About this ebook
Long before European coin reached these shores, wampum belts recorded law and sealed peace among the Haudenosaunee. Then Dutch and English traders flooded the market with mass produced shell beads and rewrote the rules of an ancient economy for their own gain. What began on that riverbank became a pattern repeated for nearly four centuries: treaty annuities withheld to force compliance, trader ledgers padded with fraudulent debt, gold discovered on Cherokee land in 1829 and on Lakota land in 1874, each strike breaking a solemn federal promise within months of its discovery.
Then came 1920s Oklahoma, where Osage families, made among the wealthiest people on earth by oil beneath their allotted land, were poisoned, shot, and blown apart by guardians appointed to protect their own fortunes. J. Edgar Hoover sent a young Bureau of Investigation west to crack the case. What his agents found still shocks readers a century later.
This book traces the full and largely untold story: wampum, fur trade debt, gold rushes, the Dawes Act, the Osage Reign of Terror, and the modern rise of tribal gaming that, since the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, has turned the tables at last. Written with the narrative pull of the finest American history writing and grounded in primary sources, court records, and firsthand accounts, this is history that reads like a thriller and holds up to serious scrutiny at every turn.
For readers who love American history told honestly, with real names, real dates, and real consequences, this book will not let you put it down.
