The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

Written by Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard Chappelle

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: March 17, 1983
Price: $32.95
ISBN: 978-1-56098-296-8 (1-56098-296-9)

The bark canoes of the North American Indians, particularly those of birchbark, were among the most highly developed manually propelled primitive watercraft. They could be used to carry heavy loads in shallow streams but were light enough to be hauled long distances over land. Built with Stone Age tools from available... Read more >

The First Americans
In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery
Written by James Adovasio and Jake Page

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: June 17, 2003
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-75704-4 (0-375-75704-X)

Archaeologist J. M. Adovasio has spent the last thirty years at the center of one of our most fiery scientific debates: Who were the first humans in the Americas, and how and when did they get there?

H. L. Mencken said that “for every complex problem, there is a solution that is... Read more >

The Hold Life Has
Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community
Written by Catherine J. Allen

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: October 17, 2002
Price: $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-032-0 (1-58834-032-5)

This second edition of Catherine J. Allen’s distinctive ethnography of the Quechua-speaking people of the Andes brings their story into the present. She has added an extensive afterword based on her visits to Sonqo in 1995 and 2000 and has updated and revised parts of the original text. The book focuses... Read more >

The Sacred Hoop
Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions
Written by Paula Gunn Allen

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: September 1, 1992
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4617-3 (0-8070-4617-5)

This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions. Read more >

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear
The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing
Written by Lori Alvord and Elizbeth Cohen Van Pelt

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: June 6, 2000
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-37800-9 (0-553-37800-7)

The first Navajo woman surgeon combines western medicine and traditional healing.

A spellbinding journey between two worlds, this remarkable book describes surgeon Lori Arviso Alvord's struggles to bring modern medicine to the Navajo reservation in Gallup, New Mexico--and to bring the values of her people to a medical care system in danger... Read more >

Crazy Horse and Custer
The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors
Written by Stephen E. Ambrose

Format: Trade Paperback, 560 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: May 1, 1996
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-47966-0 (0-385-47966-2)

From the author of the bestselling D-Day, June 6, 1944 and Undaunted Courage, Stephen E. Ambrose's Crazy Horse and Custer is "an impressively researched and admirably narrated dual biography" (Publishers Weekly) of the two leaders whose strikingly parallel lives culminated with their legendary clash at Little Bighorn. Crazy Horse, leader of... Read more >

Makuna
Portrait of an Amazonian People
Written by Kaj Arhem
Photographed by Diego Samper

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: November 17, 2003
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-092-4 (1-58834-092-9)

Throughout their history, the Makuna have withstood the social and environmental stresses inflicted upon them by European arrival, the Amazonian rubber boom at the turn of the century, and a black-market demand for coca leaves during the 1970s and 1980s. Most recently, gold mining is threatening to destroy their hills and... Read more >

Killing the White Man's Indian
Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century
Written by Fergus M. Bordewich

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: April 14, 1997
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-42036-5 (0-385-42036-6)

Killing the White Man's Indian bravely confronts the current myths and often contradictory realities of Native American tribal life today. Based on three years of research, and written with neither a conservative nor a politically correct bias, the book reveals Native American politics and policies today in all their contradictory—and controversial—guises... Read more >

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past
Healing through Family Constellations, Ceremony, and Ritual
Written by Francesca Mason Boring

Format: Trade Paperback, 216 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: June 19, 2012
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-447-9 (1-58394-447-8)

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past is a pragmatic, spiritual journey that introduces a variety of specific rituals and conversations in connection with Constellations work, an experiential process that explores one's history and powerful events of the past in order to understand and resolve problems of the present. Constellations facilitator and author... Read more >

Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage
The First Peoples of Alaska
Edited by Aron A. Crowell, Rosita Worl, Paul C. Ongtooguk and Dawn D. Biddison

Format: Hardcover, 312 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: May 18, 2010
Price: $50.00
ISBN: 978-1-58834-270-6 (1-58834-270-0)

Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska features more than 200 objects representing the masterful artistry and design traditions of twenty Alaska Native peoples. Based on a collaborative exhibition created by Alaska Native communities, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the... Read more >

A Sorrow in Our Hearts

Written by Allan Eckert

Format: Paperback, 1088 pages
Publisher: Domain
On Sale: February 1, 1993
Price: $8.99
ISBN: 978-0-553-56174-6 (0-553-56174-X)

With the meticulous accuracy of a scholar and the dramatic flair of a novelist, Eckert's biography details Tecumseh's life, from his birth in 1768 under the augury of a shooting star, through his formation of an unprecedented alliance of Native American tribes during one of the most crucial periods in Native... Read more >

American Indian Myths and Legends

Written by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz

Format: Trade Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: August 12, 1985
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-74018-8 (0-394-74018-1)

This collection gathers one-hundred-sixty tales from eighty tribal groups to offer a rich and lively panorama of the Native American mythic heritage.  From all across the continent come tales of creation, love, of heroes and war, of animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. Alfonso Ortiz, an eminent anthropologist, and Richard... Read more >

Legends and Tales of the American West

Written by Richard Erdoes

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: September 1, 1998
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-70266-2 (0-375-70266-0)

From Davy Crockett, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane to Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Frank and Jesse James, here are more than 130 colorful stories of the pioneers, cowboys, outlaws, gamblers, prospectors, and lawmen who settled the wild west, creating a uniquely American hero and a fascinating folk mythology.

