Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Indian Territory, in U.S. history, name applied to the country set aside for Native Americans by the Indian Intercourse Act (1834). In the 1820s, the federal government began moving the Five Civilized...

(Encyclopedia) skywriting, advertising medium in which aircraft spell out trade names and sales slogans in the sky by means of the controlled emission of thick smoke. The technique was first developed (1922) by J. C...

(Encyclopedia) Red Cloud, b. 1821 or 1822, d. 1909, Oglala Sioux chief, b. near the Platte River in present-day Nebraska. He led the Native American fight against the establishment of the Bozeman Trail (see Bozeman,...

(Encyclopedia) Gerasa both: jĕˈräsh, jəräshˈ [key], ancient city of the Decapolis, 22 mi (35 km) N of Amman, in present-day Jordan. According to Josephus it was captured (83 b.c.) by Alexander Jannaeus, king o...

(Encyclopedia) Davis, Richard Harding, 1864–1916, American author and journalist, b. Philadelphia; son of Rebecca Harding Davis. After attending Lehigh and Johns Hopkins universities, he became a reporter in Phila...

(Encyclopedia) McEwan, Ian (Ian Russell McEwan) məkyo͞oˈən [key], 1948–, English novelist, b. Aldershot, B.A. Univ. of Sussex, 1970, M.A. Univ. of East Anglia, 1971. His early short-story collections, First Lo...

(Encyclopedia) Constable, John, 1776–1837, English painter, b. Suffolk. Constable and Turner were the leading figures in English landscape painting of the 19th cent. Constable became famous for his landscapes of S...

(Encyclopedia) Colter, John kōlˈtər [key], c.1775–1813, American trapper and guide, b. Virginia. In 1803 he enlisted in the Lewis and Clark expedition and in 1806, on the return trip, was granted a discharge to...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Purslane, Portulaca oleraceae purslane, common name for some plants of the Portulaceae, a family of herbs and a few small shrubs, chiefly of the Americas. The portulacas or purslanes (genus Po...

(Encyclopedia) Gass, Patrick, 1771–1870, American explorer, member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, b. Perry co., Pa. His journal of the trip across the continent first appeared in 1807 and was widely read. Gass...