Lincoln And The Indians

"With a new preface by the author"--P. [1] of cover.

"This book traces Lincoln's family history, his early years, and how they shaped--and may have shaped--his attitudes toward Native Americans"--

Lincoln presents the writing of today's most gifted Native American authors, against an ethnographic background which should enable a growing number of readers to share his enthusiasm. Lincoln has lived with American Indians, knows them, and is respected by them; all this enhances his book.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year In August 1862, after suffering decades of hardship, broken treaties, and relentless encroachment on their land, the Dakota leader Little Crow reluctantly agreed that his people must go to war. After six weeks of fighting, the uprising was smashed, thousands of Indians were taken prisoner by the US army, and 303 Dakotas were sentenced to death. President Lincoln, embroiled in the most devastating period of the Civil War, personally intervened to save the lives of 265 of the condemned men, but in the end, 38 Dakota men would be hanged in the largest government-sanctioned execution in U.S. history. Writing with uncommon immediacy and insight, Scott W. Berg details these events within the larger context of the Civil War, the history of the Dakota people and the subsequent United States–Indian wars, and brings to life this overlooked but seminal moment in American history.

On the bright Sunday morning of August 17, 1862, four Sioux warriors emerged from the Big Woods northwest of St. Paul, Minnesota, on their way home from an unsuccessful hunt. When they came upon the homestead of Robinson Jones, a white man who ran a post office and general store and offered lodging for travelers, the Indians opened fire on the settlers, killing almost all of them. Soon bands of Sioux were rampaging across southwestern Minnesota, attacking farms and trading posts and murdering everywhere they wentósplitting the skulls of men; clubbing children to death; raping daughters and wives before disemboweling them; cutting off hands, breasts, and genitals; and looting whatever could be taken before setting fire to what remained. Perhaps as many as two thousand settlers were brutally massacred, although the number has never been firmly established. Once the uprising was suppressed, 303 Sioux warriors were sentenced to death. The people of Minnesota called for their immediate execution, a sentiment that matched the national mood. Abraham Lincoln suspected that most of those convicted were marginal players in the rebellion and that the worst culprits had escaped, and he carefully reviewed each case before selecting the 39ólater reduced to 38ómen to hang whom he believed to be guilty of the worst crimes. The remainder were committed to life in prison. "I could not hang men for votes," he later explained. On December 26 the 38 were simultaneously hanged on a gallows construction especially for them. The Sioux Uprising of 1862, also known as the Dakota War, sounded the first shots of a war that continued for another 28 years, culminating in the massacre of Indian women and children at Wounded Knee in 1890. Lincoln's death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth ended his intention to reform the government's Indian policy, and both political parties continued to use the system to reward their supporters, a practice that largely continues to this day.

David J. Wishart's Great Plains Indians covers thirteen thousand years of fascinating, dynamic, and often tragic history. From a hunting and gathering lifestyle to first contact with Europeans to land dispossession to claims cases, and much more, Wishart takes a wide-angle look at one of the most significant groups of people in the country. Myriad internal and external forces have profoundly shaped Indian lives on the Great Plains. Those forces--the environment, religion, tradition, guns, disease, government policy--have written their way into this history. Wishart spans the vastness of Indian time on the Great Plains, bringing the reader up to date on reservation conditions and rebounding populations in a sea of rural population decline. Great Plains Indians is a compelling introduction to Indian life on the Great Plains from thirteen thousand years ago to the present.

Beginning with a general discussion of American Indian origins, language families, and culture areas, Deloria then focuses on her own people, the Dakotas, and the intricate kinship system that governed all aspects of their life. She writes, “Exacting and unrelenting obedience to kinship demands made the Dakotas a most kind, unselfish people, always acutely aware of those about them and innately courteous.” Deloria goes on to show the painful transition to reservations and how the holdover of the kinship system worked against Indians trying to follow white notions of progress and success. Her ideas about what both races must do to participate fully in American life are as cogent now as when they were first written. Originally published in 1944, “Speaking of Indians” is an important source of information about Dakota culture and a classic in its elegant clarity of insight.

Long before lucrative tribal casinos sparked controversy, Native Americans amassed other wealth that provoked intense debate about the desirability, morality, and compatibility of Indian and non-Indian economic practices. Alexandra Harmon examines seven such instances of Indian affluence and the dilemmas they presented both for Native Americans and for Euro-Americans--dilemmas rooted in the colonial origins of the modern American economy. Harmon's study not only compels us to look beyond stereotypes of greedy whites and poor Indians, but also convincingly demonstrates that Indians deserve a prominent place in American economic history and in the history of American ideas.