Native America History: Eastern Tribes

CULTIVATING A LANDSCAPE OF PEACE: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America
by Matthew Dennis. B&W era illustrations and B&W photos. B&W maps. Condition: Very good, gently pre-read through the Introduction, 1995 Cornell Trade Paperback, first printing. Light edge wear. Underlinings through the Introduction and none that I could find after that. Content: This book examines the peculiar new worlds of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, the Dutch, and the French, who shared cultural frontiers in seventeenth century North America. Matthew Dennis employs methods and materials from a range of disciplines, including archaeology, ethnology, folklore, literary criticism, and history, to reconstruct those worlds and analyze the consequences of their mingling with one another. Dennis likens his book to a cubist painting that describes and orders multiple elements on canvas but consciously avoids dissolving them into a single angle of vision. Viewing early America from the different perspectives of the diverse people who coexisted uneasily during the colonial encounter between Europeans and Indians, he explains a long-standing paradox: the apparent belligerence of the Five Nations, a people who saw themselves as promoters of universal peace. In a radically new interpretation of the Iroquois, Dennis argues that the Five Nations sought to incorporate their new European neighbors as kinspeople into their Longhouse, the physical and symbolic embodiment of Iroquois domesticity and peace. He offers a close, original reading of the fundamental political myth of the Five Nations, the Deganawidah Epic and situates it historically and ideologically in Iroquois life. Detailing the particular nature of Iroquois peace, he describes the Five Nations' diligent efforts to establish peace on their own terms and the frustrations and hostilities that stemmed from the fundamental contrast between Iroquois and European goals, expectations, and perceptions of human relationships. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 8.50 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority & International shipping available.

HOW INDIANS USE WILD PLANTS FOR FOOD, MEDICINE & CRAFTS
by Frances Densmore. B&W era photos and charts. Condition: NEW 1974 Dover Trade Paperback edition, no printing given. Tiny edge wear. Content: Ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution offers a wealth of material on nearly 200 plants used by Chippewas of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Emphasis on wild plants and lesser-known uses. "A fascinating, well-illustrated study." Originally published in 1928 under the title Use of Plants by the Chippewa Indians. The uses of 290 plants are described. [1 copy available]
$ 4.69 + $ 3.40 shipping. International shipping available.

SEARCHING FOR LOST CITY: On the Trail of America's Native Languages
by Elizabeth Seay. Condition: NEW 2004 Lyons Trade Paperback, first printing. First Prize, Multicultural Non-Fiction, Independent Publishers. Content: Seay writes hauntingly about the efforts to preserve Native American languages in her home state of Oklahoma in this lyrical, if occasionally solipsistic, travel history. Seay begins her expedition with the intent of finding a "lost city" populated solely by speakers of a Native American language. Eventually, however, she finds herself learning Cherokee from an elderly man and becoming part of the effort to preserve that language from extinction. Early in her work, Seay declares that "the languages seemed to be receding as I raced toward them" and that sense of imminent disappearance propels her narrative. Many of the people she meets, including Quese Frejo, a Native American hip-hop artist, Charles Chibitty, who used his native tongue as a code talker in World War II and Seay's own Cherokee teacher, Alex Sawney, are people of careful words and compelling insight. Frejo, for example, says that "the melting pot doesn't consist of Native Americans, so when I come into a hip-hop event it kind of blows them away." Though Seay's ruminations may occasionally strike readers as self-absorbed, the author bravely recognizes that as a "tall skinny white woman" she's something of an interloper in another culture's world, and she doesn't shy away from describing how this role affected her interviews. Above all, her interest is with Native American languages, and with the threats to their survival. Her conclusion on this topic is not simple: she challenges both the government and tribal leaders to ask if there is "anything-beyond shame over the American past-that made it necessary to prevent such losses" as the decline of the Caddo dialect. Readers will ponder this, and her other eloquently posed questions, for some time. Questions encouraged. [1 copy available]
$ 5.49 + $ 3.19 media shipping. International shipping available.

