Few areas of the world have played as prominent a role in human evolution as the Levantine Corridor, a comparatively narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the expanse of inhospitable desert to the east. The first hominids to leave Africa, over 1.5 million years ago, first entered the Levant before spreading into what is now Europe and Asia. About 100,000 years ago another African exodus, this time of anatomically modern humans, colonized the Levant b...

In the fourteenth century, a culture arose in and around the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas that represents the last prehistoric peoples before the cultural upheaval introduced by European explorers. This culture has been labeled the Toyah phase, characterized by a distinctive tool kit and a bone-tempered pottery tradition.Spanish documents, some translated decades ago, offer glimpses of these mobile people. Archaeological excavations, some quite recent, offer other views of this...

A masterful reconstruction of one of the worst Indian massacres in American historyIn April 1871, a group of Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O?odham Indians surrounded an Apache village at dawn and murdered nearly 150 men, women, and children in their sleep. In the past century the attack, which came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre, has largely faded from memory. Now, drawing on oral histories, contemporary newspaper reports, and the participants? own accoun...

A stunningly vivid account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the Apaches’ decades-long struggle for their homeland—a vibrant saga of blood, power, family, and revenge from the renowned historian and author of The Undiscovered Country“An epic tale filled with Homeric scenes and unforgettable characters.”—Chicago TribuneThey called him Mickey Free. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. And his kidnapping in 1861 started th...

"Among the ten best Western books of all time. It has that rare combination, a personal reminiscence covering important events, and a thoroughly scholarly and reliable treatment." — Westerners Brand Book. For fifteen years John G. Bourke served under General George Crook as they fought side by side on the frontiers of the United States from Mexico to the Canadian border. Crook and his troops clashed against some of the most formidable opponents of the nineteenth century during the Great Si...

The fierce bands of Comanche Indians, on the testimony of their contemporaries, both red and white, numbered some of the most splendid horsemen the world has ever produced. Often the terror of other tribes, who, on finding a Comanche footprint in the Western plains country, would turn and go in the other direction, they were indeed the Lords of the South Plains.For more than a century and a half, since they had first moved into the Southwest from the north, the Comanches raided and...

For more than four hundred years in New Mexico, Pueblo Indians and Spaniards have lived “together yet apart.” Now the preeminent historian of that region’s colonial past offers a fresh, balanced look at the origins of a precarious relationship.John L. Kessell has written the first narrative history devoted to the tumultuous seventeenth century in New Mexico. Setting aside stereotypes of a Native American Eden and the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty, he paints an evenhanded picture ...

Side by side with the westward drift of white Americans in the 1830's was the forced migration of the Five Civilized Tribes from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Both groups were deployed against the tribes of the prairies, both breaking the soil of the undeveloped hinterland. Both were striving in the years before the Civil War to found schools, churches, and towns, as well as to preserve orderly development through government and laws.In this book Grant Foreman brings ...

A scrupulously researched investigation of the mysterious massacre of Hopi Indians at Awat'ovi, and the event's echo through American history.The Hopi community of Awat’ovi existed peacefully on Arizona’s Antelope Mesa for generations until one bleak morning in the fall of 1700—raiders from nearby Hopi villages descended on Awat’ovi, slaughtering their neighboring men, women, and children. While little of the pueblo itself remains, five centuries of history lie ben...

After the end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848, the Southwest Borderlands remained hotly contested territory. Over following decades, the United States government exerted control in the Southwest by containing, destroying, segregating, and deporting indigenous peoples—in essence conducting an extended military campaign that culminated with the capture of Geronimo and the forced removal of the Chiricahua Apaches in 1886. In this book, Janne Lahti charts these encounters and the cultural diff...

John C. Cremony was a surveyor for the U.S. Boundary Commission charting the nation’s frontier with Mexico in the 1850s when he first became fascinated with Apache culture. Over two decades he came to know them and their language like no other white man in history. Life Among the Apaches remains the first and foremost source on the Apache people – their beliefs, tribal life and fighting tactics.

The Trade and Intercourse Acts passed by Congress between 1796 and 1834 set up a system for individuals to receive monetary compensation from the federal government for property stolen or destroyed by American Indians. By the end of the Mexican-American War, both Anglo-Americans and Nuevomexicanos became experts in exploiting this system—and in using the army to collect on their often-fraudulent claims. As Gregory F. Michno reveals in Depredation and Deceit, their combined efforts...