I have read the book Only The Names Remain many many times. I am of Cherokee blood and my roots are from Oklahoma. I was very interested in my history when I was younger and I found this book in my library. It tells so much about what has happened to the Cherokees throughout those tough years. While reading it to my Grandma she pointed out that my Great Great Great Grandfather was a Cherokee Chief and is talked about in the book. In the older versions there is also a black and white drawing of him. Because of this book, I can tell my grandchildren and my children the interesting story of how their grandfather saved President Andrew Jackson's life in a battle before he became president. I'm so glad that a book like this was written to tell both the good and the bad of the Cherokee life. It makes me wish that I could learn more and more about it.

Sequoyah was a great leader in the Tribal Council. He took Ah-yo-keh, his daughter, with him to the Tribal Council meetings everyday. The white men thought Sequoyah had bad magic and set the cabin on fire to get rid of him. It destroyed all his years of hard work. He was making an alphabet for the Cherokees. Everyone wanted to learn how to read and write. Soon they started their own newspaper called the Cherokee Phoenix. Sequoyah was a great leader and his work was important.

This wonderfully enchanting story takes you into the life of a young Sequoyah Indian. It is historically accurate, and a joy to read!

This colorful, beautifully illustrated little booklet gives a delightful, brief insight into the seven clans of the Cherokee and some interesting tidbits of historical information concerning the laws, customs and social organization of the tribe. There is also a suggested reading list in the back.

This is a fascinating book that everyone interested in Native American cultures should read, regardless of whether they have a particular interest in the Cherokees, or their language, or their writing system, which is the oldest living writing system native to the New World.

What makes this book fascinating is that not only does this book show how literacy (in its many functions) was invented by and is adapted to the perspectives of a living Native culture, but it also reveals many insightful things about that culture -- everything from ideas about modern tourism in the area, to the very very complex community attitudes toward what the "real Cherokee" language is -- whether it's the Cherokee of the Bible (and there's lots of religious attitudes involved in how the community thinks about the syllabary), or the Cherokee of spelling pronunciations, or of the faraway (from the Eastern Cherokee of this boo) Oklahoma Cherokee dialect.

My only real criticisms of the book are that it felt short (I liked it so much that I wanted more), and also that it occasionally descended pointlessly into overwrought prose and unrevealing semiotics jargon. For example: "In Cherokee tourism in the mid-1990s, semiotic potency, use-value, and exchange-value intersected in compelling ways. Syllabic objects were differentiated in terms of their semiotic use potential. The distinction had to do with whether syllabic objects were considered to possess symbolic use-value, which, in the case of texts, meant that they were considered to have significant and specific meanings or performative powers." So the bad news is that now and then, the book pops up with a few irritating sentences like that. But the good news is that the rest of the book is nice and clear.

Besides being great for reading on your own, this book is great reading for any university-level class involving sociolinguistics, Native fieldwork and Native community relations and literacy teaching, and maybe even modern Native cultures in general.

