6 books found
by Lawrence A. Clayton, Edward C. Moore, Vernon James Knight
2024 · University of Alabama Press
“For those interested in De Soto and his expedition, these volumes are an absolute necessity.” —The Hispanic American Historical Review 1993 Choice Outstanding Academic Book, sponsored by Choice Magazine The De Soto expedition was the first major encounter of Europeans with indigenous North Americans in the eastern half of the United States. De Soto and his army of over 600 men, including 200 cavalry, spent four years traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. The De Soto Chronicles Volume 1 and Volume 2 present for the first time all four primary accounts of the De Soto expedition together in English translation. The four primary accounts are generally referred to as Elvas, Rangel, Biedma (in Volume 1), and Garcilaso, or the Inca (in Volume 2). In this landmark 1993 publication, Clayton’s team presents the four accounts with literary and historical introductions. They further add brief essays about De Soto and the expedition, translations of De Soto documents from the Spanish Archivo General de Indias, two short biographies of De Soto, and bibliographical studies. For anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, The De Soto Chronicles are valued for the unique ethnological information they contain. They form the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America—the Mississippian culture—a culture largely lost in the wake of European contact.
Although Frederick Webb Hodge once remarked that the members of the Eastern Apache tribe called the Mescaleros were "never regarded as so warlike" as the Apaches of Arizona, their history clearly belies that statement. The record is one of hardship and oppression alternating with wars of revenge. They were friendly to the Spaniards until victimized by them. They were also friendly to the Americans until they were betrayed again. For three hundred years they fought the Spaniards and Mexicans. For forty more they fought the Americans, before subsiding into a long period of lethargy and discouragement. Only since 1930 have they made real progress. In the early days their principal range was between the Río Grande and the Pecos in New Mexico, but it extended also into the Staked Plains and southward into Mexico. They moved about freely, wintering on the Río Grande or farther south, ranging the buffalo plains in the summer, following the sun and the food supply. They owned nothing and everything. Now they are in a precarious economic condition, but at least they are American citizens and still own their reservation in the Tularosa country of New Mexico. Their children are beginning to go away to college and prepare themselves for leadership, and while in many ways they have not bridged the gap between their old life and the new, they have made amazing progress. Their story is told here from the earliest records to the present day, from the Indian's point of view. Cruel and revengeful as these Indians were at times, they always had more than sufficient provocation, and a catalog of the sins committed against them is revealing, even appalling, to a white reader.
by Charles Henry Cunningham
1919
This is the first book to examine the full arc of American isolationism, from the founding era through the Trump presidency. Charles Kupchan tells the fascinating story of why isolationism dominated US statecraft for so long, uncovers isolationism's enduring connection to American exceptionalism, and explains why an aversion to foreign entanglement is making a comeback. This fresh account of American history sheds revealing light on not only the nation's past, but also where US grand strategy is headed and how the nation can find the middle ground between isolationism and strategic overreach.