A Yavapai from Arizona, Carlos Montezuma (1865-1923) was a physician who became a prominent advocate for Native Americans.
In his newsletter Wassaja and elsewhere, he spoke out for Indian rights.
He helped to found the Society of American Indians in 1911.
Of the 22.4 million Hispanic-Americans counted in the 1990 census, more than 60 percent (13.5 million) are of Mexican heritage. Another 2.7 million are Puerto Rican, 1 million are Cuban, and the rest are “other.” All together, Hispanics, who can be of any race, account for 9 percent of the U.S. population.
Abraham Lincoln was watching Our American Cousin, by Tom Taylor, on the evening of April 14, 1865. It was during this play when John Wilkes Booth entered Lincoln’s private box and fired his one-shot derringer. Lincoln’s bodyguard had stepped away for a drink of water.
The 13 original American colonies were: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer, first sighted Manhattan in 1524. However, English explorer Henry Hudson, who sailed into what is now known as the Hudson River in 1609, is credited as the island’s discoverer.
During the Revolutionary War years, 90 percent of Americans were farmers. By World War II, the number had shrunk to 15 percent. Today fewer than 3 percent of the population are farmers.
A Ghost Dance is a ceremonial spiritual dance related to the teachings of Wovoka, a Paiute medicine man of Nevada who foresaw the restoration of the American continent to the Indians. Wovoka’s revolutionary message, preached in the late 1880s, provoked repression from U.S. officials, culminating in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890.