Southeast Books

The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

good, but leaves important gaps 4 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

This book tells the story of American ethnic cleansing against the Cherokee nation through an admirable combination of primary documents and the editors' analyses. Perdue and Green begin with a short but sophisticated history of the Cherokee from their first interaction with Europeans to their expulsion from the region where Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama meet. We are then directed through a variety of documents commenting on several important themes: the "civilizing" of the Cherokee (i.e. their adoption of European culture), Georgia's leading role in pressuring the Cherokee off their land and pushing the federal government to remove them by force, the national debate between promoters and opponents of expulsion, the debate within the Cherokee nation, and a brief look at the deportation itself.

Hearing the voices of those who framed the debate and the Cherokee themselves allows the reader to appreciate exactly how complicated the situation really was. Pro-removal Americans make racist judgments of the Cherokee but cast their arguments in humanitarian rhetoric. Pro-emigration Cherokee harshly criticize the Cherokee leadership as corrupt and disdain traditional Cherokee culture. American defenders and the Cherokee leadership deploy legal and moral arguments in a futile effort to forestall American violence.

Yet the situation was even more complex than the editors convey. They ignore the very real class divisions within Cherokee society: the land- and slave-owning elite afraid of losing their property in the expulsion; the "middle class", resentful of elite privilege and hoping to seize leadership after emigration by betraying the nation and negotiating a sham treaty with the Americans; and the less Europeanized majority simply seeking to avoid forced deportation from their homes. Perdue and Green also ignore the larger political situation in the United States, namely the struggle between pro-Jackson Democrats and the emerging Whig opposition that resulted in a surprisingly close 102-97 House vote on the issue (try to imagine a vote that close over the latest example of government violence in pursuit of resources, the coming Iraq war). Particularly disappointing is a lack of any internal documents from the Jackson administration that might give insight into the motivations of the ethnic cleansers themselves.

Despite these deficiencies (and despite the editors' insistence on "modernizing" capitalization and punctuation), the book provides a good overview of the US-Cherokee conflict and a taste of what it's like to work with primary sources. It opens our eyes to how some of the most prominent Americans could embrace ethnic cleansing and revives the voices of those Americans and Cherokee who stood up against imperialism even when there was no hope of victory.

The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears: The Penguin Library of American Indian History series

Theda Perdue, Michael Green

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

~The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears: The Penguin Library of American Indian History~ is an intriguing and sad look at the Cherokee nation, one of the nations in what was called the five civilized tribes, which included the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Perdue and Green, both specialists in Native American history, have collaborated to produce a fascinating account of the beleaguered Cherokee nation.

This short narrative history offers a backdrop to the history of the Cherokee Nation from hollowed antiquity to its first contact with the European world, and the uneasiness that ensued in the nineteenth century as white settlements fast encroached upon Cherokee land. A plague of European disease devastated the Cherokees in the earlier centuries of the European exploration of the New World. The Cherokee nation was unified in the early 18th century under the Emperor Moytoy, with the aid of an English envoy, Sir Alexander Cuming. In 1730, at Nikwasi, Chief Moytoy II of Tellico was chosen as Emperor by the Elector Chiefs of the principal Cherokee towns. Moytoy recognized the British king, George II. A delegation of seven prominent Cherokee traveled with Sir Alexander Cuming back to England, and stayed for four months. The visit culminated in a formal treaty of alliance between the British and Cherokee, the 1730 Treaty of Whitehall, which acknowledged Great Britain as the Cherokee protector. In 1785, following the wake of the War for Independence, the Treaty of Hopewell acknowledged the Cherokee Nation. In 1792, George Washington appointed an agent to the tribe, which represented their interests vis-a-vis the United States government. So enamored was this agent with the Cherokee people, he took up a Cherokee bride, and fiercely contested on behalf of their interests. Later U.S. agents were not so conciliatory.

Gradually, of the course of time, new developments sprung up, and as the nineteenth century dawned, the Cherokees were forced to concede new territory. The Cherokee were squeezed and pushed back and forced to cede more and more land.

