Native American History

Discover a Lost Language

Originally published in 1666, written by John Eliot, a Puritan minister who went to America to escape religious persecution and found himself learning the native Massachusett language. Eliot eventually created a written language, articulating grammatical rules, and translated the bible into that native language. This is the grammar he created and is a landmark early American linguistic and historical publication.

Thirteen Master Carvers. One Enduring Legacy

For generations, Cherokee people in North Carolina shaped their world with their hands. Every object needed to live, work, and gather—from tools to ceremonial items—was made through practiced skill and shared knowledge. Rooted in an oral tradition, Cherokee history is preserved not primarily through written records, but through material culture. These objects stand as living evidence of belief systems, values, and continuity passed from one generation to the next.

Wood carving occupies a vital place within this tradition. Although time, environmental loss, and forced disruption have erased much early archaeological evidence, the knowledge itself endured. Unlike many craft traditions that faded with the rise of mass-produced goods, Cherokee carving remained a respected and active practice. Hand skill, technique, and cultural meaning continued to be valued, refined, and taught.

Pipes, masks, figures, sculpture, and bas-relief carvings from the early twentieth century to the present illustrate the depth, craftsmanship, and cultural meaning of Cherokee carving traditions. Each piece was made with intention—whether functional, ceremonial, or ornamental—and reflects a deep connection between the maker and the community. These carvings are expressive and tactile, shaped by both personal vision and shared heritage.

Biographical profiles explore the lives and creative paths of thirteen accomplished Cherokee carvers, offering insight into their training, influences, and responsibilities as cultural bearers. Together, the works and stories presented form a clear record of Cherokee carving as a living tradition—one defined by resilience, innovation, and mastery.

Anna Fariello is a cultural curator and researcher who, through Curatorial insight, has organized more than forty museum exhibitions, heritage sites, and archival collections documenting traditional craft and material culture.

A complicated friendship blooms during a fated meeting in northern Michigan between two nineteenth-century women writers.

In the mid-1830s, the author Anna Brownell Jameson was called from Britain to Canada to see her husband. Before she returned back home, she embarked on a trip around the Great Lakes to gather material for a book on the “plight of the Indian woman.”

In a remarkable interaction on Mackinac Island, where the current-day lower peninsula of Michigan meets the upper peninsula, she met Jane Johnston Schoolcraft—an Ojibwe American poet and translator married to the geologist Henry Schoolcraft, who was working as an Indian agent for the United States government. The two women talked extensively, bonding over their interests and plights, and sharing private demons.

After their meeting, Anna continued to gain recognition for her writing and become a larger part of the literary scene in Britain and the Continent, entangling herself in the affairs of the likes of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Ottilie von Goethe, Lady Byron, and Ada Lovelace. Jane became sicker and less able to work.

In Andrew Wittkop’s sensitive, subtle retelling, complete with Anna's sketches and other historical images, the nuances of the relationship between the two women reveal much about the complicated nature of connection and disconnection and Anna’s blindnesses and missed opportunities. This inventive debut opens a window on two under-remembered writers. 

A Harrowing Heritage of Resilience

During the era of Indian Removal, scores of men, women and children of African descent were forced west alongside the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations. 

Kuwohi towers over the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains as the highest point in both the national park and the state of Tennessee.

The mountain holds an ancient allure—the Cherokee treasured it, as did early settlers, and it captivates throngs of visitors today. Senator Thomas Clingman made an 1858 journey to measure the mountain, and it was called by his name until being renamed Kuwohi, restoring the original name given by the Cherokee people. Scarred by logging, invasive species, and modern pollution, the mountain endures. Through lush narratives and fascinating detail, author Marci Spencer presents the natural and human history of this iconic destination.

From settlement to sediment 

Unlike the freedman communities in Spiro, Ft. Coffee and Poteau, the town of Skullyville faded into a forgotten ghost town. Dr. G. E. Hartshorne’s 1950 “Skullyville and Its People in 1889” chronicled the inhabitants’ lifestyle and culture. Yet he excluded many that arrived in the 1830s, having survived the long and arduous journey of the Trail of Tears. Enslaved people of African descent, arriving alongside their Choctaw masters, were seldom mentioned in contemporaneous accounts. They labored for decades without pay, or the comforts of freedom. Their tribal oppressors joined the Confederates, vowing to maintain their slaveholding lifestyle. Conversely, some from Skullyville resisted by joining the Union Army. Many lived to see freedom, and established livelihoods after abolition. In April of 1866, Choctaw leaders joined the Chickasaw at Fort Smith to sign a peace treaty that abolished slavery and promised citizenship and suffrage to those once enslaved by their nations. Freedman descendent Angela Walton-Raji resurrects the lost voices of Skullyville and champions a legacy that outlasted the town itself. 

The Complex History of One of Our Great State Parks.

Middlesex Fells, located north of Boston, is one of the most storied state parks in the United States.

Home to Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years, this land became part of Charlestown, the first capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Puritans transformed the landscape, marked woodlots with stone walls, and gave the largest lots to wealthy men. They harvested timber and quarried stone from the Fells to build houses, ships, and walls and to fuel brickmaking and rum distilling. Enslaved labor, acquired through the transatlantic trade, supported these markets.

Today the Fells is preserved, but beyond its trails and wooded vistas lie deeper stories of Indigenous communities and colonial transformation. Alison C. Simcox and Douglas L. Heath trace this history with new research published for the first time.

Uncovering Uniquely Montanan Stories

More than steamboats and famous explorers, Great Falls’s history is colored with compelling episodes nearly lost to the ages. Glacial Lake Great Falls changed the course of the Missouri River while carving fascinating geological features like Lost Lake, the Big Sag, and Lewis and Clark’s Slaughter River. Copper from Butte mines, Anaconda smelters, and Great Falls refineries wired the world and helped win the World Wars. Landless Indigenous peoples sought refuge on a hill called 57. A local crusading editor became “Montana’s Conscience” and authored the revered Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome. A Civil War monument was raised to honor both the Blue and the Gray—the first in the nation to do so. Pathbreaking preservationists Charley and Sue Bovey saved acclaimed gold rush–era Virginia City before historic preservation was cool.

Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life little-known accounts from a storied past.

The history of the People of the Shore detailed in Shinnecock Indian Nation.

The Shinnecock have resided along the shores of eastern Long Island for more than 10,000 years. These hunter-gatherers were also skilled whalers who first tackled the Atlantic in their dugout canoes and later became highly regarded crew members on 19th-century whaling ships that sailed the globe. The Shinnecock were also noted wampum makers, using the northern quahog hard-shelled clam and whelk shells to craft some of the finest-quality wampum beads to be found anywhere along the eastern seaboard. Since the first tall ships sailed into the local waters in the 1500s, new settlers and shifty land deals have diminished the ancestral territory of the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Despite overwhelming odds, however, and in the midst of immense privilege and wealth of their Hamptons neighbors, the Shinnecock remain. They are a federally recognized tribe with more than 1,500 enrolled members and are governed by a seven-member council of trustees.