Celebrate Native American Heritage Month

Angie Debo penned Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place. "On September 5, 1886, the entire nation rejoiced as the news flashed from the Southwest that the Apache war leader Geronimo had surrendered to Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles. With Geronimo, at the time of his surrender, were Chief Naiche (the son of the great Cochise), sixteen other warriors, fourteen women, and six children. It had taken a force of 5,000 regular army troops and a series of false promises to "capture" the band. Yet the surrender that day was not the end of the story of the Apaches associated with Geronimo. Besides his small band, 394 of his tribesmen, including his wife and children, were rounded up, loaded into railroad cars, and shipped to Florida. For more than twenty years Geronimo’s people were kept in captivity at Fort Pickens, Florida; Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama; and finally Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They never gave up hope of returning to their mountain home in Arizona and New Mexico, even as their numbers were reduced by starvation and disease and their children were taken from them to be sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania." (from Amazon.com)

"Dispelling the clouds of romance and legend that have surrounded Pocahontas throughout the more than two centuries since her death, Grace Steele Woodward here re-creates the life of the Powhatan Indian princess in her book Pocahontas. Indeed, the true story, as it emerges from these pages, is probably more dramatic and certainly more significant for American history than the legend. The story of Pocahontas coincides with the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World. Her story begins with her first visit to the colony as a child of ten and ends with her journey to England with her English husband, John Rolfe, and their young son. The event which catapulted her to fame was, of course, her rescue of Captain John Smith from murder at the hands of her father, Chief Powhatan, and his warriors. But the more significant contribution she made was her almost singlehanded deliverance of the Jamestown colonists from starvation and massacre. Without her compassionate gifts of food and warnings about her father's plots against them, the Jamestown settlers would probably have met the same fate as that of the Roanoke settlers. Pocahontas' visit to London was arranged by the Virginia Company, which established the Jamestown colony, not only as a gesture of appreciation to the young princess but also as a means of stimulating further interest in New World colonization. It was Pocahontas' final act of devotion to the colonists. She was never to see her homeland again. In preparation for writing this biography, Mrs. Woodward searched out the Virginia settings where Pocahontas lived as a child and those in England which she visited in adulthood. The author studied every pertinent document of the period, from official records of the Virginia Company to letters of highborn Londoners telling about Pocahontas' visit to England and its sorrowful aftermath." (from Amazon.com)

"In 1877, Standing Bear and his Indian people, the Ponca, were forcibly removed from their land in northern Nebraska. In defiance, Standing Bear sued in U.S. District Court for the right to return home. In a landmark case, the judge, for the first time in U.S. history, recognized Native American rights-acknowledging that "Standing Bear is a person"-and ruled in favor of Standing Bear. Standing Bear Is a Person by Stephen Dando-Collins is the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of that landmark 1879 court case, and the subsequent reverberations of the judge's ruling across nineteenth-century America. It is also a story filled with memorable characters typical of the Old West-the crusty and wise Indian chief, Standing Bear, the Army Indian-fighting general who became a strong Indian supporter, the crusading newspaper editor who championed Standing Bear's cause, and the "most beautiful Indian maiden of her time," Bright Eyes, who became Standing Bear's national spokesperson. At a time when America was obsessed with winning the West, no matter what, this is an intensely human story and a small victory for compassion. It is also the chronicle of an American tragedy: Standing Bear won his case, but the court's decision that should have changed everything, in the end, changed very little for America's Indians." (from Amazon.com)

Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe is by Kate Buford. "The first comprehensive biography of the legendary figure who defined excellence in American sports: Jim Thorpe, arguably the greatest all-around athlete in U.S. history. With clarity and an eye for detail, Kate Buford traces the pivotal moments of Thorpe’s incomparable career: growing up in the tumultuous Indian Territory of Oklahoma; leading the Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team to victories against the country’s finest college teams; winning gold medals in the 1912 Olympics pentathlon and decathlon; defining the burgeoning sport of professional football; and playing long, often successful—and previously unexamined—years in professional baseball. At the same time, however, Buford recounts the difficulties Thorpe faced as a Native American. We also see the infamous loss of his Olympic medals, stripped from him because he had previously played professional baseball, an event that would haunt Thorpe for the rest of his life. We see his struggles with alcoholism and personal misfortune, and how he came to distrust many of the hands extended to him. We learn the details of his vigorous advocacy for Native American rights while he chased a Hollywood career, and the truth behind the supposed reinstatement of his Olympic record in 1982. Here is the story of a complex, iconoclastic, profoundly talented man whose life encompassed both tragic limitations and truly extraordinary achievements." (from Amazon.com)