Chief John Ross came to be a respected leader of the Cherokee creating a written Cherokee language. He was a tireless advocate for Cherokee property rights before the United States government. At every turn in protesting their grievances, the Cherokee were snubbed. President Andrew Jackson who earned acclaim as an Indian fighter had little sympathy for the Cherokee and snubbed their delegates to Washington, DC misleadingly informing them that the State of Georgia was possessed of full rights in deciding such controversies, when in fact the Constitution designated the general government of the United States as responsible with diplomatic relations with the Indian tribes.

Chief Justice John Marshall was among the cast of characters in settling the fate of Native Americans east of the Mississippi. "The Cherokee Nation," declared Marshall, "is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force." This decision thrilled Cherokee Chief John Ross for it put the issue not as a contest between the Cherokee Nation and the State of Georgia, but one between the United States and the State Georgia. Often heralded as a champion of Indian rights, Marshall in fact laid the whole groundwork for the undoing of tribal sovereignty in Johnson v. McIntosh, which gave a paramount claim to land title to Westerners. The subsequent Cherokee Nation and Worcester cases were sort of an afterthought to correct Marshall's own earlier misdeed, and by that the time the popular momentum had already turned decisively against the beleaguered Cherokee. After Marshall declared Georgia's actions unconstitutional, Jackson defiantly declared, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

Eventually, widespread ethnic tension compelled the white settlers arguably greedy for Cherokee land to pilfer what was left of it, and press for an out-and-out ethnic cleansing of Georgia, east Tennessee and the Carolinas where they domiciled. The Cherokee Nation was betrayed by the United States government who breached their treaties and dishonored their obligations with them--imposing a farce removal act upon them in total breach of the only treaty of legal authority with the Cherokee. The Indian Removal Act, part of a U.S. government policy known as Indian Removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. Many Cherokee remained however in the immediate years following this law, which gained efficacy in 1838.

A group of renegade Cherokee leaders led by John Ridge and Elias Boudinot entered into an agreement with the U.S. Government that would come to be known as the Treaty of New Echota signed on December 29, 1835. Their authority as representatives of the Nation was lacking, so the treaty's authority is suspect, and Ridge and Boudinot were probably bribed. According to the terms of the Treaty the U.S. government would forcibly preside over the removal of the Cherokee to the western frontier in Oklahoma territory, but it would ostensibly provide substantial resources to facilitate the relocation of the tribe. Chief Ross remained opposed to the idea and argued emphatically that those who signed it were not authorized to enter into such a treaty, or speak on behalf of the Cherokee.

In 1838, the United States government commenced a round-up of Cherokees that had not consented to move west in earlier moves. What ensued was no better than a pogrom for thousands of Cherokees would lay dead on the trek to Oklahoma covering which covered most of Tennessee and Arkansas. The Cherokee were malnourished, poorly clothed, subjected to a grueling pace, and many perished during the trip. The United States failed at every step to provide them accommodation, whether it be in terms of food, adequate rest or shelter for the winter. But seldom is ethnic cleansing conducting by humanitarians is it? This book is a sad chapter in American history. Christian charity should have compelled better treatment of America's first Americans, but it did not. This is a most worthwhile read about a sad chapter in American history.

"No, it is true. The frontier place is for people like my white son and his woman and their children. And one day there will be no more frontier. And men like you will go too, like the Mohicans. And new people will come, work, struggle. Some will make their life. But once, we were here."
--Chingachgook, The Last of the Mohicans

Editorial Review:

Today, a fraction of the Cherokee people remains in their traditional homeland in the southern Appalachians. Most Cherokees were forcibly relocated to eastern Oklahoma in the early nineteenth century. In 1830 the U.S. government shifted its policy from one of trying to assimilate American Indians to one of relocating them and proceeded to drive seventeen thousand Cherokee people west of the Mississippi.