SEARCHING FOR LOST CITY: On the Trail of America's Native Languages (Hardcover)
by Elizabeth Seay. Condition: NEW 2004 Lyons hard cover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. First Prize, Multicultural Non-Fiction, Independent Publishers. Content: Seay writes hauntingly about the efforts to preserve Native American languages in her home state of Oklahoma in this lyrical, if occasionally solipsistic, travel history. Seay begins her expedition with the intent of finding a "lost city" populated solely by speakers of a Native American language. Eventually, however, she finds herself learning Cherokee from an elderly man and becoming part of the effort to preserve that language from extinction. Early in her work, Seay declares that "the languages seemed to be receding as I raced toward them" and that sense of imminent disappearance propels her narrative. Many of the people she meets, including Quese Frejo, a Native American hip-hop artist, Charles Chibitty, who used his native tongue as a code talker in World War II and Seay's own Cherokee teacher, Alex Sawney, are people of careful words and compelling insight. Frejo, for example, says that "the melting pot doesn't consist of Native Americans, so when I come into a hip-hop event it kind of blows them away." Though Seay's ruminations may occasionally strike readers as self-absorbed, the author bravely recognizes that as a "tall skinny white woman" she's something of an interloper in another culture's world, and she doesn't shy away from describing how this role affected her interviews. Above all, her interest is with Native American languages, and with the threats to their survival. Her conclusion on this topic is not simple: she challenges both the government and tribal leaders to ask if there is "anything-beyond shame over the American past-that made it necessary to prevent such losses" as the decline of the Caddo dialect. Readers will ponder this, and her other eloquently posed questions, for some time. Questions encouraged. [1 copy available]
$ 7.89 + $ 3.29 media shipping. Priority shipping available.

THE SEMINOLE: Patchworkers of the Everglades (America's First Peoples series)
by Rachel A. Koestler-Grack. Wonderful color and era B&W illustrations and photos. Condition: NEW 2006 Blue Earth soft cover, second printing. Content: This is a wonderful series on Native America for youngsters. This book takes a look at the Seminole Indians, focusing on their tradition of creating patchwork. Includes a recipe for a grape juice and dumpling dessert. Excellent. (2 copies available)
$ 3.59 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

TEARS OF THE TRAIL
by Marie W. Exler. Edited and with an Intro and Historical Notes by Dr. aArol Morrow. B&W photos illustrate. Condition: Good+ 2000 The Center for Regional History soft cover, no printing given. While the book looks and feels "new," there is some underlining throughout. Content: A series of stories, collected over 20 years by Marie Exler who worked as an historian at the Trail of Tears State Park, north Cape Girardeau, Missouri. These stories were gathered from visitors to the Park who were descendants of Cherokees and on the forced march from the southeast United States to Indian Territory (presently Oklahoma) in 1838 and 1839. Exler is the former historian of Missouri's Trail of Tears State Park in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. 32 pages. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 3.79 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

THE UNREDEEMED CAPTIVE: A Family Story from Early America
by John Demos. B&W maps. Condition: UNREAD, but not perfect, 1995 Vintage Trade Paperback, 6th printing. Light edge wear with moderate tanning to page edges. Not crisp. Content: From an obscure and isolated event, Demos, a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, explodes the easy oppositions between Christian and savage, Indian and white, nature and civilization--oppositions on which the narrative of colonial American history has traditionally been built. In 1704, Mohawk Indians, converted to Catholicism by Jesuit missionaries, allied with the French settlers in Canada, attacked the frontier village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing 50 of the very young and old and kidnapping 112 more. They then marched the prisoners to Canada, killing 20 more women and several children along the way as acts of mercy, including the wife and infant son of John Williams, a Puritan minister and a prize hostage. While he and his surviving sons were ultimately released, his daughter, Eunice, who was seven at the time of her capture, remained with her captors, converted to Catholicism, and at the age of 16 married an Indian, with whose people she chose to spend the rest of her life (she died at age 96). Among Demos's narrative achievements is his representation of the religious, cultural, political, economic, and psychological orientations that collided in this episode, the web of fears, justifications, and powers revealed in the process of encounter: the Puritan fear of the wilderness, the English fear of the French, the Jesuit missionary fever, the French-Canadian greed, the Indian interpretation of Christianity, and the arrogance with which Puritans interpreted a massacre as an expression of God's will, of redemption and resurrection. This thought-provoking study explores the multiple communities to which apparently simple people belonged and how their domestic lives were overtaken by political events. Fascinating, lively, and especially timely to an age struggling to understand the implications of its own cross-cultural encounters. [1 copy available]
$ 3.79 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority & International shipping available.

WAH'KON-TAH: The Osage and the White Man's Road (Wah Kon Tah)
by John Joseph Mathews. B&W map of the Oklahoma Osage Reservation. Condition: Gently pre-read, 1981 Univ. of Oklahoma Press Trade Paperback, third printing. While the book appears and feels unread, there are problems: shelf wear in the form of rubbings on the front and back covers with a few pages containing neat underlinings. Content: Mathews relied heavily on the papers of Osage agent Major Labian J. Miles to recreate the world of the Osage during the last quarter of the Nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century. Using his own experiences, Mathews stressed the spirituality, dignity, and humor of the Osages as they acculturated to the non-Indian world and adapted some of its aspects for their own use. Mathews himself was an Osage and a member of the Tribal Council and the great-grandson of the mountain man Old Bill Williams. He was brought up on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma and went on to receive a degree from Oxford. Fasinating history. [1 copy available]
$ 6.79 + $ 3.19 media shipping.