San Antonio College Library

The Indian of popular culture has never existed anywhere--except in imagination. Yet these illusory Indians are so authentic to most Americans that no alternate images are acceptable. Even in recent decades, when increased awareness of the sensitivities of minority groups has become more prevalent, American Indians are seen as almost mythic figures. Raymond William Stedman examines images of American Indians from the first contact with whites, who...

An Ihanktonwan-Sicangu Sioux, explaining why he enjoyed his years spent performing in Wild West shows, remarked: "It gave me a chance to get back on a horse and act it out again." Between the 1880s and the 1930s Show Indians depicted their warfare with whites and portrayed scenes from their culture in productions that traveled throughout the United States and Europe and drew huge audiences - well over a million people in 1885 alone. Were they simply...

In 'Never One Nation', Linda Frost argues that during the eventful decades surrounding the Civil War, American identity was constructed not only nationally but also locally.

"Indians Illustrated is a social and cultural history of Indian illustrations in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Harper's Weekly, and other illustrated journals during the last half of the nineteenth century, the heyday of the American pictorial press. The pictorial press era, spurred in the mid-1850s by the transportation revolution, innovations in printing technology, and an expanded literary and pictorial market, was marked by a proliferation...