Library: Native American Studies by Credo Reference: Individuals

Leaders, Chiefs and Legends

Joseph Brant (1742-1807): Topic Page
Mohawk chief, Anglican missionary, and British military officer during the American Revolution.
Alexander McGillivray (1759-1793): Topic Page
Native American chief; He was born in the Creek country now within the borders of the state of Alabama, the son of Lachlan McGillivray, a Scots trader, and Sehoy Marchand, his French-Creek wife.
Black Hawk (1767-1838)
From Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Houghton Mifflin
Sauk war leader and spokesman.
Geronimo (c. 1829-1909): Topic Page
Leader of a Chiricahua group of the Apaches.
Hiawatha
From Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Houghton Mifflin
Legendary Mohawk founder of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Pocahontas (c. 1595-1617): Topic Page
Daughter of Wahunsonacook, headman of the Algonquian-speaking Powhatan Confederacy of Tidewater Virginia; mythologized in American literature as an Indian princess and epitomized in Vachel Lindsay’s poem Our Mother Pocahontas as “the mother of us all.”
Pontiac (c. 1720-1769)
From The Reader's Companion to American History
Ottawa Indian chief.
Quetzalcoatl: Topic Page
Ancient deity and legendary ruler of the Toltec in Mexico.
Sacagawea (1788-1812)
From Encyclopedia of American Studies The Shoshone woman who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their journey to the western shores of North America.
Sequoyah (c. 1766-1843): Topic Page
Native North American leader, creator of the Cherokee syllabary.
Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890)

From Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Houghton Mifflin
Hunkpapa military, religious, and political leader.
Tecumseh (c. 1768-1813): Topic Page

Chief of the Shawnee, b. probably in Clark co., Ohio. Tecumseh set out to bind together the Native Americans of the Old Northwest, the South, and the eastern Mississippi valley.

Relevant Non-Native Americans

Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952): Topic Page
American photographer and pioneer ethnographer known for his documentation of Native Americans.
George Custer (1839-1876): Topic Page

US general; died in defeat at the battle with the Sioux at Little Bighorn.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758): Topic Page
American theologian and metaphysician; At Stockbridge, Mass., where he went to care for the Native American mission and to minister to a small white congregation, he completed his theological masterpiece, The Freedom of the Will.
John Eliot (1604-1690): Topic Page
English missionary in colonial Massachusetts, called the Apostle to the Indians.
Andrew Jackson (1767-1845): Topic Page

7th President of the United States; In the War of 1812 Jackson defeated the Creek warriors, tacit allies of the British, at Horseshoe Bend, Ala. (Mar., 1814) after a strenuous campaign and won the rank of major general in the U.S. army.
William Penn (1644-1718): Topic Page
Penn became involved in the affairs of the American colonies when in 1675 he was appointed a trustee for Edward Byllynge, one of the two Quaker proprietors of West Jersey. He also established the friendly relations with the Native Americans that were to distinguish the early history of Pennsylvania.

Authors

Overview of Native American Literature
From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The over 550 indigenous cultures of North America, consisting of ten language groups and almost three hundred languages, have produced a rich and diverse literature.
Paula Gunn Allen (1939-)
From The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English
Native American poet, critic and novelist concerned with the re-establishment of the importance of women in Native American tradition.
Louise Erdrich (1954-)
From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
Erdrich's works reveal the tension between the Native American people and the white race that threatens the destruction of Chippewa culture and heritage and the conflicts between family members within the Native American world.
N. Scott Momaday (1934-)
From Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms
The son of a poet-mother (part Cherokee) and a painterfather (Kiowa), Momaday is known primarily as a writer but he is also an accomplished painter.
Simon Ortiz (1941-)
From The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story
Simon Ortiz’s life and writing center on Acoma, New Mexico. The stark southwestern landscape and the open skies form the backdrop for the culture and perspective of the Pueblo people whose agricultural acumen and stable sociopolitical structure have endured for centuries
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948-)
From The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story
“I grew up at Laguna Pueblo,” wrote Leslie Silko in Kenneth Rosen’s 1974 collection of contemporary American Indian short stories, The Man to Send Rain Clouds, where six of her early stories were published.