AMERICAN EPIC: The Story of the American Indian

An excellent chronicle of the tragedies and triumphs of the North American Indians from the pre-Columbian migrations to today's Red Power, with special emphasis upon the effects of European and Euro-American contacts on interrelations among the different peoples of the New World. Although aimed at the general reader and not the professional anthropologist, it packs in a considerable amount of information about the cultural development of the various tribes under the impact of such historical milestones as the Industrial Revolution and westward expansion, and through the painfully disruptive period of forced removal and resettlement that decimated tribes and shrank Indian country almost to the vanishing point. The final sections feature the efforts of federal agencies and individual crusaders to alleviate conditions on the reservations and the Indians' exertions on their own behalf through various intertribal coalitions and the ""powwow circuit."" With more than forty-five years of collective research and field experience under their belts, the authors decry the ""deplorable effect on Indian lives of a person who visits for three days and goes away an expert"" with mournful tales of the deprivations of these ""second-class citizens."" Their book stresses the positive side of the Indians' struggle to survive the Euro-American steamroller, in the hope that it ""will suggest possible solutions to the problems of other conquering, conquered, and emerging, nations.