Wampum: How the Haudenosaunee Kept Their Word
Purple and white shell beads that colonists mistook for money. For the Haudenosaunee they were the archive — treaties, titles, and the Two Row.
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Thursday, October 1, 2026
Sarah Winnemucca: The Voice That Crossed a Continent
Interpreter, army scout, lecturer and author — the Northern Paiute woman who took her people’s case to the President, and published the first book by a Native American woman.
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The Three Sisters: The Field That Fed a Confederacy
Corn, beans and squash in the same mound — the Haudenosaunee farming system that fed towns of hundreds, and why armies burned it.
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Watch: How a Tipi Goes Up — and Comes Down in Fifteen Minutes
A tipi is not a tent. It is a permanent home that happens to be mobile — warm through a
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Reading a Plains Portrait: Eight Details Most People Miss
The images in this gallery are illustrations created for The Native Tales. They are not historical photographs, and each caption
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Chief Joseph: The Man America Remembers for the Wrong Reasons
Forty Miles Short of Canada On 5 October 1877, in the freezing Bear Paw Mountains of northern Montana, about forty
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Wait for the Snow: Why Some Stories Are Told Only in Winter
Ask in July and the Answer Is No Across a great many Native nations there is a rule that surprises
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The Horse That Remade the Plains
A Family Could Only Own What It Could Carry That is the rule that governed life on the Great Plains
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The Tipi: The Home That Could Be Packed in 15 Minutes
A Tipi Was Never Just a Tent That is the first thing to understand about it, and the thing most
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