The vast, pine-covered plateau now known as Yellowstone National Park has been lived in, traveled through, and exploited by humans for thousands of years. It is still possible to see the remnants of old camps and deep-rutted trails over which ancient peoples crossed the Park to reach the bison-rich plains. When did humans first visit the area we ......
This volume constitutes one of the earliest and most comprehensive ethnographic reconnaissance of the Western Shoshoni and some of their Northern Paiute, Ute, and Southern Paiute neighbors of the Great Basin. At the same time, it tries to ascertain the types of Shoshonean sociopolitical groups and to discover their ecological and social ......
How is it possible that in 1521 five-hundred Spanish soldiers defeated the most powerful military force in Middle America? The answer lies not in western firearms, as we have been taught, but rather in the differences between the Aztec and Spanish cultures. Differing concepts of warfare and diplomacy, reinforced by tensions and stresses within the ......
History belongs to the people, Dean May reminds us, and must ultimately be accessible all. Based on his award-winning television series, Utah: A People's History provides a sweeping view of the state's past. From prehistory to present, May explains Utah as it is today and its promise for the future. The video series upon which this book is ......
Pilgrims to the Wild is a survey of American writers who have responded to their encounters with the natural world. Ranging in its treatment from Thoreau's important but neglected essay, 'Walking, ' to the exuberant letters of the young artist Everett Ruess (who disappeared in the Escalante canyonlands), this is a broadly based exploration that ......
Navaho Legends is one of the earliest collections of Navajo oral traditions in English, and still the best. Originally published in 1897, Washington Matthews's sensitive translation contains extensive versions of the Original Legend and two other tales. These richly detailed legends remain among the most complete sources of Navajo cultural, ......
Over many centuries, the prehistoric Fremont and Anasazi peoples of present-day Utah left an artistic record in which distinctive styles are readily identifiable. From the Uinta Mountains through the central canyonlands to the Virgin River, Utah's abundant prehistoric rock art offers glimpses of a lost world. The Rock Art of Utah is a rich sample ......
Not just an exploration of our early Western European roots, these rich chronicles read as literature, first-person narratives of the greatest exploration adventures in historic times. From the Platonic vision of Atlantis to Arthur's Avalon, pre-Columbus Europeans imagined fabulous lands to the west--and after 1492, initial reports of a new world ......
Religion and Mythology of the Havasupai Indians of the Grand Canyon
For almost seven hundred years, the Havasupai Indians, who call themselves People of the Blue Water, have lived in an area that includes the depths of the western Grand Canyon and the heights of the San Francisco Peaks. Here they inhabited the greatest altitude variation of any Indians in Southwestern America. Written in consultation with some of ......