Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Native American languages, languages of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere and their descendants. A number of the Native American languages that were spoken at the time of the European arriv...

(Encyclopedia) American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), largest union of public employees in the United States. It began as a number of separate locals organized by a group of Wisconsi...

(Encyclopedia) James, Thomas, 1782–1847, American fur trader and pioneer, b. Maryland. He accompanied the 1809 expedition of the Missouri Fur Company up the Missouri River. He left the expedition at the Mandan vil...

(Encyclopedia) Hopkins, Mark, 1813–78, American railroad builder and merchant, b. Henderson, N.Y. A clerk in a village store and later a commission merchant in New York City, he was more than 35 years old when he ...

(Encyclopedia) American Fur Company, chartered by John Jacob Astor (1763–1848) in 1808 to compete with the great fur-trading companies in Canada—the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. Astor's most ...

(Encyclopedia) Pan-American Highway, system of roads, c.16,000 mi (25,750 km) long, linking the nations of the Western Hemisphere. It was suggested at the Fifth International Conference of American States (1923) and...

(Encyclopedia) Cable, George Washington, 1844–1925, American author, b. New Orleans. He is remembered primarily for his early sketches and novels of creole life, which established his reputation as an important lo...

(Encyclopedia) Arciniegas, Germán hĕrmänˈ ärsēnyāˈgäs [key], 1900–1999, Colombian historian and diplomat. A leading Latin American intellectual, he gained prominence as a journalist and publisher. A criti...

(Encyclopedia) Cooke, Alistair, 1908–2004, Anglo-American journalist, b. Salford, England, as Alfred Cooke; grad. Cambridge, 1930, where he officially adopted the name Alistair. Cooke became famous in Britain for ...

(Encyclopedia) Mason, William, 1724–97, English poet, editor, and cleric. His works include two plays, Elfrida (1752) and Caractacus (1759), based on classical dramas. He was a friend of Thomas Gray, whose Life an...