Great Documents in American Indian History

xvi, 416 pp. 8vo. "The condition of American Indians has become a matter of increasing concern to those who realize that society as a whole is impoverished when any large segment of the population is deprived of the rights and opportunities that the majority take for granted. The plight of the American Indian is thus seen as a continuing impetus to the attainment of what Americans hold to be the basic ideals of their national life. But, as Wayne Moquin and Charles Van Doren point out in their introduction to this book, "Indians are not just symbols; they are also people--an inherently diverse group with a culture, heritage, humor, self-consciousness, and outlook that will not be dissipated by evanescent notions of a melting pot. They insist on maintaining the certain identity they know they have as a contribution to cultural pluralism." Great Documents in American Indian History is a survey of Indian life and history in the words of Indians from many tribes all over the United States. The reader is thus provided with a "mosaic of Indian-ness" that could not be obtained by the study, however detailed, of one tribe or language group. The first section of the book describes life within the tribal communities and provides insight into the sweep of Indian thought and activity from the legends of origin to social and political customs and organization. The second section, which covers a period of nearly three hundred years, from the early seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth, is devoted to the long series of confrontations between red men and white that included broken treaties, land cessions, reservations, a lost way of life, and occasional massacres. The third and final section ranges from 1900 to 1970 and focuses on such twentieth-century issues as pan-Indian efforts to achieve full social and political rights, the complexities of adjusting to modern technology and urbanization, and the rise of the "Red Power" movement."