William W. Warren's History of the Ojibway People has long been recognized as a classic source on Ojibwe history and culture. Warren, the son of an Ojibwe woman, wrote his history in the hope of saving traditional stories for posterity even as he presented to the American public a sympathetic view of a people he believed were fast disappearing under the onslaught of a corrupt frontier population. He collected firsthand descriptions and stories from...

Buffalo Bird Woman, a Hidatsa Indian born about 1839, was an expert gardener. Following centuries-old methods, she and the women of her family raised huge crops of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers in the rich bottomlands of the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. Here she shares her horticultural secrets, describing a year of activities in the garden, from preparing and planting the fields through cultivating, harvesting, and storing foods....