The Encyclopedia Of Native American Biography

Much needed and long overdue, this reference work gathers the life stories of more than 600 Native Americans. Many of them, like Tecumseh and Crazy Horse, are familiar; many others, from Abomazine to Honayawas to Zotom, are less well known, and their histories are uniformly fascinating. Among other things, you'll learn that Geronimo was a devoted baseball player; that a thriving Indian slave market existed in Los Angeles after the Civil War; and that Crispus Attucks was not only the first African American to die in the American Revolution but was also the first American Indian to do so, for Attucks's mother was a Massachuset. One test of a good encyclopedia is whether it bears reading from start to finish, and this passes with distinction.