The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears recounts this moment in American history and considers its impact on the Cherokee, on U.S.-Indian relations, and on contemporary society. Guggenheim Fellowship-winning historian Theda Perdue and coauthor Michael D. Green explain the various and sometimes competing interests that resulted in the Cherokee’s expulsion, follow the exiles along the Trail of Tears, and chronicle their difficult years in the West after removal.

The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears (The Penguin Library of American Indian History)

Theda Perdue, Michael Green

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Editorial Review:

In the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government shifted its policy from trying to assimilate American Indians to relocating them, and proceeded to forcibly drive seventeen thousand Cherokees from their homelands. This journey of exile became known as the Trail of Tears.

Historians Perdue and Green reveal the government’s betrayals and the divisions within the Cherokee Nation, follow the exiles along the Trail of Tears, and chronicle the hardships found in the West. In its trauma and tragedy, the Cherokee diaspora has come to represent the irreparable injustice done to Native Americans in the name of nation building—and in their determined survival, it represents the resilience of the Native American spirit.

Florida's First People: 12,000 Years of Human History

Robin C. Brown

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent guide to Paleo-indians, pottery ID, & much more.A+ 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This is the best book I've read on Florida's Paleo-Indians so far, not only for identifying pottery, tools (both shell & stone) and other artifacts, but the author's details on reconstructing the methods of creating and using the same, are wonderful. The photos and drawings of hundreds of different potsherds are alone worth the price of the book. At last I can not only identify the many pieces I have picked up over the last several years, but gain a greater understanding of the people who created them.

Editorial Review:

Revised edition. Brings to life the first humans who entered Florida about 12,000 years ago. Combines contemporary archaeology, the writings of early European explorers, and replication experiments to paint a vivid picture of the state's original inhabitants. Photos of replications of many of the technologies used by early people in their day-to-day lives. The author made a tool kit of stone, wood, bone, and shell, then used implements to carve wood, twist palm fiber into twine and rope, make and decorate pottery, and weave fabric. Includes a comprehensive photographic atlas of Florida projectile points, pottery types, and typical plant and animal remains that are uncovered at Florida archaeological sites.

The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians (The Iroqouis and Their Neighbors)

Adolph L. Dial, David K. Eliades

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great history of a little-known Native American tribe 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 17 people found this review helpful.

My father is a Lumbee who was born and raised in Pembroke, North Carolina. Unfortunately, in California, it's next to impossible to find out information on the Lumbee Indians in any general text on Native Americans. This book, along with "To Die Game" (which I first read as a teenager) are the two best resources on Lumbee history I have run across.Like many people out there, I've always wanted to know something about my ancestors, and Mr. Dial seems to know just about everything. I've never met him but he is spoken very highly about by my relatives, and upon reading "The Only Land I Know" I can see why!

wonderful 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

My father also is a Lumbee from Pembroke NC. Information about our tribe is very hard to find, yet this book helps answer many questions. Thankfully my father lets me know who is who which is helpful, since I have never lived in Pembroke. I highly recommend this book to anyone, Indian or not who would love to learn more about a beautiful native culture.

Editorial Review:

Written from an Indian perspective, this text provides a history of the Lumbee Indians of southwestern North Carolina. Sections cover: the colonial period and the Revolutionary War; the Lowrie War; the development of the Lumbee educational system; Lumbee folklore; and the modern Lumbee.

Walking the Trail: One Man's Journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears

Jerry Ellis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Wonderful, Breath-taking Read 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

For the trip of your life, read Walking the Trail. It's filled with heart, information, adventure, soul, beauty, saddness, humor and haunting stories. The story of the Cherokee and the author's step by step journey along the Trail of Tears is the story of the human condition.

Eye opening 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

What a wonderful job Ellis did in writing this story. He mentions Cherokee history then and now, describes the road he's walking on, the people he meets along the way (to include the proverbial weirdoes that make good travelogues so appealing), the emotional ups and downs of physical exertion. Even the daily weather and how it affected his mood was well described.

