This background essay, adapted from a Smithsonian Institution online exhibit, provides information about the Winter Count calendars kept by many Lakota Indian bands.

Russell Means, who was born on the Ogalala Sioux reservation in South Dakota, became a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the late 1960s. In often dramatic ways, AIM protested the government and society's treatment of Native Americans. …

In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted the rights to settle the Roanoke colony to Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh sent a fleet to investigate the area called Virginia that year. A group of colonists, led by Sir Richard Grenville, established a settlement in…

In this letter to superiors at the Hague, Pieter Schaghen describes conditions in New Amsterdam, including the purchase of Manhattan from local Indians for goods worth sixty guilders. Scholars have speculated that the Indians who took part in this…

A massive labor strike in 1877 shook the very foundations of American politics and society. Starting with a spontaneous railroad strike in West Virginia, the “Great Uprising” spread rapidly across the country. In many cities, entire…

In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted the rights to settle the Roanoke colony to Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh sent a fleet to investigate the area called Virginia that year. The excerpts below come from a longer account of the first voyage of exploration…

This lithograph of miners on the shore of the Sacramento River captures the crowded, thrilling early days of the California Gold Rush. People from diverse racial, national, and class backgrounds all participate in one way or another. In the…

John White, a painter who traveled with several English exploration companies in North America, made many illustrations of the people, plants and animals that inhabited the area around the Jamestown colony. Theodor de Bry later made engravings based…

This watercolor by English artist, cartographer, and expeditionary John White gives a sense not only of the diversity of marine wildlife in coastal Virginia and the Carolinas at the time of the Europeans' arrival, but also of the sophisticated means…

In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson hired Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the vast territory of the Louisiana Purchase, recently acquired from France. Lewis and Clark followed the path of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers through eleven…