The autobiography, "Someone's Child" like Ken Kesey's popular novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"(1962), takes the reader inside a mental hospital--a Veterans' Hospital, in this case--where a young Indian, like Kesey's Chief Bromden, is subjected to a daily routine of inhumane treatment which most Americans would ascribe to a concentration camp, not a hospital. One major difference, however, distinguishes Alethea Adams-Wells' book from Kesey's novel: "Someone's Child" is non-fictional. Born two months prematurely, in 1951--the third child of a 14 year old Cherokee girl from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky--the author was named Aleechawa ('Good Hunter'). Though she did become an excellent hunter, skilled in tracking and shooting wild game, Aleechawa's name often took an ironic twist as she herself became the hunted in a world of human predators. After Alethea (her English name) was diagnosed with polio at the age of two weeks, for instance, the step-father she knew only as "Sir" attempted to destroy the crippled infant by burying her alive. A few years later, Sir--assisted by the county sheriff--would hunt Aleechawa down like a wild animal, and sell her (for $500) to an older man. In heart-rending story which alternates scenes from the Ward B lock-up unit of an Ohio mental hospital with those of various Cherokee homes in which Alethea was raised, the reader is granted a rare journey through the thoughts of a contemporary Cherokee woman--a journey whcih may cause us to recoil in horror, or one which can give unprecedented insight into the lives of a segment of our society often dismissed as "drunken Indians". A superficial reading of "Someone's Child", in fact, may leave an impression of a horse-thieving, moonshine-drinking, cigar-smoking Indian woman who lives by a gun and her wits; the careful reader, however, will meet a beautiful young Cherokee/Appalachian woman whose strong spirit and steady faith in the "Maker of Breath" have enabled her to survive, against insurmountable odds: polio, seizures, dyslexia, cancer; physical beatings, chronic verbal abuse, rape; the murder of her "babies", the death of her Paw, the fatal plane crash of her beloved Cherokee fiance, the terminal illness of her dearest friend--her Mama. Encouraged by her mother, her 'Paw', an occasional school teacher and such notables as author Jesse Stuart and singer Johnny Cash, Alethea learns to express her thoughts through poetry and painting; hence,though the author is economical with "flowery words", "Someone's Child" is filled with descriptive phrases, flavored with the mountain dialect of Eastern Kentucky. For example, instead of a "scraggly-headed child", Aleechawa writes, "Her hair looked like a bunch of baby kittens had had a good sucking on it!". Or, avoiding the tired cliche, "hungry as a bear", she declares. "I ate like an old hound that had been chasing a 'coon all night!". Making no claims as an academic treatise, "Someone's Child" will touch you in a way that no other autobiography has, and for those who want to understand "Indian issues", this book is unequaled in its illuminating analysis of those issues.

Scott C.S. Stone is a legend in Hawaii. He is a very strong and resourceful man with a heart of gold. He was also a mercenary in Indochina. The Song of the Wolf reflects many of the experiences of the author as a young man. And then some. You will never regret reading such a fine adventure novel.

If you are interested in the Civil War, Mountaineers, Native Americans or Genealogy, this is a great read.. learn how the War came to the Mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, the people and the battles and the harshness of the War, and maybe find an ancestor or two. Well worth hunting for and the price.

As is often the case with these informative volumes in the Cornerstones of Freedom series, "The Trail of Tears" is about more than the forced exodus of the Cherokee nation from Georgia to Oklahoma. One of the strengths of this book is that R. Conrad Stein spends as much time teaching young readers about the culture of the Cherokees as he does discussing the Indian Removal plan to settle all Indians east of the Mississippi River finally implemented by President Andrew Jackson. Although the focus is primarily on the Cherokee nation, Stein also touches on the other members of the "Five Civilized Tribes," the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole, albeit to a lesser degree. As would be the case with the Plains War of the 1870s, the spark for this fatal encounter would be the discovery of gold in the heart of Cherokee territory. The Cherokees went to court to have their treaty rights enforced, but Jackson ignored the ruling of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Marshall. Simply by presenting the facts of the matter, Jackson clearly becomes the villain of this tale, which saw one in four Cherokees die on the Trail of Tears. Stein ends his story with the defiance of Tsali, a legendary Cherokee whose last words were "It is sweet to die in one's own country." This book, illustrated with both historic paintings and etchings as well as more contemporary artwork of the tragic trek westward, gives students and teachers considerably more information about the treatment of Indians by the American government and the Trail of Tears than they will ever get in an American History textbook. There is not a better supplemental source of historical information for secondary History classes than this series

Little Brother is a young Tennessee Cherokee who is frustrated he has not performed a brave deed to earn his permanent name. Life just gets worse as he tries to be brave, do any feat which would earn a "good" name. Readers, mainly children, learn about Cherokee life in fascinatng detail. Cherokees used to use turkey feathers as towels, sopapilla plants for soap, enjoyed games we play today such as lacrosse. Children learn about foods and their preparation, how families back then were like our families today, and aspects of Cherokee culture and religion and their deep respect for the Earth. As a teacher, I use Tenase Brave as a thematic base for about a month's teaching in 3rd grade -- tieing in math, science, language, and Native American studies. Culmination of the unit is on or near Thanksgiving. The author is elderly, but lives nearby in Smyrna, Tennessee, and is extremely sharp and lively. She often visits schools who are fortunate enough to find and use her book. Children love to be read to, and this book is written in a format that lends itself of storytelling. It has humor, high adventure and is a fascinatingly well written little book. I highly recommend it.