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Drawing of three Native American men wearing plains dress.

The Last Chief of the Comanches and the Fall of an Empire

Dustin Tahmahkera details the life of the last chief of the Comanches, Quanah Parker.
Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court in support of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
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The Supreme Court Stopped the Latest Assault on Native American Sovereignty

A long history of disrespect, dispossession and mass slaughter is crucial to understanding the case.
American Indian woman embraces a horse wearing a ceremonial mask.

Taken Together, Archaeology, Genomics and Indigenous Knowledge Revise Colonial Human-Horse Stories

New research adds scientific detail to Indigenous narratives that tell a different story.
Petroglyphs in southern Wyoming, probably dating to the early 17th century, include well-preserved images of horses and riders, depicted with riding equipment and shields.

Horse Nations

After the Spanish conquest, horses transformed Native American tribes much earlier than historians thought.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference in Austin
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Though Often Mythologized, the Texas Rangers Have an Ugly History of Brutality

Teaching accurate history about white supremacy may be painful, but it's essential.
African-American cowboys in Bonham, Texas, circa 1913

The Real Texas

What is Texas? Should we even think about so large and diverse a place as having an essence that can be distilled?

On the Range

Excavations at a ranch in the southern High Plains show how generations of people adapted to an iconic Western landscape.
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A Bullet Can Cross the Border. Can the Constitution? The Supreme Court Won’t Say.

The Supreme Court punts on Hernandez v. Mesa, leaving the Constitution lost in the borderlands.

America's Other Original Sin

Europeans didn’t just displace Native Americans — they enslaved them, on a scale historians are only beginning to fathom.
Ledger drawing of Plains Indians on horseback.

A Shameful US History Told Through Ledger Drawings

In the 19th century ledger drawings became a concentrated point of resistance for Indigenous people, an expression of individual and communal pride.
Oil pumpjack in the rural southwest.

Public Universities Are Profiting In Billions From Industries On Stolen Indigenous Land

Extractive industries filling public university coffers on stolen land. Here's how 14 land-grant colleges took 8.2 million acres from 123 Indigenous nations.
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Borderland Stories

What we remember when we remember the Alamo.
Bison drinking from a pond.

How the Iron Horse Spelled Doom for the American Buffalo

From homesteaders to tourists to the U.S. Army, railroads flooded the Great Plains with people who saw bison as pests, amusements, or opportunities for profit.
Henry Arthur McArdle’s The Battle of San Jacinto (1895), depicting the final battle of the Texas Revolution of 1836.

The Long American Counter-Revolution

Historian Gerald Horne has developed a grand theory of U.S. history as a series of devastating backlashes to progress—right down to the present day.
Painting, a portrait of Thayendanegea, depicting a a Native American in a red and orange headdress.

Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward?

They dominated far longer than they were dominated, and, a new book contends, shaped the United States in profound ways.
An art installation that evokes the Hollywood sign with the phrase "Indian Land".

Contest or Conquest?

How best to tell the story of oppressed peoples? By chronicling the hardships they’ve faced? Or by highlighting their triumphs over adversity?
Man in American themed boxers, carrying a semiautomatic rifle

How Did Guns Get So Powerful?

Decade by decade, firearms have become deadlier—and tightened their grip on our collective imagination.
Photograph of Sam Chamberlain

Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History

McCarthy imagined a vast border region where colonial empires clashed, tribes went to war, and bounty hunters roamed.
International Women's Day marchers in San Antonio hold signs celebrating Emma Tenayuca.

The Militant Passion of Emma Tenayuca

84 years ago this week, this Mexican American labor organizer led one of the largest strikes in Texas history—and was arrested and blacklisted for her trouble.
Activists with a sign saying "No More Stolen Sisters" march for missing and murdered Indigenous women at the Women's March California 2019 on January 19, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Sarah Morris/Getty

Colonial Traffic in Native American Women

“European and Indian men—as captors, brokers, and buyers—used captured and enslaved women to craft relationships of trade and reciprocity with one another.”
Wooden cross in the Eli Jackson Methodist Church cemetery in San Juan, Texas.

When Slaves Fled to Mexico

A new book tells the forgotten story of fugitive slaves who found freedom south of the border.
Statue of Kit Carson

The Removal of Monuments: What about Kit Carson?

The West and the nation need worthier, more honest memorials.
A map of Mexico.

When the Enslaved Went South

How Mexico—and the fugitives who went there—helped make freedom possible in America.

Clipping the Devil's Rope

How barbed wire sparked a cowboy war and changed the American West.

The Little Ice Age Is a History of Resilience and Surprises

The world's last climate crisis demonstrates that surviving is possible if bold economic and social change is embraced.

Can Colonial Nations Truly Recognise the Sovereignty of Indigenous People?

The Lakota, like other groups, see themselves as a sovereign people. Can Indigenous sovereignty survive colonisation?
Angelina Eberley fires off the cannon at the agents attempting to move the archives from her hometown of Austin.

The Fascinating Story of the Texas Archives War of 1842

The battle over where the papers of the Republic of Texas should reside reminds us of the politics of historical memory.

The Alamo: The First and Last Confederate Monument?

The Alamo supposedly honors the courage of Anglos pitted against Mexican brutality. In fact, it is about slavery and emancipation.

Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History

Two historians shed light on the atrocities of Native American enslavement and genocide.
A still from a film western depicting a fictionalized version of volunteers at the Alamo.

What a 1950s Texas Textbook Can Teach Us About Today's Textbook Fight

Texas education officials have preliminarily voted to reject a Mexican-American history textbook that scholars have said was riddled with inaccuracies.

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