The "wonderful and tragic story" of Indian cultures in America from the Ice Age arrival of Asiatic peoples across the Bering Strait to the Spanish conquests. The author opens up the thrilling notebook of the archeologist from which the histories and fates of various Indian cultures have been uncovered. The early hunters, the basketmakers, and moundbuilders of the South and West, the Mayans, Aztecs, Iroquois, and Incas have ll contributed magnificent chapters in the story of man; the author focuses a certsin perspective upon these cultures, both living and extinct, offering to the young reader a basis of comparison to our own civilization.

The first Americans -- The hunters and the hunted -- Time and change -- Food gatherers and basketmakers -- Citadels of the southwest -- Interlude: the Vikings find and lose America -- The mound builders -- The warrior democracies of the eastern forests -- Food gatherers of the far north and west -- The Mayan triumph and failure -- The Mexican melting pot -- Children of the sun -- An end and a beginning -- A decade of discovery.