The Indian Sign Language
In 1876 and 1877, Captain W. P. Clark commanded a detachment of Indian scouts — including Pawnees, Shoshones, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Crows, and Siuox — who conversed in sign language. They made requests, relayed information, and told stories with their hands, communicating in a language indispensable for quick understanding between Indians of different tribes. The scouts patiently taught Clark the sign system, which he patiently recorded in this book.
Originally written in 1884 for use by the United States Army, The Indian Sign Language is far more than a grammar book or curiosity. Clark worked closely with the Indians wo taught him the language, and his respect for them and their way of thinking informs every page.
Clark believed that sign language could assist him “to think like the Indians,” which he considered essential for a conscientious officer.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-6309-3
443 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″
University of Nebraska Press, 1982
The Indian Tipi – Its History, Construction, and Use.
This book will show you how to make, use, and enjoy the best of all movable shelters, the Indian tipi or tepee. The American Indian was a strictly practical man. But he was also a born artist. As a result, his inventions are commonly as beautiful as they are serviceable. Sometimes we can make these of more durable materials, but we could never improve on the design.
The most notable contributions to civilization are the canoe, snowshoe, moccasin and the tipi. Many used the tipi for a place of shelter. A staple of an item that is still used today.
ISBN – 978-0-8061-2236-6
343 Pages
Softback
5 7/8″ x 9″
University of Oklahoma Press, 1957
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
In 1803, when the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the great expanse of this new American territory was a blank — not only on the map but in our knowledge. President Thomas Jefferson keenly understood that the course of the nation’s destiny lay westward and that a national “Voyage of Discovery” must be mounted to determine the nature and accessibility of the frontier.
He commissioned his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an intelligence-gathering expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, made the first trek across the Louisiana Purchase, mapping the rivers as he went, tracing the principal waterways to the sea, and establishing the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Together the captains kept a journal, a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the Indian tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River. In keeping this record they made an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history.
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, writes Bernard DeVoto, was “the first report on the West, on the United States over the hill and beyond the sunset, on the province of the American future. There has never been another so excellent or so influential…It satisfied desire and created desire: the desire of the westering nation.”
ISBN: 978-0-395-85996-4
504 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/4″
Houghton Mifflin, 1997
The Lakota Way – Stories and Lessons for Living
Rich with storytelling, history, and folklore, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and imparts the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Joseph Marshall is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Sioux and has dedicated his entire life to practicing and teaching the wisdom he learned from his elders. Here he focuses on the twelve core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of living — bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion — and illustrates them with personal stories and archetypal Lakota tales. Whether teaching a lesson on respect imparted by the mythical Deer Woman or the humility embodied by the legendary Lakota leader Crazy Horse, The Lakota Way is a compelling and profound work that offers a fresh outlook on spirituality and ethical living.
ISBN – 978-0-14-219609-0
240 Pages
Softback
5″ x 7 3/4″
Penguin Compass, 2001
The Lewis & Clark Trail – Yesterday and Today
William Hill commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with this guide to the history and the route of the Corps of Discovery. Hill explains the reasons President Thomas Jefferson sent the explorers west. He describes how the country expedition passed through looked two centuries ago and how it looks today.
Journals, maps, paintings, and photographs illustrate the story.
The Lewis and Clark Trail also contains information about the many museums, interpretive centers and historic sites, from Philadelphia to Astoria, Oregon, that have been opened and upgraded as part of the bicentennial celebration.
ISBN – 0-87004-439-7
288 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Caxton Press, 2004
The Mountain Men – The Dramatic History and Lore of the First Frontersmen
To know how the West was really won, start with the exploits of these unsung mountain men who, like the legendary Jeremiah Johnson, were real buckskin survivalists. Preceded only by Lewis and Clark, beaver fur trappers roamed the river valleys and mountain ranges of the West, living on fish and game, fighting or trading with the Native Americans, and forever heading toward the untamed wilderness.
In this story of rough, heroic men and their worlds, Laycock weaves historical facts and practical instruction with profiles of individual trappers, including harrowing escapes, feats of supreme courage and endurance, and sometimes violent encounters with grizzly bears and Native Americans.
ISBN: 978-1-4930-1882-6
246 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Lyons Press, 2016
The Mystery of John Colter – The Man Who Discovered Yellowstone
From the first account of “Colter’s Run,” published in 1810, fascination with John Colter, one of America’s most famous and yet least known frontiersmen and discoverer of Yellowstone Park, has never waned. Unlike other legends of the era like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson, Colter has remained elusive because he left not a single letter, diary, or reminiscence. Gathering the available evidence and guiding readers through a labyrinth of hearsay, rumor, and myth, two Colter experts for the first time tell the whole story of Colter and his legend.
ISBN – 978-1-4422-6282-9
243 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Rowman & Littlefield, 2014
The Oregon Trail: Yesterday and Today
Here lies a description of the history of the Oregon Trail- from past to present. It is a unique blend of maps, guides, emigrant diaries and journals, old drawings and paintings, together with recent photographs. This book tells the story of the Oregon Trail in an interesting, easy to read manner and is packed with information for every one, the armchair traveler, the tourist, the historian and the Oregon Trail buff.
