Books published by publisher Lewes Historical Society

Based on three decades of extensive field work and exhaustive research in manuscript and published sources, Berndt Kuhn chronicles more than a century of conflict between Native Americans, Anglos, and Mexicans in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The nearly 4,000 entries in this meticulous compendium provide essential information on combatants, casualties, and locations of battles, skirmishes, and raids, along with the relevant sources for further research. Maps and tables chart the ebb and flow of warfare and tally the cost in lives and property. A comprehensive bibliography enhances the value of this seminal work for scholars and beginning researchers.

At the age of fourteen, a young man in Waveland, Indiana, had taken over the family farm after the death of his father. Now responsible for taking care of his widowed mother and supporting his four brothers, he took up the reins on the plow to begin preparing the field for planting. Family legend has it that the young farmer, Theodore Clement Steele, tied colored ribbons to the handles of the plow so that he could watch the ribbons in the wind and the effect that they had on the [surrounding] colors. Recognizing Steele s passion for art, his mother supported his choice to make his living as an artist. He realized he had chosen a difficult path, writing in his journal: To do this requires a systematic devotion to the one object of my life, the bending of all things to the one. And this presupposes a clear understanding of the main object or purpose, so clear that there will be no mistaking it for a moment. Written by author and art historian Rachel Berenson Perry, Paint and Canvas: A Life of T. C. Steele, the eighth volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press s youth biography series, traces the path of Steele s career as an artist from his early studies in Germany to his determination to paint what he knew best, the Indiana landscape. Steele, along with fellow artists William Forsyth, Otto Stark, Richard Gruelle, and J. Ottis Adams, became a member of the renowned Hoosier Group and became a leader in the development of Midwestern art. In addition to creating artwork, Steele wrote and gave lectures, served on numerous art juries to select paintings and prizes for national and international exhibitions, and helped organize pioneering art associations and societies. Though known today primarily for his landscapes, Steele was an accomplished and sought-after portrait artist. By the time of his death, he had painted many of Indiana s most prominent citizens, including President Benjamin Harrison, Vice President Charles Fairbanks, Colonel Eli Lilly, James Whitcomb Riley, Catherine Merrill, William Lowe Bryan, and Lyman S. Ayres, among others. In 1907 Steele and his second wife, Selma Neubacher, moved to Brown County, where they built their home, dubbed The House of the Singing Winds for the aural treats produced as the wind blew through the wire of the screened porches surrounding the house. From 1907 to 1921 the Steeles spent the spring season at their Brown County property and wintered in Indianapolis. In 1922 Steele became artist in residence and an honorary professor at Indiana University.

FACES OF CHRISTMAS PAST is an engaging, middle-aged look at the perils of Christmas, our own self-imposed burdens of ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas Xerox), and the more unsettling fact that successive Christmases, more even than New Year’s, mark the passing of our life from childhood to death. "Old Christmas card photos show us how we’ve aged," says author Bill Holm, "reminding us that, though time may curve in Einstein’s physics, in our small life it is a straight line to white hair and bifocals." Holm also reminds us of the great consoling ritual of music, so rich and full of feeling at Christmas. Our best defense against age and death may be singing, he says, so we’d better open our mouths with courage and spirit to let the songs come.

Famed Indiana author Booth Tarkington once took on the task of naming three of Indianapolis's most outstanding citizens. Two of the three he named--former president Benjamin Harrison and legendary poet James Whitcomb Riley--were well-known people. The third, however, was someone whose memorable accomplishments have become lost to history--educator, woman's rights pioneer, and peace activist May Wright Sewall. Written by award-winning author and historian Ray E. Boomhower, Fighting for Equality: A Life of May Wright Sewall, a biography aimed at young readers, showcases Sewall's important contributions to the history of Indianapolis, Indiana, the United States, and the world. A woman who had the "organizing touch," Sewall helped to establish such Indianapolis institutions as the Girls' Classical School, the Indianapolis Woman's Club, the Contemporary Club, the Art Association of Indianapolis (today known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art), and the Indianapolis Propylaeum. Sewall also worked tirelessly on behalf of rights for women in the United States--and around the globe--during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She served as a valuable ally to such national suffrage leaders as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and gave the woman's movement a worldwide focus through her pioneering involvement with the American National Council of Women and the International Council of Women. After working on behalf of peace as a delegate on millionaire automaker Henry Ford's failed Peace Trip in 1915, Sewall shocked her friends by releasing a book telling of her communications beyond the grave with her deceased husband, Theodore Sewall. She related her remarkable experiences with spiritualism in her book Neither Dead nor Sleeping, published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis in 1920 just a few months before Sewall's own death.