In... Read more >

Comanches
The History of a People
Written by T.R. Fehrenbach

Format: Trade Paperback, 592 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: April 8, 2003
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3049-1 (1-4000-3049-8)

Authoritative and immediate, this is the classic account of the most powerful of the American Indian tribes. T.R. Fehrenbach traces the Comanches’ rise to power, from their prehistoric origins to their domination of the high plains for more than a century until their demise in the face of Anglo-American expansion.

Master horseback... Read more >

Native American Photography at the Smithsonian
The Shindler Catalogue
Written by Paula Fleming

Format: Hardcover, 408 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: December 17, 2003
Price: $39.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-121-1 (1-58834-121-6)

This book of hauntingly beautiful Native American portraits reflects the tragic history of the Cheyenne, Sioux, Pawnee, Cherokee, and other groups whose leaders traveled to Washington in the mid-nineteenth-century to negotiate treaties with the US government. As compelling as the famous photographs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis, these unique images... Read more >

Star Mounds
Legacy of a Native American Mystery
Written by Ross Hamilton

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: May 1, 2012
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-446-2 (1-58394-446-X)

Star Mounds is a full-color illustrated study of the precolonial monuments of the greater Ohio Valley, woven together with over fifty “medicine stories” inspired by Native American mythology that demonstrate the depth of the knowledge held by indigenous peoples about the universe they lived in.

The earthworks of the region have... Read more >

Cave and Cosmos
Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality
Written by Michael Harner

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: April 9, 2013
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-546-9 (1-58394-546-6)

In 1980, Michael Harner blazed the trail for the worldwide revival of shamanism with his seminal classic The Way of the Shaman. In this long-awaited sequel, he provides new evidence of the reality of heavens.

Drawing from a lifetime of personal shamanic experiences and more than 2,500 reports of Westerners’ experiences... Read more >

Creation's Journey
Native American Identity and Belief
Written by Tom Hill and Richard W. Hill

Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: September 17, 1994
Price: $45.00
ISBN: 978-1-56098-453-5 (1-56098-453-8)

Drawing on the vast collections of the National Museum of the American Indian, Creation’s Journey retells the story of native life from the Arctic to the Tierra del Fuego, and from childhood to old age.

“Moving, instructive, and thought provoking. . . The stories and descriptions that accompany the images are often... Read more >

America in 1492
The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus
Written by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 2, 1993
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-74337-8 (0-679-74337-5)

Developed at the D Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian and edited by award-winning author Alvin Josephy, Jr., America in 1492 is an invaluable collection of essays by fifteen prominent historians, anthropologists, and scholars of art, religion, and folklore.  With the dozens of illustrations, drawn largely from the... Read more >

Tiwanaku and Its Hinterland
Archaeology and Paleoecology of an Andean Civilization Volume 2: Urban and Rural Archaeology
Written by Alan L. Kolata

Format: Hardcover, 528 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: January 17, 2003
Price: $110.00
ISBN: 978-1-58834-054-2 (1-58834-054-6)

The book presents, for the first time, a rich body of empirical data on the chronology of the Tiwanaku state; the nature of the social and political relationships between the city and its hinterland; the form and meaning of its monumental and elite architecture; and the texture of everyday life in... Read more >

Collecting Native America, 1870-1960

Written by Shepard Krech, III

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: February 15, 2010
Price: $39.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-277-5 (1-58834-277-8)

Between the 1870s and 1950s collectors vigorously pursued the artifacts of Native American groups. Setting out to preserve what they thought was a vanishing culture, they amassed ethnographic and archaeological collections amounting to well over one million objects and founded museums throughout North America that were meant to educate the public... Read more >

Here First
Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers
Edited by Arnold Krupat and Brian Swann

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: June 13, 2000
Price: $23.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75138-7 (0-375-75138-6)

Here First is an important new collection of essays by Native American writers compiled by Arnold Krupat and Brian Swann, the editors of I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers. In Here First, authors such as Sherman Alexie, Greg Sarris, and Elizabeth Woody tell the stories of their... Read more >

Arctic Dreams

Written by Barry Lopez

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 2, 2001
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72748-1 (0-375-72748-5)

Barry Lopez’s National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.

Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world–its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history... Read more >

1491 (Second Edition)
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Written by Charles C. Mann

Format: Trade Paperback, 576 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3205-1 (1-4000-3205-9)

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

In the last twenty years, archeologists and anthropologists equipped with a battery of new scientific techniques have made far-reaching discoveries that have completely changed their understanding... Read more >

1493
Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Written by Charles C. Mann

Format: Hardcover, 560 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: August 9, 2011
Price: $30.50
ISBN: 978-0-307-26572-2 (0-307-26572-2)

From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally... Read more >