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Great Plains Indians

David J. Wishart

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Imprint: Bison Books
Published: 09/2016
Pages: 162
Subject: Social Science
eBook ISBN: 9780803290938

DESCRIPTION

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.   

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David J. Wishart is a professor of geography at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is the author or editor of many books, including Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (Nebraska, 2004), and The Last Days of the Rainbelt (Nebraska, 2014).   

REVIEWS

"Essential reading for any westerner. Great Plains Indians is a magnificent encapsulation of a story we all need to know."—Elizabeth Fenn, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People    

"Excellent style—probably the most readable synthesis I have encountered. Masterful in its economy, without sounding trite."—Bonnie Lynn-Sherow, author of Red Earth: Race and Agriculture in Oklahoma Territory

"David Wishart covers an astonishing range of time and territory in this brief introduction to the history of Plains Indians. Beginning with the earliest human migrations to the region, Wishart takes readers through Native cosmology and subsistence patterns, European incursions and indigenous dispossession, before arriving at the present moment, characterized by the bleak realities of reservation life mixed with the hopes represented by a resurgent population awaiting political mobilization."—Andrew R. Graybill, author of The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West  

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