American Indian Removal and the Trail to Wounded Knee

Gr 8 Up—This well-written volume effectively explores a topic of intense historical debate. Fascinating sidebars add significantly to the text by highlighting various episodes, actors, and opinions from Ralph Waldo Emerson's condemnation of Indian removal to L. Frank Baum's call for the extermination of the Indians. The volume closes with a number of biographies of important figures, such as Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Andrew Jackson, as well as various documents that add elements of insight. Primary sources include Tecumseh's call for Native unity, an excerpt from Andrew Jackson's 1830 State of the Union address in which he praised the merits of Indian removal, and a late-19th-century account of life at an Indian boarding school. The well-selected sources add a prospective that provides readers with valuable information about the evolution of United States-Native American relations over the years.—Brian Odom, Pelham Public Library, AL