History & Stories

The Sicangu (burnt thighs) received their name when some of the Lakota peoples' legs were burned in a great prairie fire. The French later named them Brule and two large groups of the band would be settled on two reservations, Rosebud and Lower Brule in...

"No two people ever remember a single event in identical ways, especially with the passage of time." ~Excerpt from the book.This fascinating look into history tells the tale of the people who were directly involved in the war of 1862. There are differing...

A child, an elder and the light from an ancient sky. A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers and the "old ones" still have powers beyond...

As the year 1890 wound to a close, a band of more than three hundred Lakota Sioux Indians led by Chief Big Foot made their way toward South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to join other Lakotas seeking peace. Fearing that Big Foot's band was...

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andres Resendez illuminates in his myth-shattering THE OTHER SLAVERY, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret.There was no abolitionist movement to...

The story of Spotted Tail and his people is the story of the deadly game of resistance and subjugation. The government expected the Sioux to live on a reservation, to farm the land, raise cattle, send their children to school and adopt Christianity - all...

There is a rock of incredible legend and history that stands before the Standing Rock Agency. Years ago a Dakota man took a second wife, thereby bruising the ego of his first. As camp was breaking up and the tribe was moving on, the first wife pouted and...

Originally published in 1967, this remarkable pictographic history consists of more than four hundred drawings and script notations by Amos Bad Heart Bull, and Oglala Lakota man from the Pine Ridge Reservation made between 1890 and the time of his death...

A political history. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the United States government, through its agents, superintendents and commissioners, endeavored to reshape Lakota society in accordance with American ideals.Part of this acculturation...

"This is my prayer that, through our sacred pipe and through this book in which I shall explain what our pipe really is, peace may come to those peoples who can understand, an understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone." ~Black...

A broad range of perspectives from Natives and non-Natives makes this book the most complete account and analysis of the Lakota Ghost Dance ever published. A revitalization movement that swept across Native communities of the West in the late 1880's, the...

This book presents Sioux life as it was in the years of its greatest vigor – 1830 to 1870. It traces the origins of the Sioux and brings them up to the present day, explaining the author’s opinion of why this tribe has not been assimilated...

Few places provide a more storied backdrop for key events related tot he high plains Indian wars than fort Robinson, Nebraska. Established in 1874 just south of the Black Hills, Fort Robinson witnessed many of the most dramatic and most tragic...

Fifty extraordinary letters, written by Dakota men imprisoned after the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862, give direct witness to a harsh and painful history by Minnesotans today.In April 1863 - after the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862, after the hanging of thirty eight...

"Allen's work is a lively account of his life and contemporary events from early years in Dakota Territory during the 1870's to the tragic day at Wounded Knee. Those interested will find here an early and detailed description of the Lakota Ghost Dance...

Indian views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877. The Great Sioux War comprised a series of sequential battles and skirmishes that arrayed elements of the U.S. Army against diverse tribes of Teton, or Western Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians during a...

The "Images of America" series is a celebration of the history of towns and cities across the country. Each photograph and title depicts stories from the past that have shaped the character of the community as it exists today.The county seat Dupree;...

Against the backdrop of contemporary reservation life and the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf Nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Indian, locked in their own understandings yet struggling to find a common voice. In...

Winner of the 2015 American Book Award. Today in the United Staes, there are more than 500 federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native peoples who once inhabited this land.The...

Eagle Elk’s story of his life, practice, and beliefs provides a uniquely introspective, demystified, and informative look at the career of a traditional Native American healer. We learn how a persistent vision and recurring visits by thunder...

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan (as told in the classic "Neither Wolf Nor Dog"). The touching,...

Established as the Pine Ridge Agency in southwestern South Dakota between Nebraska and the Black Hills in 1878, Pine Ridge became a reservation in 1889.The second largest reservation in the country, comprised of almost 2 million acres, it is home to...

"I am Crow Dog, I am the fourth of that name. Crow Dogs have played a big part in the history of our tribe and in the history of all the Indian nations of the Great Plains during the last two hundred years. We are still making history."Thus opens the...

The general focus in Lakota oral literary research has been relatively in the study of content rather than the process in oral traditions. In Delphine Red Shirt’s new book, George Sword’s Warrior Narratives: Compositional Process in Lakota...