Native Indian Culture

David Roberts describes the culture of the Anasazi - the name means "enemy ancestors" in Navajo - who once inhabited the Colorado Plateau and whose modern descendants are the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism.

Growing up impoverished and shuttled between different households, it seemed life was bound to take a certain path for Eddie Chuculate. Despite the challenges he faced, his upbringing was rich with love and bountiful lessons from his Creek and Cherokee heritage, deep-rooted traditions he embraced even as he learned to live within the culture of white, small-town America that dominated his migratory childhood.

Every schoolchild knows the story of how Pocahontas saved the life of Captain John Smith, but that's not the whole story. The Native American princess Pocahontas was born near the end of the sixteenth century as the daughter of Powhatan, chief of the Powhatan confederacy. It was Pocahontas, known as Matoaka by her clan, who interceded on behalf of John Smith in 1608 and then persuaded her father to bring food to the starving colonists at Jamestown.

Physician, activist, and author Charles Alexander Eastman was the first Native American certified in Western medicine and one of the first authors of any background to emphasize the Native American perspective. In The Soul of the Indian, he shares the customs, rituals, celebrations, and beliefs of Native American spirituality, and in so doing provides a powerful account of the “Great Mystery” at their core.