500 Nations - Tapa blanda

This is the stirring, epic story of the hundreds of Indian nations that have inhabited North America for more than 15,000 years and of their centuries-long struggle with the Europeans. It is a story of friendship, treachery, courage and war, beginning when Columbus disembarked at Hispaniola among the Arawaks in 1492, and comes to a climax when the last groups of Sioux were moved onto a reservation following the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. We meet men and women, heroes and villains through their own words, their lives recreated from memory, memoir, and ancient documents: Massasoit, whose greeting to the Mayflower pilgrims - 'Welcome, Englishmen' - was given in their own language; Pocahontas, whose father's intervention on behalf of John Smith ironically changed the course of her life; Deganawida, known as the Peace Maker, whose Great Law laid the foundation for the confederacy among the five nations of the Iroquois, which in turn may have influenced the colonists' fledging efforts at confederation; Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet; Tecumseh, the charismatic Shawnee leader; Satanta, who led the Kiowa resistance; Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; Cochise and Geronimo of the Apaches; Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Sioux...Written by the celebrated historian Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., lavishly illustrated with nearly 500 paintings, woodcuts, drawings, photographs, and Indian artifacts, this thrilling and beautiful book shows us the many worlds of North America's Indians, as we have never seen them before.

Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., is the author of many award-winning books, including The Patriot Chiefs, The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest, The Indian Heritage of America, Red Power, Now That the Buffalo's Gone, and The Civil War in the American West. He was born in 1912, grew up in New York City, and attended Harvard College. He was an associate editor of Time magazine and a vice president and editor of American Heritage magazine, was founding chairman of the board of trustees of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and is past president of the Western History Association. He and his wife, Betty, live in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Joseph, Oregon.