Download or read book Sins of the Shovel written by Rachel Morgan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-11-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive history of early American archaeology—from reckless looting to professional science—and the field’s unfinished efforts to make amends today, told "with passion, indignation, and a dash of suspense" (New York Times). American archaeology was forever scarred by an 1893 business proposition between cowboy-turned-excavator Richard Wetherill and socialites-turned-antiquarians Fred and Talbot Hyde. Wetherill had stumbled upon Mesa Verde’s spectacular cliff dwellings and started selling artifacts, but with the Hydes’ money behind him, well—there’s no telling what they might discover. Thus begins the Hyde Exploring Expedition, a nine-year venture into Utah’s Grand Gulch and New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon that—coupled with other less-restrained looters—so devastates Indigenous cultural sites across the American Southwest that Congress passes first-of-their-kind regulations to stop the carnage. As the money dries up, tensions rise, and a once-profitable enterprise disintegrates, setting the stage for a tragic murder. Sins of the Shovel is a story of adventure and business gone wrong and how archaeologists today grapple with this complex heritage. Through the story of the Hyde Exploring Expedition, practicing archaeologist Rachel Morgan uncovers the uncomfortable links between commodity culture, contemporary ethics, and the broader political forces that perpetuate destructive behavior today. The result is an unsparing and even-handed assessment of American archaeology’s sins, past and present, and how the field is working toward atonement.

Download or read book Abolitionists Doctors Ranchers and Writers written by Lynne Marie Getz and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 250 years after ninety-five-year-old Elder Thomas Faunce got caught up in the mythmaking around Plymouth Rock, his great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter Hilda Faunce Wetherill died in Pacific Grove, California, leaving behind a cache of letters and family papers. The remarkable story they told prompted historian Lynne Marie Getz to search out related collections and archives—and from these to assemble a family chronology documenting three generations of American life. Abolitionists, Doctors, Ranchers, and Writers tells of zealous abolitionists and free-state campaigners aiding and abetting John Brown in Bleeding Kansas; of a Civil War soldier serving as a provost marshal in an occupied Arkansas town; of young women who became doctors in rural Texas and New York City in the late nineteenth century; of a homesteader and businessman among settler colonists in Colorado; and of sisters who married into the Wetherill family—known for their discovery of Ancient Pueblo sites at Mesa Verde and elsewhere—who catered to a taste for Western myths with a trading post on a Navajo reservation and a guest ranch for tourists on the upper Rio Grande. Whether they tell of dabbling in antebellum reforms like spiritualism, vegetarianism, and water cures; building schools for free blacks in Ohio or championing Indian rights in the West; serving in the US Army or confronting the struggles of early women doctors and educators, these letters reveal the sweep of American history on an intimate scale, as it was lived and felt and described by individuals; their family story reflects the richness and complexity of the genealogy of the nation.

Download or read book Traders Agents and Weavers written by Robert S. McPherson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For travelers passing through northern Navajo country, the desert landscape appears desolate. The few remaining Navajo trading posts, once famous for their bustling commerce, seem unimpressive. Yet a closer look at the economic and creative activity in this region, which straddles northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah, belies a far more interesting picture. In Traders, Agents, and Weavers, Robert S. McPherson unveils the fascinating—and at times surprising—history of the merging of cultures and artistic innovation across this land. McPherson, the author of numerous books on Navajo and southwestern history, narrates here the story of Navajo economic and cultural development through the testimonies of traders, government agents, tribal leaders, and accomplished weavers. For the first half of the twentieth century, trading posts dominated the Navajo economy in northwestern New Mexico. McPherson highlights the Two Grey Hills post and its sister posts Toadlena and Newcomb, which encouraged excellence among weavers and sold high-quality rugs and blankets. Parallel to the success of the trading industry was the establishment of the Northern Navajo or Shiprock Agency and Boarding School. The author explains the pivotal influence on the area of the agency’s stern and controversial founder, William T. Shelton, known by Navajos as Tall Leader. Through cooperation with government agents, American settlers, and traders, Navajo weavers not only succeeded financially but also developed their own artistic crafts. Shunning the use of brightly dyed yarn and opting for the natural colors of sheep’s wool, these weavers, primarily women, developed an intricate style that has few rivals. Eventually, economic shifts, including oil drilling and livestock reduction, eroded the traditional Navajo way of life and led to the collapse of the trading post system. Nonetheless, as McPherson emphasizes, Navajo weavers have maintained their distinctive style and method of production to this day.