The realities of the trail are examined, as the misconceptions that have surrounded it are dispelled. The trail is explored through the eyes of the early emigrants’ art and diaries, which stand as evidence of their experiences and their true amazement as they traveled westward. Old paintings are compared to similar views today as photographed by the author while many of the landmarks along the trail still remain. Learn about he people and events that brought so many people west in the years of its development. Not only will you read about the trail, you will experience it almost as if you were and early emigrant yourself.
ISBN: 978-0-87004-319-2
197 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Caxton Press, 2008
The Original Journal of Charles Larpenteur – My Travels to The Rocky Mountains Between 1833 and 1872
“Times lonesome enough to kill a dog.” Charles Larpenteur is speaking of a time in 1871 when he’d left the fur trade on the Upper Missouri and had begun his retirement in northwestern Iowa. But his language is reminiscent of that in his journal in which he speaks of the many long, dull, and melancholy days he’d spent at his remote post on that distant stretch of river, so far from the comforts of St. Louis. But his chronicle also is packed with intimate details of life on the frontier, with information on trading activities and its personnel, and on the repetitive disappointments that characterized his long life.
318 Pages
Hardback
7 1/4″ x 10 1/4″
The Museum Association of the American Frontier, 2007
The Perilous West – Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail
Although a host of adventures stormed west in 1806 after Lewis and Clark’s safe return, seven of them left unique legacies because of their monumental journeys, their lionhearted spirit in the face of hardship, and the way their paths intertwined time and again.
These seven counted the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass among their discoveries. More important, they forged the Oregon Trail — a path destined to link the Atlantic coast with the Pacific, spurring national expansion as it carried trappers, soldiers, pioneers, missionaries, and gold-seekers westward.
ISBN: 978-1-4422-1113-1
239 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013
An American Legend
It operated less than two years. It lost an enormous amount of money. But the Pony Express delivered the mail across a continent at a critical time and captured the imagination of people all over the world like few events in the history of the American West.
ISBN – 978-0870044762
321 Pages
Caxton Press, 2010
The Prairie Traveler – The 1859 Handbook for Westbound Pioneers
For today’s reader, Marcy’s manual offers a fascinating view of the rigors and hazards of crossing the country. In 1859, it provided life-or-death advice on everything from finding water and building a fire to avoiding quicksand and treating snakebites. Marcy promised to assist his reader in escaping unforeseen disasters and maintaining relative comfort during the journey, adding that the intrepid pilgrim “will feel himself a master spirit in the wilderness he traverses, and not the victim of every new combination of circumstances which nature affords or fate allots, as if to try his skill and prowess.”
Marcy’s counsel encompasses choosing the best routes to California, wagon maintenance and the selection and care of horses, food supplies, first-aid procedures, and fording rivers. He also conveys information “concerning the habits of Indians,” including Native American tracking and hunting techniques, smoke signals and sign language, and battle tactics. Twenty-one original illustrations complement the informative and entertaining text.
ISBN – 978-0-486-45150-3
256 Pages
Softback
5″ x 8″
Dover Publications, 2006
The Revenant – A Novel of Revenge
The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier. Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.
ISBN: 978-1-250-10119-8
262 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/4″
Picador/St. Martin’s Press, 2002
The Saga of Hugh Glass – Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man
Before his most fabulous adventure, Hugh Glass was captured by the buccaneer Jean Lafitte and turned pirate himself until his first chance to escape. Soon he fell prisoner to the Pawnees and lived for four years as one of them before he managed to make his way to St. Louis. Next he joined a group of trappers to open up the fur-rich, Indian-held territory of the Upper Missouri River. Then unfolds the legend of a man who survived under impossible conditions: robbed and left to die by his comrades, he struggled alone, unarmed, and almost mortally wounded through two thousand miles of wilderness.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-5834-1
237 Pages
Softback
5 1/4″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1963
The Splendid Wayfaring – Jedediah Smith and the Ashley-Henry Men, 1822 – 1831
The exciting narrative begins in 1822, when (Jedediah) Smith ascended the Missouri River in the first fur-trading expedition of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, and ends in 1831, when he was killed by Comanche Indians on the Cimarron River. In the intervening years Smith became the first explorer to recognize South Pass as the gateway to the Far West, the first overlander to reach California and travel up the coast to the Columbia River, and the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin from west to east.
ISBN: 0-8032-5723-6
290 Pages
Softback
5″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1920
The Story of Sacajawea – Coloring Book
Kidnapped as a young child by enemy warriors, sold to a French trader, and married at fourteen, Sacajawea was just a teenager when she helped lead explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark through the wilderness of the great American Northwest.
ISBN: 978-0-486-42374-6
32 Pages
Softback
8 1/8″ x 10 7/8″
Dover Publications, 2002