I especially appreciated his story about the crow and how the crow became the symbol of the Cherokee Nation. I went to visit the Musuem of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina because of this book. That was money well-spent and very educational.

The phrase that sticks out in my mind (I read this book two years ago) is his phrase "Men and boys will always want something from a woman." That is so true...

Editorial Review:

One fall morning Jerry Ellis donned a backpack and began a long, lonely walk: retracing the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the nine hundred miles his ancestors had walked in 1838. The trail was the agonizing path of exile the Cherokees had been forced to take when they were torn from their southeastern homeland and relocated to Indian Territory. Following in their footsteps, Ellis traveled through small southern towns, along winding roads, and amid quiet forests, encountering a memorable array of people who live along the trail today. Along the way he also came to glimpse the pain his ancestors endured and to learn about the true beauty of modern rural life and the worth of a man's character.

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear

Lori Alvord, Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In a remarkable book that takes the reader on a spellbinding journey between two worlds, surgeon Lori Arviso Alvord describes her struggles to bring modern medicine to the Navajo reservation in Gallup, New Mexico—and to bring the values of her people to a medical care system in danger of losing its heart.

Finding the solutions to modern medicine's most daunting problems was far from the mind of a girl from a small, dusty town on a Navajo reservation. But Lori Arviso Alvord would leave the traditional hogans of her people to attend the prestigious Stanford University Medical School and become the first Navajo woman surgeon. Only after conquering the high-tech realm of the operating room would this extraordinarily talented doctor realize something was missing from contemporary medical care—an understanding of the whole person who has come seeking healing.

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear tells of Dr. Alvord's pioneering journey to become a woman surgeon, fighting the odds presented by her own culture and the unspoken rules that made surgery the territory of a privileged class of males. Then, having accomplished her dreams, the strong-willed young woman would find herself faced with a different challenge: learning another approach to medicine amid the Hataali, the medicine men of the Diné, the people we call Navajo.

Here in this moving, enlightening, and provocative volume, Dr. Alvord teaches us how she merged the latest breakthroughs of science and methodology with the ancient tribal paths to recovery and wellness. In dramatic encounters while practicing reservation medicine—a man whose intestine was pierced by a porcupine quill, which he insisted was placed there by an enemy's curse; a woman who had been struck by lightning and blamed her cancer on it; an all-night winter sing for a gravely ill young woman, attended by the whole community—Dr. Alvord witnessed the power of belief to influence health, for good or for ill. She discovered that patients undergoing chemotherapy did better after having a native healer at bedside, and that the feelings of both the patient and the surgeon could affect recovery time, postsurgical complications, and even whether the patient lived or died.

The secret, Lori Alvord discovered, lay in the Navajo philosophy of a balanced and harmonious life, called "Walking in Beauty." Her sharing of these ancient principles promises to have an immeasurable impact on today's doctors and patients by expanding the concept of mind-body healing to include the interconnectedness of all life. Personal, simply written, yet profoundly wise, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear joins those few rare works, such as Healing and the Mind, whose ideas have changed medical practices and our understanding of the world.

William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians (Indians of the Southeast)

William Bartram

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"In this splendid volume, editors Gregory A. Waselkov and Kathryn E. Holland Braund pull together from a variety of published and archival sources Bartram's observations on Southeastern Indians, particularly the Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees...With this comprehensive compendium, the scope of Bartram's contributions to the fields of ethnohistory, anthropology, and historical archaeology can finally be understood."-Mississippi Quarterly "An exemplary work...Waselkov and Braund have given scholars and fans of Bartram an invaluable source of his writing on the southeastern Indians and the tools and information with which to interpret and use his work."-American Indian Culture and Research Journal William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians is essential reading for anyone interested in the Native American Southeast...As a primary source, the book is an invaluable collection of information; as a scholarly work, it is unparalleled in its informed presentation and critical review of Bartram's writings."-North Carolina Historical Review Gregory A. Waselkov is a professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Archaeological Studies at the University of South Alabama.He is the author of Old Mobile Archaeology and the coeditor (with Bonnie L. Gums) of Plantation Archaeology at Riviere aux Chiens, Ca. 1725-1848. Kathryn E. Holland Braund is an associate professor of history at Auburn University and the author of Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685-1815 (Nebraska 1993).