Download or read book Viewing the Ancestors written by Robert S. McPherson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anaasází people left behind marvelous structures, the ruins of which are preserved at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelly. But what do we know about these people, and how do they relate to Native nations living in the Southwest today? Archaeologists have long studied the American Southwest, but as historian Robert McPherson shows in Viewing the Ancestors, their findings may not tell the whole story. McPherson maintains that combining archaeology with knowledge derived from the oral traditions of the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, and Hopi peoples yields a more complete history. McPherson’s approach to oral tradition reveals evidence that, contrary to the archaeological consensus that these groups did not coexist, the Navajos interacted with their Anaasází neighbors. In addition to examining archaeological literature, McPherson has studied traditional teachings and interviewed Native people to obtain accounts of their history and of the relations between the Anaasází and Athapaskan ancestors of today’s Hopi, Pueblo, and Navajo peoples. Oral history, McPherson points out, tells why things happened. For example, archaeological findings indicate that the Hopi are descended from the Anaasází, but Hopi oral tradition better explains why the ancient Puebloans may have left the Four Corners region: the drought that may have driven the Anaasází away was a symptom of what had gone wrong within the society—a point that few archaeologists could derive from what is found in the ground. An important text for non-Native scholars as well as Native people committed to retaining traditional knowledge, Viewing the Ancestors exemplifies collaboration between the sciences and oral traditions rather than a contest between the two.

Download or read book Pueblo Bonito and Chaco Canyon Revisited written by Jonathan E. Reyman and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde are arguably the two best-known archaeological areas in the American Southwest. Yet despite more than a century of archaeological research, many questions remain unanswered. From more than fifty years of research, archaeologist Jonathan E. Reyman has uncovered a wealth of materials from the work of George Pepper and Richard Wetherill, mostly from the 1896–1901 Hyde Exploring Expedition at Chaco Canyon but also from later field and collections research at more than twenty institutions in the United States. Previously unpublished Pepper-Wetherill field notes, photographs, and drawings combined with newly commissioned drawings offer a significant revision to what we know about the Chacoan world. Reyman’s research has produced a unique book that compares the published record with the unpublished record to provide new information and insight into the archaeological culture and history of Chaco, the findings of the HEE and other pre-1950 archaeological projects, various Chaco field schools, and much more. Pueblo Bonito and Chaco Canyon Revisited offers a blueprint for future research among existing archaeological collections.

Download or read book Stories and Stone written by Reuben J. Ellis and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep . . . For many, such historic places evoke images of stone ruins, cliff dwellings, pot shards, and petroglyphs. For others, they recall ancestry. Remnants of the American Southwest's ancestral Puebloan peoples (sometimes known as Anasazi) have mystified and tantalized explorers, settlers, archaeologists, artists, and other visitors for centuries. And for a select group of writers, these ancient inhabitants have been a profound source of inspiration. Collected here are more than fifty selections from a striking body of literature about the prehistoric Southwest: essays, stories, travelers' reports, and poems spanning more than four centuries of visitation. They include timeless writings such as John Wesley Powell's The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Tributaries and Frank Hamilton Cushing's "Life at Zuni," plus contemporary classics ranging from Colin Fletcher's The Man Who Walked Through Time to Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian to Edward Abbey's "The Great American Desert." Reuben Ellis's introduction brings contemporary insight and continuity to the collection, and a section on "reading in place" invites readers to experience these great works amidst the landscapes that inspired them. For anyone who loves to roam ancient lands steeped in mystery, Stories and Stone is an incomparable companion that will enhance their enjoyment.

Download or read book Taking the Field written by Amy Kohout and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the Field draws on the experiences of U.S. soldiers to examine interconnected ideas about nature and empire during the Progressive Era.

Download or read book A History of the Chaco Navajos written by David M. Brugge and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the present report, David Brugge, a National Park Service anthropologist and a recognized authority on the Athabaskans of the Southwest, carefully and meticulously details the history of the Navajo people of the Chaco area. Brugge's account is fundamentally descriptive and consciously impartial. Yet at times he presents us alternative views to the published accounts of historical events of the area, offering the "Navajo version" as gleaned from interviews with the old people themselves.

Download or read book White Mother to a Dark Race written by Margaret D. Jacobs and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous communities in the United States and Australia suffered a common experience at the hands of state authorities: the removal of their children to institutions in the name of assimilating American Indians and protecting Aboriginal people. Although officially characterized as benevolent, these government policies often inflicted great trauma on indigenous families and ultimately served the settler nations? larger goals of consolidating control over indigenous peoples and their lands. White Mother to a Dark Racetakes the study of indigenous education and acculturation in new directions in its examination of the key roles white women played in these policies of indigenous child-removal. Government officials, missionaries, and reformers justified the removal of indigenous children in particularly gendered ways by focusing on the supposed deficiencies of indigenous mothers, the alleged barbarity of indigenous men, and the lack of a patriarchal nuclear family. Often they deemed white women the most appropriate agents to carry out these child-removal policies. Inspired by the maternalist movement of the era, many white women were eager to serve as surrogate mothers to indigenous children and maneuvered to influence public policy affecting indigenous people. Although some white women developed caring relationships with indigenous children and others became critical of government policies, many became hopelessly ensnared in this insidious colonial policy.

