years later there weren't many fires.

 

During one of the Spanish explorers, maybe DeSoto, search for gold they traveled from Florida out to Arizona and back. It took something like 2 years.They brought the muman diseases, and they had swine in there group for food on their travels. Their journal tells of how most of the tribes they met on the way there were gone when they traveled back.

 

Basically between our diseases and our culture we pretty much eliminate several million native peoples.

 

Oh yeah and it described how the different groups fought over hunting territory etc.

Ike

[Captain Long Story, US Cavalry]

In 1836, a 9-year-old pioneer girl named Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped during a Comanche raid in North Texas. She was strapped onto the back of a horse and taken north, back into the Plains where the powerful American Indian tribe lived.

 

Parker became a ward of the chief and later, a full member of the Comanches. She eventually married a highly respected Comanche chief and gave birth to three children, including Quanah — who would grow up to become the last and greatest Comanche leader.

 

The story of Cynthia Ann and her son, Chief Quanah Parker, is told in S.C. Gwynne's book, Empire of the Summer Moon. Gwynne traces the rise and fall of the Comanche Nation against the backdrop of the fight for control of the American Midwest.

 

*

On rewriting history to leave out Native American atrocities

 

"There was even an attempt at one point to deny that Indians were warlike. Comanches were incredibly warlike. They swept everyone off the Southern plains. They nearly exterminated the Apaches. And you know, if you look at the Comanches and you look back in history at Goths and Vikings or Mongols or Celts — old Celts are actually a very good parallel. In a lot of ways, I think we're looking back at earlier versions of ourselves. We — being white European — did all of those things. Not only that but torture was institutionalized during things like the Counter-Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition and the Russian Revolution."

 

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/20/136438816/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-comanche-empire

[Texas Man]

As a collector of early books on Texas and most historians on Texas agree that there are around 50 books that are basic on the subject to start with. I also have a great interest in books giving accounts of Indian Captvies and these are very hard to find. I have found the series Savage Frontier to be extramly researched and super details on Indian matter. The author is Steven L. Moore and the University of North Texas Press, Denton, Texas printed the series.

The books in the above post are good as well. Also the Bible books on Texas Indian Fighting in Texas is A.J. Sowell Texas Indian Fighters and J.W. Wilbarger Indian Depredations in Texas. Both were written by Indian Fighters themselves and the best. Also If You can find it Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas by John Henry Brown has great history on early Texas. I give $2,500 for this book and it is well worth it. Also there is a small little book called the Indian Captives about two small boys who were taken about five miles from my house in Ciblo, Texas, I dont remember the autors name but it is very good. Also Three years amound the Comances by Nelson Lee, Texas Ranger and the three books on Herman Lehman. Books on women who were taken by the Indians are by far the hardest to find.

I have my collection scattered between three houses and there are several other good books on the subject I dont have at hand. Others I have been trying to find for years like the book on Sammuel Highsmith or Ben Highsmith who were early Texas Rangers and Sammuel was the last man to leave the Alamo to go for help. My Sister was married to his great great grandson and is now a member of the Daughters of Texas. I have also been looking for writings on a Ranger Scout called Cobb who is my wifes great grandfathers brother. Her family is full of Indian Police and U.S. Marshalls from Oklahoma Indian Territory and Judge Parkers Marshalls. I have Texas Rangers on both sides of my family and still looking for more information on them as well.

 

Collecting books on Rangers, Gun Fighters and Outlaws is a very interesting hobby and new research turns up everday. I have a lagre number of M. Marvin Hunters news letter from the 1920s taken from first hand reports and was called Frontier Times from Bandera Texas. I had the chance to meet him before he passed and he let me try on John Hardins boots and hat from his museum and I once dated a girl our of the Hardin family and her mother [Mother was a Taylor] was married to an outlaw family and I have told here before how strange the family was even after a 100 years. Tight lipped and never trusting anyone and cold hearted as hell.

As an investment, I sometimes think books hold there value as well as guns and moreso when out of print.

 

Texas Man