This magnificent, sweeping work traces the histories of the Native peoples of the American West from their arrival thousands of years ago to the early years of the nineteenth century. Emphasizing conflict and change, One Vast Winter Count offers a new look at the early history of the region by blending ethnohistory, colonial history, and frontier history. Drawing on a wide range of oral and archival sources from across the West, Colin G. Calloway offers an unparalleled glimpse at the lives of generations of Native peoples in a western land soon to be overrun.

A history of the complex relationship between a school and a people

First Peoples was Bedford/St. Martin’s first “docutext” – a textbook that features groups of primary source documents at the end of each chapter, essentially providing a reader in addition to the narrative textbook. Expertly authored by Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples has been praised for its inclusion of Native American sources and Calloway’s concerted effort to weave Native perspectives throughout the narrative. First Peoples’ distinctive approach continues to make it the bestselling and most highly acclaimed text for the American Indian history survey.

In this superb volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series, Colin Calloway reveals how the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had a profound effect on American history, setting in motion a cascade of unexpected consequences, as Indians and Europeans, settlers and frontiersmen, all struggled to adapt to new boundaries, new alignments, and new relationships. Most Americans know the significance of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the Treaty of Paris. Yet 1763 was a year that shaped our history just as decisively as 1776 or 1862. This captivating book shows why.

Before European incursions began in the seventeenth century, the Western Abenaki Indians inhabited present-day Vermont and New Hampshire, particularly the Lake Champlain and Connecticut River valleys. This history of their coexistence and conflicts with whites on the northern New England frontier documents their survival as a people-recently at issue in the courts-and their wars and migrations, as far north as Quebec, during the first two centuries of white contacts. Written clearly and authoritatively, with sympathy for this long-neglected tribe, Colin G. Calloway's account of the Western Abenaki diaspora adds to the growing interest in remnant Indian groups of North America. This history of an Algonquian group on the periphery of the Iroquois Confederacy is also a major contribution to general Indian historiography and to studies of Indian white interactions, cultural persistence, and ethnic identity in North America Colin G. Calloway, Assistant Professor of History in the University of Wyoming, is the author of Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-181S, and the editor of New Directions in American Indian History, both published by the University of Oklahoma Press. "Colin Calloway shows how Western Abenaki history, like all Indian history, has been hidden, ignored, or purposely obscured. Although his work focuses on Euro-American military interactions with these important eastern Indians, Calloway provides valuable insights into why Indians and Indian identity have survived in Vermont despite their lack of recognition for centuries."-Laurence M. Hauptman, State University of New York, New Paltz. "Far from being an empty no-man's-land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the western Abenaki homeland is shown in this excellent synthesis to have been an active part of the stage on which the events of the colonial period were acted out. -Dean R. Snow, State University of New York, Albany. "At last the western Abenakis have a proper history. Colin Calloway has made their difficultly accessible literature his own and has written what will surely remain the standard reference for a long time."-Gordon M. Day, Canadian Ethnology Service. "Although they played a central role in the colonial history of New England and southern Quebec, the western Abenakis have been all but ignored by historians and poorly known to anthropologists. Therefore, publication of a careful study of western Abenaki history ranks as a major event.... Calloway's book is a gold mine of useful data."-William A. Haviland, senior author, The Original Vermonters.

In nineteenth century paintings, the proud Indian warrior and the Scottish Highland chief appear in similar ways--colorful and wild, righteous and warlike, the last of their kind. Earlier accounts depict both as barbarians, lacking in culture and in need of civilization. By the nineteenth century, intermarriage and cultural contact between the two--described during the Seven Years' War as cousins--was such that Cree, Mohawk, Cherokee, and Salish were often spoken with Gaelic accents. In this imaginative work of imperial and tribal history, Colin Calloway examines why these two seemingly wildly disparate groups appear to have so much in common. Both Highland clans and Native American societies underwent parallel experiences on the peripheries of Britain's empire, and often encountered one another on the frontier. Indeed, Highlanders and American Indians fought, traded, and lived together. Both groups were treated as tribal peoples--remnants of a barbaric past--and eventually forced from their ancestral lands as their traditional food sources--cattle in the Highlands and bison on the Great Plains--were decimated to make way for livestock farming. In a familiar pattern, the cultures that conquered them would later romanticize the very ways of life they had destroyed. White People, Indians, and Highlanders illustrates how these groups alternately resisted and accommodated the cultural and economic assault of colonialism, before their eventual dispossession during the Highland Clearances and Indian Removals. What emerges is a finely-drawn portrait of how indigenous peoples with their own rich identities experienced cultural change, economic transformation, and demographic dislocation amidst the growing power of the British and American empires.

In this ambitious book that ranges across the Great Basin, Blackhawk places Native peoples at the center of a dynamic story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that shaped the American West. This book is a passionate reminder of the high costs that the making of American history occasioned for many indigenous peoples.