At head of title: Reader's digest.

Includes index.

The Indians you encounter in this book may well be strangers to you. They are not the familiar characters of romantic legends, of western movies and television shows, of "covered wagon" novels. As you will discover in this realistic, carefully researched account, they were, instead, a remarkably ingenious, imaginative people who, long before Europeans arrived in the New World, had developed numerous cultures -- that differed as widely as those of the various nations of Europe -- some 200 languages, and the ability to survive in all the environments that exist between the Arctic Circle and subtropical Mexico. - Jacket flap.

Synthesis of North American Indian heritage.

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