When the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) strike was called in September, women enthusiastically joined the cause of their male family members. They harassed strikebreaking miners—“scabs”—and beat one scab, tracklayer John Hale, so badly that…

Animosity between union organizers and mining operators hit a boiling point in August 1913 after the callous murder of union organizer Gerald Lippiatt by mine guards. The Colorado Fuel & Mining Company (CFI) did not acknowledge the murder and local…

At nearly 9:00 that morning, Mary Thomas O’Neal and her children finished their breakfast of oatmeal within the flaps of one of the many union-issued tents at the Ludlow tent colony. The seven-month coal miners’ strike against the Colorado Fuel and…

They were among the only survivors: Chief Sagwitch and his Northwestern Band of Shoshone were destitute and hopeless after three quarters of their tribe were murdered in the 1863 Bear River Massacre. One decade later, Sagwitch made peace with the…

From the creation of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation until the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the reservation was controlled by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Without clearly understanding the cultural and physical needs of the…

Two thousand miles away from the rich farmland and pastures of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the future of America’s native peoples was decided by politicians and sociologists in Washington, D.C. The new Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian…

After the Native Americans were forced onto reservations, the U.S. Congress was concerned that most tribes had not discontinued collective living. In response, the Dawes Act was passed in 1887 to “allot” reservation lands to individual owners. This…