More than a few otherwise well-educated Americans speak about the "Indian language," although they know well enough that there is no analogous "European language." Those students who are themselves Native Americans or who have friends and acquaintances among them know better. Those who depend on romantic images from elementary school and from western movies are much less well informed. Highly desirable is at least one lecture on Native Americans that provides a substantial amount of anthropological as well as historical information. Students should understand the enormous differences among the Indian nations as well as some overriding similarities. Although the emphasis in Chapter 17 is on the Plains Indians, it would be well to point out that the eastern woodlands required a different style of life. An explanation of the Ghost Dance movement will increase students' understanding of the power of religion and the situation of some of the Indians. Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934 (1991), is among the excellent suggestions for further reading at the end of the chapter in the text. See also Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (1970), and Robert E. Bieder, "Anthropology and the History of the American Indian," American Quarterly 33 (Bibliography 1981): 309-326. A fine reference work is to be found in Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn, editors, The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, volume I: North America (1996). And there are presently over two hundred titles in the University of Oklahoma Press's Civilization of the American Indian series.

The frontier of legend is not so much wrong as exaggerated, larger than life. In the interests of accuracy, explore that exaggeration. Choices will have to be made among many possibilities. Deromanticize the boom towns, for example, with a more accurate account of how much effort went into stabilizing them. Deromanticize cowboys and outlaws and help students avoid confusing the two. Show the struggles over land to be as grim as they were. See Joseph G. Rosa, Age of the Gunfighter: Men and Weapons on the Frontier 1840-1900 (1995); Harry S. Drago, The Great Range Wars: Violence on the Grasslands (1985); and Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (1987). There are numerous accounts of western desperadoes. They include Joseph G. Rosa, Wild Bill Hickok: The Man and His Myth (1996); Robert K. DeArment, Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend (1989); Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (1989); and Leon Claire Metz, John Selman, Gunfighter (1992). Finish the lecture on the upbeat. There is romance in the story of the Pony Express. See especially Robert R. Dykstra, The Cattle Towns (1968), and Robert V. Hine, Community on the American Frontier (1980). For cowboys read William W. Savage, Jr., The Cowboy Hero: His Image in American History and Culture (1979). And a lively account is available in Raymond W. Settle and Mary L. Settle, Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga (1972).

Students who have never seen the Great Plains need help in developing a sense of the region. Films or photographs might be used as part of an illustrated lecture--one that draws upon letters and reminiscences, descriptions of insect infestations and of extreme heat and cold. Students from Seattle or Atlanta need to have pointed out a temperature range of -10 to 100 degrees. See Gilbert Fite, The Farmer's Frontier (1966), and some of the titles suggested in the "Process of Settlement" section of the bibliography at the end of Chapter 17. See also Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (1931).

The participation of African-Americans in the opening of the West is a story just beginning to be told. See Elinor Wilson, Jim Beckwourth: Black Mountain Man (1980); Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones, The Negro Cowboys (1983); William H. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West(1975); and Arlen L. Fowler, The Black Infantry in the West, 1869-1891 (1971).