The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians

by Francis Paul Prucha

The Great Father was widely praised when it appeared in two volumes in 1984 and was awarded the Ray Allen Billington Prize by the Organization of American Historians. This abridged one-volume edition follows the structure of the two-volume edition, eliminating only the footnotes and some of the detail. It is a comprehensive history of the relations between the U.S. government and the Indians. Covering the two centuries from the Revolutionary War to 1980, the book traces the development of American Indian policy and the growth of the bureaucracy created to implement that policy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, American History, Research, Law, Indigenous History

426 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

Francis Paul Prucha was an American Jesuit, historian, and professor emeritus of history at Marquette University. Prucha was a leading authority on American Indian policy and the author of more than a dozen books on the subject.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read as part of my Indian Law class in law school, but I think the author successfully highlighted the events that shaped Indian law policy. The author does a nice job sprinkling in anecdotes to alleviate the boredom of reading about the policy from the period.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to seriously study the history of indigenous people in the U.S..

[Mel Tungate · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, so I read technical books on certain historical topics.

Prucha's books is the classic on how the US govt related to the American Indians. I have an Indian heritage ( small part ), and the topic is one I was interested in.

[Woody Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me forever to get through this abridged version of the larger work, but it hits my interest and was amazingly readable for a general history reader. Totally worth the effort.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! A must read! This is the abridged version with a lot of information and history. I highly recommend this.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly really enjoyed how thoughtful and detailed this history of federal “Indian” policy was. Some places you could really tell how the older timeframe of when this book was written plays into it, but besides that this was very detailed and comprehensive and not dull to read.

[Kevin Chuculate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prucha does a well job in creating an easy to understand line of the history of federal and indian law.

However he has some very strong sympathies towards the government actions that were imposed on natives. He gives a lot of benefit of the doubt to their intentions and often assumes bad results were usually form pure motives.