The Mammoth Book of Native Americans

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Edited by Jon E. Lewis.

The story of America´s original inhabitants in all its beauty, magic, truth and tragedy.

Today Native Americans make up less than 1 percent of the US population but represent half the languages and cultures in the nation. In this superbly readable new single-volume history, Jon E. Lewis provides a fresh view of America´s indigenous peoples, their society, culture and religion - everything from the land-based spirituality of their early creation myths, the 88 uses to which the Sioux put the flesh and bones of the buffalo, the practice of berdache [men adopted as women], right through to the recent rise of Indian Pride.

The full story of these tribal people takes us from their dramatic early entry into North America out of the now submerged continent of Beringia, to the ´forgotten wars´ of the 16^th and 17^th centuries which wiped many tribes from the face of the East Coast, and the late struggles of the Cheyenne and the Comanche. We are shown not just the terrible nature of their genocide, but their whole way of life and the dark side of their own culture that led to cannibalism in some tribes, and the part they played in the decimation of North America´s buffalo herds. Forced to adapt or become merely onlookers to modern American society, some remarkable success stories are now emerging.

A compelling account of the first inhabitants of the world´s most powerful nation.