Indian Classics

Robert Benjamin Lewis (1802 - 1858) was an African American and Native American author, inventor, and entrepreneur. In the ethnological work Light and Truth, Lewis claims that Adam and Eve were people of color, as were the Egyptians and many great figures of the ancient world, including Julius Caesar and Plato. Denouncing notions of white superiority, he asserts that all humans have a common origin, and pointed to a shared cultural history between Africans and Native Americans.

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux. He became one of the best known Indians of his time, receiving a bachelor of science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later.

Wynema Harjo is an idealistic young Muscogee woman who finds meaning as a teacher for the young people of her village. After the Wounded Knee Massacre and the subsequent Ghost Dance movement, Wynema feels a need to take further action, and she and her husband adopt a Lakota girl. As the years roll by and injustices mount, Wynema and a fellow teacher, Genevieve Weir, consider the repercussions of the oppression that surrounds them—and wonder how their society might eventually be improved.

American Indian Fairytales is a collection of Native American folklore retold for children and young adults. Margaret Compton (1852-1903) drew on authentic lore from a wide selection of regions. The tales include "The Story-Teller Himself", "Snowbird and the Water-Tiger", "The Coyote or Prairie Wolf", and "How Mad Buffalo Fought the Thunder-Bird".

With an arcing and emphatic beauty, Ghalib, the Indian Beloved by Khalid Hameed Shaida is a starry-eyed collection of 124 translated odes by Ghalib. Capturing the essence and pure song of one of the most loved romantic poets of India, Shaida's translation and interpretations also illustrate the deeply philosophical undertones of Ghalib's voice.

This five famous Indian tales are a collection of stories on human behaviors, portrayed by animal characters, with a beautifully wrought moral at the end. Discover the oldest legends of ancient India with this still resonating folk tales.

The translator Shaida does something altogether breathtaking in the expansive and lovely poems found in Khusro, the Indian Orpheus: A Hundred Odes, a collection of 100 translated poems by Khusro, an Indian musician, scholar, and poet of Persian descent. Fans of Rumi, the translations of Coleman Barks in particular, and Persian poets in general will delight in this current and timeless effort.

In this exquisite collection of children’s folktales, Zitkála-Šá shares the legends that were handed down to her through generations of Yankton storytellers. These tales display the wide range of insights and observations that accrue to such stories through repeated iteration, but they also benefit from the sharp ear and finely tuned sensibility of Zitkála-Šá as a writer. Her characters seem to speak to us—often crying out to us—in the same tones that Zitkála-Šá must once have heard.

Toda una tradicion de novelas de aventuras en el oeste estadounidense, entre los indios pieles rojas, que aun perdura en nuestros dias en la literatura y en el cine, fue la iniciada por Fenimore Cooper, un distinguido escritor de ese pais, que a principios del siglo XIX escribio una serie de novelas, que siguen entre las mas destacadas del genero y de las cuales El ultimo de los mohicanos es no solo la mas conocida sino la mejor.

Discover the endless fascination of Indian culture with five tales, selected for you for their power of evocation, wisdom and humor. "The Alligator and the Jackal" is a tale of wit and cleverness, about which will defeat the other. "Singh Rajah and the Cunning Little Jackals" is another example of how cleverness can overcome even the most powerful. "The Farmer and the Money-Lender" shows the eternal struggle between class, and a way to trick the tricker; "Who Killed the Otter's Babies?" will bring you deep reflections about causality and responsibility; and Tit for Tat is a powerful lesson about the dangers of habits.

Didier is an elephant, but he isn't sure if he likes being an elephant all that much, with his big, awkward body and boring life of carrying and lifting things for his human owner, Mr. Rahol. He lives in Mumbai with his mother, who tells fantastic tales about living in the wild before humans captured her and turned her into a domestic animal. Neither she nor the rest of Mr. Rahol's herd of elephants, however understand why Didier would rather be some other kind of animal instead.