Crazy Horse, orTashunka-uitco,led the Lakota resistance to the U.S. Army and the forced movement of his people onto reservations in the 1860s and 1870s. He helped lead a victorious coalition of Native Americans against Custer's soldiers at the Battle…

Edward Curtis was a professional photographer of the American West. In 1906, the wealthy banker and art collector J.P. Morgan hired Curtis to produce a multi-volume series on Native Americans that would include essays, sound recordings, and 1500…

Entrepreneur George A. Croffut published several tourist guides and manuals encouraging Americans to visit and settle in the West. His guides prominently featured the expanding railroad network as the best way to explore the vast territory beyond the…

In 1786, while Gilbert Stuart was in London, the Duke of Northumberland commissioned him to paint this portrait of Joseph Brandt, a Mohawk military leader decorated by the British whose given name was Thayendanegea. As depicted by Stuart, Brandt…

Richard Pratt, an officer of the United States Cavalry, became obsessed with the assimilation of Indians into U.S. "civilization." Pratt believed that Indians could only survive if they adapted the values of the white man; it was necessary to "kill…

From 1835 to 1907, the Currier & Ives printmaking company produced over a million lithograph illustrations of events, portraits, and scenes from American life. In the era before photography and the widespread use of illustrations in newspapers,…

White Californians complained that the new American government, which took over California after the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in May 1848, was not doing enough to control and regulate Indian labor. In the chaos of the Mexican War, many Indian…

White Californians complained that the new American government, which took over California after the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in May 1848, was not doing enough to control and regulate Indian labor. In the chaos of the Mexican War, many Indian…

In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson hired Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the vast territory of the Louisiana Purchase, recently acquired from France. Lewis and Clark followed the path of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers through eleven…

This watercolor by English artist, cartographer, and expeditionary John White gives a sense not only of the diversity of marine wildlife in coastal Virginia and the Carolinas at the time of the Europeans' arrival, but also of the sophisticated means…