Tragic Encounters : A People's History of Native Americans

Page Smith was one of America's greatest historians. After studying with Samuel Eliot Morison at Harvard, Smith went on to a distinguished academic career that culminated with him being the founding Provost of Cowell College, the first college of the new campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. But he made his mark with a history of the United States published in eight volumes, each volume carrying the subtitle "A People's History of the United States. These were ground-braking histories, composed as a long continuous narrative loosely organized around the themes present in each age or period. There were sourced almost entirely in contemporaneous accounts of the events covered, and they set the ground for a whole new approach to history, that perhaps culminated in the work of Howard Zinn. During the last years of his life, Smith concentrated on composing a history of Native Americans after the first European contact. This manuscript was discovered unpublished after his death. Using his wonderful technique of narrative, discovering in the events of each period the thematic overview of that period, he again turns to contemporaneous documents to provide the structure and substance of his story. From Jamestown to Wounded Knee, the story of these Native peoples from coast to coast is explored, granting these oppressed and nearly destroyed people a chance to tell their own broad story. We know of no other similar attempt, and this book will surely caution and intrigue readers as they are offered a new slant on a very old suB. J.ect Page Smith was one of America's greatest historians. After studying with Samuel Eliot Morison at Harvard, Smith went on to a distinguished academic career that culminated with him being the founding Provost of Cowell College, the first college of the new campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. But he made his mark with a history of the United States published in eight volumes, each volume carrying the subtitle #x93;A People's History of the United States. These were ground-braking histories, composed as a long continuous narrative loosely organized around the themes present in each a "This work is not offered in any sense as a history of the American Indians or even a comprehensive account of white-Indian relations. It is, rather, an effort to suggest the nature of that interchange, of its inherent drama and abiding human interest; and to trace the hold that Indian culture has had on the imagination of the European settlers who ventured to the part of the New World that became the United States"-- Preface Early encounters The American Revolution Frontier warfare Sullivan's Expedition Sandusky Indians and the new Nation The Westering impulse Lewis and Clark The Indian Removal Pushing westward George Catlin The Indians of the Southwest Jedediah Smith Osborne Russell The Northwest The Sand Creek Massacre Postwar relations War in the Southwest Scattered campaigns The end of the Indian Wars After Wounded Knee.