In the 1820s, the United States government began commissioning portrait paintings of Native Americans, convinced they were documenting a people destined to vanish. By the late 1850s, glass plate…
In the winter of 1889, a Cheyenne warrior named Porcupine made a journey that would change the spiritual life of the Plains tribes. He traveled hundreds of miles to Nevada to meet a prophet called Wovoka, a man believed by many to be the Messiah who would save the Native Americans and drive the white … Read more
On April 6, 2009, farm workers draining an irrigation pond near Tracy, California, watched the muddy water sink and reveal a black suitcase tied shut with cord. Inside were a pink Hello Kitty…
On the morning of Monday, April 6, 2009, a small crew of farm workers drove out to an irrigation pond on a dairy farm about two miles north of Sandra Cantu’s home in Tracy, California. It was routine work. The pond sat at the corner of two quiet country roads, Betty Road and Whitehall Road, … Read more
In the winter of 1905, a Chicago museum printed a plain brown book called The Traditions of the Hopi, holding accounts a Mennonite missionary named Henry R. Voth had recorded from a living people….
The dome sits a short way up the Little Colorado River from the point where that river empties into the Colorado, down in the rock of the Grand Canyon. It is a knob of yellow stone about the height of a two-story house, almost perfectly round, with a spring bubbling out of a hole in … Read more
On June 4, 1944, a 41-year-old Navy engineer from Missouri named Albert David climbed onto the deck of a sinking German submarine in the middle of thNaN
On the morning of June 4, 1944, a 41-year-old engineer from Missouri named Albert David climbed down through the hatch of a dark, sinking German submarine. He carried a wrench and a flashlight, and he had less than five minutes before the U-boat—and everything inside it—would vanish forever into 3,000 meters of Atlantic water. What … Read more
In November 1915, Silas Whitmore vanished from the remote mining camp at Droop Mountain, West Virginia, where he kept the books for a small coal operaNaN
The winter of 1915 descended upon the mountains of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, with a severity not seen in nearly three decades. Snow began falling in early November and buried the hollows and ridges under drifts that reached the eaves of the smaller cabins. At the heart of this frozen landscape stood a weathered cabin … Read more