Potter combines findings from ethno-history, archaeology, and anthropology to trace the living patterns of natives occupying the Potomac Valley during the years from 200 to 1700. In particular, Potter uses these findings to trace the Chicacoan political organization, social behavior, and settlement patterns as they changed over time showing how and why the Chicacoans went from being a distinct group before contact with Europeans to moving to new land and merging with two other tribes and becoming the Wicocomoco by the latter 1600s and finally becoming landless tenants living on an English plantation. Potter shows that Chicacoan life (as well as the living patterns of other native groups in the region) was affected by changing subsistence patterns (increasing importance of agriculture), increasing population, conflicts with neighboring tribes, changing climate, and finally contact with Europeans.

This is a book that honestly tells the story of the lives of the Miccosukee Indians who live with the disasters wreaked upon their homeland by the encroachment of the White Man's "civilization." Buffalo Tiger is a full blooded native of the Everglades, born on an island in the real glades. He operates a tour business taking visitors into the glades to see the real environment. It tells of the environmental problems that have driven many of the natives to abandon their homes and move even as far as Miami. It also describes beautifully, the glories of this unique environment and the attempts of the adults in the tribe to keep their culture alive as their children are lured into the TV culture. It is a great book for both environmental education and for teaching about cultural diversity. Beautifully illustrated with color photographs taken by the author.

I read this historical account over the summer and it is a great source of history. It is very well written and sets forth a good historical narrative. Realy useful to learning the history of The Old Cheraws

Anyone who likes travel literature will certainly not be disappointed in Alex Shoumatoff's IN SOUTHERN LIGHT. It is a book in two parts. In the first, he travels with a friend up a large, but seldom-visited tributary of the Amazon, the Nhamunda, in search of any clues about the eponymous Amazons themselves. He finds mostly caboclos, mixed race people who live off fishing, hunting, and a little farming when possible, and the last remnants of the Indian peoples who lived in the region for centuries. The second, less-focussed journey is in the former Zaire, now Congo (again). Though the current wars and massacres had not begun, the reader gets a strong impression of the crumbling, decaying society that existed under Mobutu. The author travels by truck, by riverboat, and through the jungle on foot with some BaMbuti (pygmies). I liked two things about this book. First, I liked Shoumatoff's attitude towards the people he met: neither condescending and critical, nor full of gushing admiration. He took each person as they came, just as he would have in his own society. If you are tired of the snide, superior writing style of a Theroux or Naipaul, this could be a welcome change. Secondly, I liked his descriptions of the natural world of the forests, rivers, and interactions between people. My criticism is that both sections lack focus and sometimes the book and the diary are a little too close together. The Amazon section starts off with a very fascinating description of the Greek Amazon legend and how the early Europeans were influenced by it, how the Indians may have fed it back to successive explorers once they realized what the intruders were looking for. But, since Shoumatoff found no vestige of the legend in his travels, there really was no point to setting up this "straw woman". He was basically "messing around"; travelling to see what he could see. That would have been enough I feel---travel for its own sake is just as good a reason as any. Nothing much holds the Zaire section together either: it's just a bunch of impressions. I happened to like them, but some people might feel the book is a little diffuse. Criticisms notwithstanding, IN SOUTHERN LIGHT is well worth reading. I recommend it to anyone looking for a different sort of travel book, one not about the pastel, effete joys of Provence or Tuscany.

Henry Brackenridge traveled up the Missouri River with Manuel Lisa in 1811, and this is his account of that voyage. After reading several books about the fur trade era and seeing this journal cited as a reference in many of them, I was somewhat disappointed after reading it. Other than giving detailed descriptions of the countryside along the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Mandan villages of North Dakota, and observations of the Indian culture and customs, the book (only 70 pages) seems to come up short. I gave it four stars because it does contain some interesting and authoritative reports of the times, depicts life along the Missouri in 1811 and gives insight into the rivalry between the two competing fur companies of Manuel Lisa and Wilson Price Hunt. It is of historical significance and should be read by enthusiasts of this time period (just don't expect edge of your seat reading).

Gary C. Anderson is considered an expert on Dakota/Sioux history, largely due to this book, "Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862." It is a reprint, I believe, of his doctoral dissertation, and includes a new introduction of the original 1984 printing ... For a neophyte such as myself, the book is a bit too detailed for an introduction to Dakota history, but Anderson does help the beginner by vigorously emphasizing general themes throughout the book.

Anderson's central theme in his book is one of kinship ties. In Dakota culture, Anderson argues, one could be "adopted" into a tribe, band, or Dakota family by going through either a ceremony or marrying a Dakota. Once this was done, that person (and there is no distinction among Indians or Whites in this matter) is considered a part of the tribe. White traders as early as the French in the 17th century used these ties to great effect because it allowed the traders to employ Dakota hunters as fur gatherers. But the ties also required the traders who used them to treat their new Dakota kin as family, something some traders failed to do on a regular basis. Some of these traders let the relationships lapse, or did not give gifts to their Dakota kin (an essential aspect of the give and take of the relationship). Throughout the book, Anderson sledgehammers this concept again and again, showing how kinship bonds so heavily relied upon in the earliest days of Dakota-White contact faded into obscurity as time went by and Whites gained the upper hand in the region in terms of military, political, and economic strength. By the time of the Dakota uprising of 1862, kinship ties were nearly nonexistent.