The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Very useful collection of papers and summaries of papers on paleo and early archaic Americans in this region. The thought provoking theories on settlement and hunting practices that evolved along with the changing climate make this well worth reading. I keep my copy handy and refer back to it often.

Sticks and Stones in a new light! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you have ever wondered about your ancestors, whether or not you have Native blood, this is a worthy read. I have been hunting for and collecting American Indian artifacts for many years and studying the material discussed in this book. It not only informs but leads the reader to think. I also highly recommend another book: Walking the Trail by Cherokee author, Jerry Ellis. He was the first person in modern history to walk the 900 mile route of the Trail of Tears and the book was nominated for a Pulitzer and National Book Award.

An Excellent Synthesis in Southeastern Archaeology 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is a series of papers initially presented at a symposium during the Southeastern Archaeological Conference. It summarizes what was known at that time (1993) about the Paleoindian and early Archaic periods in the Southeast; that is, the time when the first ancestors of later Native American cultures first settled in what is now southeastern North America.

The book covers the entire southeastern region, with site reports and syntheses from Florida out to Arkansas and north to Virginia. It presents a good picture of what we know of the first human settlers in this region, including their believed use of "staging areas" - that is, places the first settlers could learn about their new environments before moving outward into more marginal territory - as well as the environmental factors, such as stone outcrops and plant and animal communities, that would have affected patterns of human settlement.

My only complaint against the book, like so many others in archaeology, is that it does not address what is known or what could be known of the cultures themselves beyond the merely physical. That is, there is far too much attention paid to environmental and technological factors at the expense of attempts to understand what these first settlers may have been thinking, or what their cultural systems or worldviews may have been. However, this alone does not mar what otherwise is a well-written and comprehensive synthesis.

I enjoyed the book, and recommend it to anyone interested in Native American cultures and archaeology.

Editorial Review:

The first state-by-state summary of Paleoindian and Early Archaic research from the region includes an appraisal of interpretive models.

To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band, Indian Guerrillas of Reconstruction (Iroquois and Their Neighbors)

William McKee Evans

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The only professional work on Lumbee history 4 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Evans is the only author ever to conduct historical research on the ancestors of the present-day Lumbee tribe at a professional level of ability and accomplishment. Other authors writing on the Lumbees have been either anthropologists (such as Sider and Blu) or else amateurs in either status and/or ability. Evans researched a plethora of primary sources, and his historical fact-finding will probably never be surpassed. Evans has written a competent and well-sourced narrative.

But there are serious flaws. By beginning the book with the murder of the Lowry relatives, Evans contextualizes the gang's story as a revenge tale. The book's organization thus obscures the fact that the Lowrys had already committed two murders themselves, prior to their enemies' murder of their father. Obviously there is more going on than a simple revenge motive. Evans fails to make clear that the Lowry gang episode is really about Radical political terrorism in opposition to the Conservative political terrorism of the KKK. While Evans does report elements of the Lowrys' political motivations (although he missed a number of sources that would have expanded this aspect), he emphasizes the revenge motivation. Ultimately, Evans has succumbed to and is reproducing stereotypes of "Indian" violence. Evans never acknowledges that there is little to no evidence that the Lowrys saw themselves as Indian warriors. In fact, the Lowry gang was a multiracial political coalition--not an outbreak of ethnic conflict.

Those caveats aside, this is the most professional work ever done on Lumbee history, and certainly the best researched. All the pieces of the story are here, and it is a fascinating story indeed.

Editorial Review:

During the Civil War, many young Lumbee Indians of North Carolina hid in the swamps to avoid conscription into Confederate labour battalions and carried on a running guerilla war. This is the story of Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee who killed a Confederate official, escaped, and ran a guerilla gang.