The Strange Career of William Ellis
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur.



A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur.
"This Study of the Early American conservation movement reveals the hidden history of three of the nation's first parks: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Karl Jacoby traces the effects that the criminalization of such traditional rural practices as hunting, fishing, and foraging had on country people in these areas. Despite the presence of new environmental regulations, poaching arson, and timber stealing became widespread among the Native Americans, poor whites, and others who had long relied on the natural resources now contained within conservation areas. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes," providing a rich and multifaceted portrayal of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." "Crimes against Nature includes previously unpublished historical photographs depicting such subjects as poachers in Yellowstone and a Native American "squatters' camp" at the Grand Canyon. This study demonstrates the importance of considering class for understanding environmental history and opens a new perspective on the social history of rural and poor people a century age."--Jacket of 2001 edition
Documents the April 1871 Camp Grant attack during which Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O'odham Indians murdered dozens of Apache women and children in their sleep, an event that generated unprecedented national attention.