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Understanding 9/11tv American Frontier Book Collection CSPAN February 4, 2017 11:51pm-12:01am EST
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look for them to air in near future on booktv on c-span2. during booktv recent visit to fresno, california, we explored thomas j frontier collection which includes oh 2,000ing boos on american frontier at fresno state university. >> well, when i was a kid the public library consign you to children room in the basement of the library, and the only nonfiction books they had were books on the american west an since i've been a nonfiction person i got, you know, i read everything that i understand there on the american west primarily native american over the years just you know the 50s when i was grewing up was the time when you have all of the movies at the theater most were cowboy movie and cowboy programs were on of it so you
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were sort of when i was a kid sort of with the american west. yeah, i fell in love with it. and then in 1993 i began traveling on the west, and just fell in love with it and i request quickly came to understand that -- it was much more to the west than cowboy and indian fight but the artistry and deep history. the history that involved so many different groups that it was a quite different west than what i had learned from hollywood all of those year an you learned that u now native american and all americans but learn that there were ash shan americans. african american, hishes all contradicting to a culture that west was diverse in many ways than the --
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land some of the places east of the mississippi river. first of all i'm going to talk about books i've pressured on african-americans in the west. and then i'm going to talk about hicks west. and then finally talk about soo. book on native american culture. we forget that african-americans who were in the west therm brought to the west as slaves first in texas in into the indian territory that 2350*eu6 civilized tribe when is they left the southeast and moved to overwhelm took their slaves with them. and so -- african-americans have always been in the west they didn't just show up suddenly. after the civil war, more left to form communities in the west consider g concern as exo dust the wortd from the book in the
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bible. most roongtly i bought a book from the university of oklahoma press, which was just published on the town of nick dee mous and within of the all black communities reformed as they tried to find a new life of freedom a place in the american west. if you watched the cowboy movies or if you watched the cowboy programs, 100% of the almost angle and, in fact, 30% of the cowboys in the west were either aron american, historic american and even native american, in fact, out here east of fresno, east of jordan community, and
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the blasting game ranch, they hired many native americans to run their sheep and cattle. so this is something that you don't see in the cowboy movies. but there were black cowboys and this book cowboy cowboys of the old west covers, covers covers t period and when you see many of these cowboys it shall they look just like, dress like, work like did everything with their white counterparts did. but not only were they cowboys? they were marshals and lawmen. for example, this is a biography of -- bass reeves who was a very famous marshal in the indian territory urdz the famous judge parker at fort smith, arkansas, and that is certainly noted as
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an outstanding lawman of his time. this where my thumb is a picture of bass. bass was tough. pass didn't worry about sparing himself in catching and catching outlaws and he caught many outlaw that was brought justice at judge's inpa nows court. now when we talk about in the native americans even though i have purchased trl on inked yarr war i thought it was very important to buy books on native american culture. especially material culture. this book i wrote called ledger narratives you can see -- the various art and them
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sketching in pieces of notebook they would find describing because they didn't have a written language therm actually describing battle scenes. i mean there would be set, symbols, for what, what actually was going on. everyone bever the reservation period, if native americans were the fine -- of a notebook or something they could write on they would do ledger and for much of native american history we have this art either in their counts, or in the notebooks. and so for example for the battle of the big horn there are quite a few we have quite a bit ledger books that trail describe the battle and what happened after the battle. these are two of my favorite books.
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a native american culture. this book is entitled american indian horse mask. and it talks you can see very decorative mask that they put on their horses. how, either they paint their horses but they have these horse masks. there's an example of a much more modern horse mask. but in here in this book you can find more traditional mask for native american paria before and each was a warrior horse had and painted each of their horses in a specific way given their medicine. book the last had thing i'm going to show you -- called bridles of the americas and this covers indian silver. and this is just an example of the various types of american american silver that was used. and native americans had quite
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extensive trait rude between each other for you would have items made on the washington coast. thousand miles inland in minnesota or great plains so extending trading rout for native americans to ?is because we sort of reduced native herns to warring indian which unfortunately was not always the case. the history of the east tends to be more white, moring angle whie angle and protestant in initial story. history the west is more reflective because from the beginning it is more multipull churl in all of its intentions that is an important they think for americans to realize and that everybody, native american, asian americans --
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