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Zusatztext “A remarkable book…gives both the event and the era a fresh perspective.” — The St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Every story has two sides! and until now! the Indian point of view has scarcely been heard.” — San Francisco Chronicle “[A] compulsively readable book…should be required reading for all Americans.” — Santa Cruz Sentinel Informationen zum Autor Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., a leading historian of the American West, was the author of many award-winning books, including The Patriot Chiefs , The Indian Heritage of America , Now That the Buffalo's Gone , The Civil War in the American West , 500 Nations , and A Walk Toward Oregon . He was a vice president and editor of American Heritage magazine, the founding chairman of the board of trustees of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and president of the Western History Association. Josephy died in the fall of 2005, shortly after completing this book. Klappentext At the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What impact! good or bad! immediate or long-range! did Lewis and Clark's journey have on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday! who offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling's illumination of her ancestral family! their survival! and the magic they use to this day; to Mark N. Trahant's attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and Roberta Conner's comparisons of the explorer's journals with the accounts of the expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling! these essays shed new light on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West. Part One Frenchmen, Bears, and Sandbars Vine Deloria, Jr. Vine Deloria, Jr., is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Fort Yates, North Dakota. He is perhaps the only American whose educational history ranges as far and wide as a New England prep school (Kent), the U.S. Marine Corps Telephone Repair School in San Diego, the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and membership in the faculty of a prestigious state university. Deloria is currently retired professor of history and an adjunct professor of law, religious studies, and political science at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Best known to the general public as an author (his works include Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto , 1969; Red Earth, White Lies , 1995; among many other books), he has been a college professor since the early 1970s and an activist in Indian affairs since the 1960s. From 1964 to 1967, for example, he was executive director of the National Congress of American Indians; in the mid-seventies he founded and chaired the Institute for the Development of Indian Law; in the nineties, after serving as vice chairman of the Board of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, he became chairman of its Repatriation Committee. Vine Deloria, Jr., has received honors early and often for his work as a writer and scholar, but unique among these was his nomination in 1974 as one of eleven "Theological Superstars of the Future." While his Sioux forebears chose confrontation in their encounter with Lewis and Clark, Deloria chooses a potent sense of historical irony. Frenchmen, Bears, and Sandbars Exaggeration of the importance of the expedition of Lewis and Clark is a typical American response to mythology. We prefer our fantasies in opposition to the facts of life. It was a routine venture now revered because we desperately need to have a heroic past, since that pleasure is denied to us in the present. The expedition was initiated following...