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Missionary Henry Spalding shipped two barrels of "Indian curiosities"--exquisite Nez Perce shirts, dresses, baskets, and horse regalia--to Dr. Dudley Allen in 1847. Donated to Oberlin College in 1893 and transferred to the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) in 1942, the collection languished in storage until Nez Perce National Historic Park curators rediscovered it in 1976. The OHS loaned most of the artifacts to the National Park Service. Twelve years later, the OHS abruptly recalled the collection, demanding the full appraised value of $608,100. Given just six-months to raise the funds, the tribe mounted a brilliant grassroots campaign. One day before the deadline, they met their goal. The author draws on interviews with Nez Perce experts and extensive archival research to tell the fascinating Spalding-Allen Collection story. He also examines the ethics of acquiring, bartering, owning, and selling Native cultural history.
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After the Civil War and Reconstruction, a new struggle raged in the Northern Rockies. In the summer of 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard, a champion of African American civil rights, ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families who resisted moving onto a reservation. Standing in his way was Chief Joseph, a young leader who never stopped advocating for Native American sovereignty and equal rights. Thunder in the Mountains is the spellbinding story of two legendary figures and their epic clash of ideas about the meaning of freedom and the role of government in American life.
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In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.