During the rough-and-tumble world of frontier Indiana politics, two men stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries—William Henry Harrison and Jonathan Jennings. Harrison, the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, established a powerful political machine as governor of the Indiana Territory and went on to become the ninth president of the United States. Jennings stood as Harrison’s biggest rival, leading the fight to keep slavery out of the Hoosier State.History, however, has not been kind to Jennings, who became Indiana’s first governor and served four terms in Congress. In this fourth volume of the Indiana Historical Society Press’s Indiana Biography Series, Randy K. Mills, noted historian and writer, has produced a groundbreaking look at Jennings, one of the nineteenth state’s most complex and fascinating figures. Mills details how Jennings worked his way up the state’s political ladder to become a hero of mythical stature to some, winning praise as "a young Hercules" and "the Colossus of Indiana," a champion of freedom and hero of the people.Jennings’s rise to the pinnacle of power in Indiana quickly turned to tragedy as he wrestled with alcoholism. By his death in 1832 at the relatively young age of fifty, Jennings had fallen far in the hearts and minds of the Hoosier public. For several decades, no gravestone marked Jennings’s final resting place. Using personal letters, official government records, and newspaper and diary accounts, this biography presents a more thorough and balanced assessment of Indiana’s first governor. The book also illuminates an important period in Indiana and American history as well, a time when "electioneering madness" played a major role in the life of the country.

Winner of the 2005 Stevens Literary PrizeDouglas's student, Sandy, who has run away from home to join the Hudson’s Bay Company, learns about the plants that Douglas methodically collected and identified for science. He befriends T’Catisa, the daughter of Chinook Chief Cockqua, and they spend time with Douglas as he explores a new landscape. Olla-piska is a good introduction for young people and adults alike to one of the most important scientists and explorers to visit the Columbia country.

She was born into a culture that had some knowledge of Europeans, and after settling on the outskirts of the territory controlled by her father, she was apparently drawn to these particular strangers. A number of the chroniclers of the Jamestown founding mention her by name and note her interactions with the English settlers. The Powhatan girl, who was reported to have saved John Smith from execution and to have enjoyed cartwheeling naked with the young boys of the Jamestown settlement, would as a young woman be kidnapped as a political pawn, converted to Christianity, married to a settler and taken to England as an example of the potential of the New World for cultural indoctrination. It was among members of her adopted nation that she took sick and died at age 22, as she attempted to return to her homeland. This study examines the historical evidence about Pocahontas and compares it to the mythology as recorded by artists and writers.

Esperanza is a courageous and imaginative Mexican American girl living in the frontier town of Tucson, Arizona in 1876. She tries to be a responsible young lady, but she and her dog, Chica, always seem to find trouble. Esperanza's dearest wish is to discover what happened to her brother, Carlos, who years earlier was captured by Apache Indians. Then, miraculously, U.S. soldiers locate Carlos and bring him back to the ranch. But instead of the happy homecoming Esperanza envisioned, her brother is angry that he has been taken away from his Apache family and wants to return to them. Can Esperanza find a way to understand her brother? Or will she and Carlos be estranged forever? Filled with humor and adventure, this true-to-life story celebrates the cultures and lives of the people who shaped the American Southwest.

The landscape encountered by the Corps of Discovery during their multi-year, cross- country trek to the Pacific was dramatically different from the one that greeted visitors attending Portland’s Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905 or the one that exists in the Pacific Northwest today. On the occasion of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, the time is ripe for reconciling those earlier events with present-day activities.In Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark, William L. Lang and Carl Abbott have collaborated to address those issues. Lang scrutinizes the motivations for the Lewis and Clark expedition and the environmental ramifications of its discoveries on the people and the landscape of the Columbia River Basin. Abbott examines the ways in which the Lewis and Clark Exposition advanced President Jefferson’s goal of developing the economic potential of the Pacific Northwest, particularly through the exploitation of the region’s abundant natural resources.