Haudenosaunee - the Iroquois Confederation

Of all of the tribes inhabiting the woodlands of what is now the northeastern United States, none impressed their white contemporaries more than the Iroquois. Called the 'Romans of the New World' by some, they formed a level of social and political sophistication rarely, if ever surpassed by any other North American tribes.

The Iroquois were a linguistic and cultural group living predominately in what is now New York state. The...

One of the last major Indian Wars, the 1877 Nez Perce conflict was small in scale but intense in its human drama. The Nimiipuu people - to give their real name - were traditional friends of the white man from their meeting with Lewis and Clark in October of 1805.

During the Civil War, gold was discovered on the land that had been reserved for the Nez Perce. Neither the presence of a Federal garrison nor the impassioned protests of the Indians were able to prevent the subsequent influx...

"May you be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan"
-Roman blessing


The annals of ancient Roman history are full of many diverse personalities, heroes alongside monsters, soldiers and scholars, killers and perverts. Very few of them, however, can match the Emperor Trajan in the timeless strength and purity of their reputation and legacy.

Trajan was brought to his throne peacefully, and his reign was universally accepted in the Roman world for...

Low-intensity warfare between Plains Indians and the US Army was a constant feature of western life for very nearly all of the 19th Century. The Indians' lack of central authority and vast manpower meant that their defeat was ultimately inevitable, but they managed to inflict several stinging reverses on their white opponents. Undoubtedly the most famous of these reverses was the destruction of Custer's 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn in 1876.
However, exactly a decade before an almost identical...

Even before Russell Crowe’s impressive performance in Gladiator, Commodus was already well-known as one of the Roman Empire’s great villains, of the likes of Caligula and Nero. As is often the case, however, the real thing was substantially different that the cinematic portrayal, far more complex and perhaps more sinister.

Commodus was the son of an emperor who should have been a philosopher – Commodus himself was the emperor who should have been a gladiator. The controversy and intrigues...