Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less … Continued
Willa Cather's best-known novel is an epic — almost mythic — story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the Southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, … Continued
In 1917 Mabel Sterne (Mabel Dodge Luhan), patron of the arts and spokeswoman for the New York avant-garde, came to the Southwest seeking a new life. This autobiographical account is a remarkable description of an Easterner's journey to the American West. It is also a great story of personal and philosophical transformation. The geography of … Continued
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a 13-year-old pioneer traveling west, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Oatman’s story has become legend, inspiring artworks, fiction, film and radio plays. … Continued
Riding 2,000 miles on horseback from Montana to New Mexico sounds like a crazy but thrilling dream— or pure hardship and exhaustion. According to Bernice Ende, the trip was all that and more. More than once she is traversed the Great Plains, the Southwest deserts, the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains. Lady Long Rider: … Continued
This book is composed of letters written by a young woman who lost her husband in a railroad accident and went to Denver to seek support for herself and her two-year-old daughter. Turning her hand to the nearest work, she went out by the day as house-cleaner and laundress. Later, seeking to better herself, she … Continued
Read the 2022 Western Heritage Award-winning Western novel The Removed by Brandon Hobson. In the 15 years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer’s in her husband, Ernest. Their adult daughter, … Continued
Celebrate the Museum’s Annual Chuck Wagon Festival by learning about the inventor of the original chuck wagon — Charlie Goodnight. Discover the exciting story of a Texas Ranger, adventurer and immigration officer who became a symbol of his age while gambling with death in the wild frontier regions of Texas, Arizona and Old and New … Continued
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer draws on her experience as botanist, Native American and mother. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer holds to the idea that we have much to learn from plants and animals about living in reciprocal relationship with the world around us. Through a braid of memoir, scientific … Continued
When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. When … Continued
