Bibliography

  • Splawn, Jack. Ka-mi-akin, the last hero of the Yakimas, Kilham Stationery & Printing Co., 1917

  • Kamiakin: The Last Hero of the Yakimas is a foundational historical biography written by A.J. Splawn that documents the life of Chief Kamiakin, a key leader of the Yakima people during the mid-19th-century regional conflicts. Relying heavily on the author’s personal interviews with early pioneers and Native Americans, the book provides invaluable, first-hand perspectives on the events surrounding the Yakima War and the signing of the 1955 treaties.

  • Washington Secretary of State classis-washington-history  
  • The “Classics in Washington History” digital collection, curated by the Washington State Library, provides free online access to rare, out-of-print books and documents detailing the state’s early history and territorial days. This specialized archive features digitized page images of essential regional texts, including early pioneer memoirs, county histories, and documentation of tribal and territorial relations across the Pacific Northwest.
  • Christopher L. Miller’s Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau was published by Rutgers University Press in 1985.
  • Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau by Christopher L. Miller explores how the distinct religious beliefs and prophetic traditions of both Native communities and European settlers shaped their interactions during the early contact period. The book argues that instead of just causing immediate conflict, these deeply held spiritual worldviews initially created shared expectations that uniquely guided the history of cultural exchange and colonization in the Pacific Northwest.
  • James Hunter, Glencoe and the Indians: A Real-life Family Saga which Spans Two Continents, Several Centuries and More Than Thirty Generations to Link Scotland’s Clans with the Native Peoples of the American West” published by Mainstream in 1997
  • Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by  was published by Viking 1985
  • The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren is a deeply personal history that traces how her Jewish ancestors’ survival and prosperity as homesteaders in South Dakota came at the direct expense of the Lakota people who were forced off that same land. Through meticulous research and intimate storytelling, Clarren examines the complex legacy of government land grants, confronting how American policy simultaneously offered a lifeline to refugees while systematically devastating Indigenous communities.
  • Indian Conflict in Washington
  • This page provides a chronological overview of the mid-19th-century military conflicts between Native American tribes and white settlers or federal troops in Washington Territory. It specifically details how Governor Isaac Stevens’ premature opening of tribal lands to settlement—violating the terms of the 1855 Walla Walla treaties before they were ratified—sparked widespread resistance under leaders like Yakama Chief Kamiakin.

  • Nagle, Rebecca. By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land. New York: HarperOne, 2024.

  • By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle is a powerful investigation into the historic legal battle for tribal sovereignty in Oklahoma, focusing on the events leading up to the landmark Supreme Court decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma. Combining deep archival research with personal narrative, Nagle chronicles the generations-long resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation against systematic federal and state attempts to erase their reservation borders.

  • The Nimiipuu Nez Perce Indians

  • The Josephy Library’s collection on the Nimíipuu offers a concise historical overview of the Nez Perce, spanning from their pivotal assistance to the Lewis and Clark expedition to the 1877 war and their contemporary efforts in cultural and environmental restoration. It highlights the tribe’s enduring connection to their ancestral Wallowa homelands and provides resources on their modern-day initiatives, including language revitalization and the management of regional fisheries.
  • Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, William R. Swagerty Encounters with the People: Written and Oral Accounts of Nez Perce Life to 1858. 2015
  • Encounters with the People: Written and Oral Accounts of Nez Perce Life to 1858, compiled by Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and William R. Swagerty, offers a rich, dual-perspective history of the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) through both European-American documents and indigenous oral traditions. By gathering diaries, official reports, and native testimonies up to the critical year of 1858, the volume provides an immersive, multi-layered look at the cultural exchanges and growing tensions on the Columbia Plateau before the outbreak of major regional warfare.