An effective way to read this book, and one that my professor is trying to drill into our heads, is to try and examine Anderson's findings from an Indian perspective. When this is done, numerous problems with the book emerge.

First, Anderson relies heavily on European sources for his information. While his list of these sources in the back of the book is truly impressive (he examines everything from diaries, travelogues, journals, letters, government documents, books, and treaties), his use of native oral tradition is scarce. Dakota oral stories do exist concerning contact with Europeans, but after reading this book, you would never know it. This may stem from the time in which Anderson wrote the book, as there is now a greater awareness of the need to utilize these sources in order to achieve a finer balance and larger historical picture.

Second, for an Indian scholar, Anderson at times shows a slight insensitivity to the Dakota. It is easy to get carried away with this point and indulge in the type of reckless statements made by the politically correct crowd, but a few statements Anderson makes could be considered crass. For instance, he calls Andrew Jackson's removal program, a program that forced Indians throughout the United States off of their land (often at gunpoint), "humane." During his exposition of the Dakota uprising in 1862, Anderson incessantly refers to Dakotas as either "friendlies" or "hostiles." Now this may be true from the standpoint of the settlers in the region dodging Indian bullets, but it probably had different connotations for those Dakotas who participated in the revolt.

Despite the few biased comments, Anderson doesn't disregard the shameful aspects of the treaty process between Dakotas and the United States government. Time and time again, treaties signed with the Dakotas promised much and delivered little. It was the traders who committed the most egregious sins; they used their position as suppliers for the Dakota to falsify debt records, presenting bills to the federal government for outlandish amounts of money "owed" to them by the Dakotas. When the treaty money finally came through, the traders skimmed this amount right off the top, often getting the amounts written directly into the treaty agreements. As if that isn't bad enough, some of the treaty commissioners indulged in a little corruption themselves, taking tens of thousands of dollars as "fees" for transporting the payments from Washington to the Dakota tribes in Minnesota. At least when this happened, it still meant the Dakotas got some of the money. Oftentimes, either the money didn't come through at all, or would be delivered months late, leading to starvation for the tribes who needed the funds for essential supplies. Eventually, the government realized they could purposefully withhold the money in order to force the Dakota to do things the government wanted done. This withholding of funds is what led to the destructive uprising in 1862, leading to the deaths of hundreds of Dakotas and Whites.

It would have been extremely helpful if Anderson included some decent maps in this book. We get two, one puny map of the upper Mississippi area and one of the Dakota reservations along the Minnesota River. Neither does effective service to the huge amount of place names Anderson drops during the course of his work. They also fail to help the reader place the various tribes within the Dakota Nation. This is important because Anderson often refers to the Mdewankantons, Sissetons, Wahpekutes, etc. These are the separate Dakota tribes, and they move about frequently, so frequently that locating them on the maps provided defies even the hardiest efforts.

For a detailed, scholarly history of the Eastern Dakota tribes, this book, despite its many flaws, does the trick. The research, for the sources it does utilize, is well done. Gary Anderson is to be commended for a fascinating look at a way of life long gone from the American scene.

I bought this book for the pictures alone! I understand most of the technical write ups but Im the biggest fan of mimbres art ever! I love the whimsical and acurate art of animals some from suprizing places? worth the money for the art work alone!

This chapbook, as a chapbook, is very well done. The drawings by the author's father are well chosen and well placed. The paper and type choices all speak of a book made with respect and craft.

The contents of the book, identified as "prose poems" by the subtitle, are a diverse lot - some nearly essays, some I would title sudden fiction, and a few I would identify as prose poems. Examples of the "prose poems" included in this book:

"Imposters Among the Ranks" is a delightful satire on a 1990 law requiring that "Indian" artists prove their native heritage.

"The Graverobbers and the Oldest Word" is a perceptive 'myth' of the clash between the Old Lexicon (based in nature and the recognition of the sacred in nature) and the New Lexicon of metallic beings. This with gentle humor exposes the emptiness of the dominate culture.

"The Argument of the Cynic" explores the issues surrounding assimilation.

Taken as a whole, the book explores the ethical questions arising from the history of colonial/native relationships - an exploration that recognizes the complexity and refuses to be lulled into simple answers. Most typical of the content, but not necessarily the style, is this quote from "The Argument of the Cynic" - "From the moment they are born, our offspring inherit the legacy of unwritten history, unprocessed grief. In this world, there is no rest for the cynic in whose skeptical glance definitive assurance is the highest form of fiction."

I was introduced to this book by a descendant of the author, Charles McClung. I do not recall the date of publication, but imagine it to be around 1830 or 1840, at a time when America's "West" included places like Kentucky.

Much of the book involves tales of the capture of settlers by the Indians, and there are horrific accounts of torture and cruelty. There are many nuances and minor details which help the reader gain a good idea, I should think, of this era in American frontier history. For instance, although I knew that the range of the buffalo or American Bison extended into what I think of, at any rate, as the Eastern United States, I was surprised to find that the buffalo had beaten deep trails through the woods. This is no doubt common knowledge to anyone from that part of the country, but to me, a Californian, it was astonishing and gratifying to secure this little detail.

An excellent book, and one which was highly popular in its day, with many printings, or so I gather. I wish I had a copy.

this book is a great collection of stories that are hard to find. to get these stories any other way would to know elders in interior alaska and listen to them. i grew up in nenana and the only time i heard these stories was at ceremonies. anyone interested in alaskan folklore, or life and culture of the athabaskan people should get this book. you will not be disappointed.