Essays and photographs provide information about the culture, beliefs, and historical events of the first Americans; grouped in nine regions, including the Southeast, the Southwest, the Plains, Plateau and Basin, California, the Northwest coast, the Subarctic, the Arctic, and the Northeast.

Presents the history of America since 1491 from an Indian perspective, with quotations from native people from the past and present, and includes photographs, paintings, drawings, and maps.

Provides information on the history, culture, languages, and lifeways of Native American groups across the United States and Canada and on early peoples of Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

Reprints a 1925 handbook that profiles more than forty groups of Native Americans in California, describing their religions, material culture, social structures, linguistic relations, demographic situations, and other aspects of the tribes; also includes more than four hundred photos and illustrations and forty maps.