Download or read book A Quilt of Words written by Sharon Niederman and published by Big Earth Publishing. This book was released on 1988 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, the Southwest has attracted people with yearnings for freedom and adventure, people who define themselves as individuals. Women's fascination with their way of life and the need for self-expression led them to write of their experiences, providing them with a creative outlet and offering those who came later a unique window into the past.

Download or read book Twelve Hundred Miles by Horse and Burro written by Harley Shaw and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. Stokley Ligon's work in bird conservation, habitat protection, and wildlife legislation during the mid-twentieth century is well-documented in his own writing and the writing of others. But hovering in the background of Ligon's life story has always been the rumor of a trip he made alone as a young man in 1913 in which he covered much of New Mexico alone on horseback. Details of the trip had faded into history, and Ligon—a self-effacing man—had never published the story. As it turns out, the trek was Ligon's first job with the US Biological Survey, and it did not go entirely undocumented. The breeding bird population report that eventually resulted from the journey, photographs from glass plate negatives, and—perhaps most enticingly—Ligon's own personal diary from these travels are presented here. Not just a compelling account of the expedition itself, the materials and insights found in this volume also reveal aspects of Ligon's family history, his early interest in wildlife, and the development of the wilderness skills needed to undertake such a survey. Using his original itinerary and handwritten report, the authors of this book revisited many of the places that Ligon surveyed and in a few cases were even able to locate and repeat Ligon's early photographs. Combined with a discussion of the conditions of birds and other wildlife then and now, this volume serves as a useful tool for understanding how wildlife numbers, distribution, and habitats changed in New Mexico over the course of the twentieth century. Birding enthusiasts, historians, naturalists, and even armchair adventurers will all find something to love in this chronicle of a young man from a West Texas ranching family with a driving ambition to be a professional naturalist and writer.

Download or read book The National Parks written by Dayton Duncan and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from the acclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and The War. America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres. The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intense political battles behind the evolution of the park system, and the enduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture the importance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala in Hawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali in Alaska to the Everglades in Florida, from Glacier in Montana to Big Bend in Texas. And they introduce us to a diverse cast of compelling characters—both unsung heroes and famous figures such as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ansel Adams—who have been transformed by these special places and committed themselves to saving them from destruction so that the rest of us could be transformed as well. The National Parks is a glorious celebration of an essential expression of American democracy.

Download or read book In Search of the Old Ones written by David Roberts and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exuberant, hands-on fly-on-the-wall account that combines the thrill of canyoneering and rock climbing with the intellectual sleuthing of archaeology to explore the Anasazi. David Roberts describes the culture of the Anasazi—the name means “enemy ancestors” in Navajo—who once inhabited the Colorado Plateau and whose modern descendants are the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism. Roberts’s book is full of up-to-date thinking on the culture of the ancient people who lived in the harsh desert country of the Southwest.

Download or read book All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees or Casinos written by Catherine C. Robbins and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both a tribute to the unique experiences of individual Native Americans and a celebration of the values that draw American Indians together, this book explores contemporary Native life. Based on personal experience and grounded in journalism, this story begins with the repatriation of ancestral remains, excavated during an archaeological expedition nearly a century earlier, to the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico. This event, along with subsequent repatriations, has accelerated similar momentum across much of Native America. Author Catherine C. Robbins traces this restorative effect in areas such as economic development, urbanization, the arts, science, and health care. Through dozens of interviews, Robbins draws out the voices of Indian people, some well-known and many at the grassroots level, to speak against the background of the narrative's historical context. The result is a rich account of Native American life in contemporary America, revealing not a monolithic "Indian" experience, but rather a mosaic of diverse peoples existing on a continuum that marks both their distinctions and their shared realities.--From publisher description.

Download or read book Swift to Wrath written by William D. Carrigan and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2013-05-24 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarship on lynching has typically been confined to the extralegal execution of African Americans in the American South. The nine essays collected here look at lynching in the context of world history, encouraging a complete rethinking of the history of collective violence. Employing a diverse range of case studies, the volume’s contributors work to refute the notion that the various acts of group homicide called "lynching" in American history are unique or exceptional. Some essays consider the practice of lynching in a global context, confounding the popular perception that Americans were alone in their behavior and suggesting a wide range of approaches to studying extralegal collective violence. Others reveal the degree to which the practice of lynching has influenced foreigners’ perceptions of the United States and asking questions such as, Why have people adopted the term lynching—or avoided it? How has the meaning of the word been transformed over time in society? What contextual factors explain such transformations? Ultimately, the essays illuminate, opening windows on ordinary people’s thinking on such critical issues as the role of law in their society and their attitudes toward their own government.

Download or read book Buried Treasures written by Richard Melzer and published by Sunstone Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melzer offers an impressive new book about famous New Mexico gravesites, usually the only monuments left to honor the human treasures who helped shape state, national, and often international history.

Download or read book Willa Cather and Others written by Jonathan Goldberg and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2001-02-13 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVQueer theory employed in a sympathetic reading of Cather in all her complexity, and in relation to several of her contemporaries./div