Our interest in the North American Indian culture goes way back, put simply we admire them. They are a spiritual people with a deep understanding of nature, it would be true to say that their understanding of nature has shaped our own veiw of nature. Before we destroyed their way of life, many tribes had an understanding of life that we have now lost. They were proud ...... they are still proud. Modern man is at last beginning to understand that it is not always technology that defines progress, or how far along the evolutionary path we have traveled. It is one measure for some people, but other people use a different measure. The North American Indians had something that has been forever destroyed. We can never regain what they lost .... what we all lost. We can only hope that we learn from our arrogance.

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By the 1880’s the vast majority of Indian people had become virtual prisoners on reservations. Their land gone and economies destroyed, now Indians faced perhaps the most difficult challenge of all: to hold onto their cultures.
Reservations were located on barren land no on else wanted. Indian people were not free to leave, and not free to live within their confines.

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The prevailing stance that Indian people would be best served by assimilating into mainstream society was translated into official policies that deprived Indian nations of their land and sovereignty. Allotment deprived Indian people of their land, and Blood Quantum was an assault on tribal sovereignty -- the right to determine 'citizenship' in their nations. But of all the policies designed to end Indian cultures, the most cruel was the separation of Indian children from their parents -- the boarding schools.

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Pee Viggi and Squaw

Jose Romero and family

Ute Chief Sevara and family

A Crow Indian

One of the most famous bettles in U.S. history was the Battle of the Little Big Horn - or, as it was known to the Indian victors -- Greasy Grass. Although most non-Indian people insisted on calling it a massacre, Custer's surprise attack was against a peaceful gathering of men, women and children from many tribes -- perhaps the largest in Plains history. Greasy Grass was the greatest Indian victory in Plains history, but it would prove to be a last hurrah. The events along the Little Big Horn River would lead to the final defeat of Indian forces in the West, and, fourteen years later, to the massacre at Wounded Knee.