Oklahoma Books

This book provides an excellent overview of the complexity of legal jurisdiction in the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the years prior to statehood. It covers tribal legal status and the loss of the limited self-government that the five tribes enjoyed prior to the Civil War. For anyone truly interested in the 'wild west' of the region this book explains WHY things were happening.

This collection of scholarly essays, mostly relating to Nahuas in the Valley of Mexico but containing some pieces on Mayan-speaking communities in Yucatan, should be very helpful to students, studied and amateur, of the American-Hispano cultures following the Spanish assault on these areas. All the selections relate directly to the lives of women in these areas, as the title would lead you to expect, but readers will find that this approach sheds light on the lives of common people generally and the social structures as seen from the below. Readers do not need to belong to one or another school of women's studies to enjoy the book and profit from it. Writing style is mostly very straightforward and in fact even vividly concrete, with little academiotic harangue.
I got hold of this book in the course of Nahuatl language study, and several of the essays were in fact valuable for this purpose. Generally, the writers assume that readers will pay close attention to Nahuatl, Mayan and Spanish language elements, but it is not necessary to actually have a background in these languages to use the work.

Contents:

Mexica women on the home front : housework and religion in Aztec Mexico / Louise M. Burkhart
Aztec wives / Arthur J. O. Anderson
Indian-Spanish marriages in the first century of the colony / Pedro Carrasco
Gender and social identity : Nahua naming patterns in postconquest Central Mexico / Rebecca Horn
From parallel and equivalent to separate but unequal : Tenochca Mexica women, 1500-1700 / Susan Kellog
Activist or adulteress? The life and struggle of Doña Josefa María of Tepoztlan / Robert Hasket
Matters of life at death : Nahuatl testaments of rural women, 1589-1801 / Stephanie Wood
Mixteca cacicas : status, wealth, and the political accommodation of native elite women in early colonial Oaxaca / Ronald Spore
Women and crime in colonial Oaxaca : evidence of complementary gender roles in Mixtec and Zapotec societies / Lisa Mary Sousa
Women, rebellion, and the moral economy of Maya peasants in colonial Mexico / Kevin Gosner
Work, marriage, and status : Maya women of colonial Yucatan / Marta Espejo-Ponce Hunt and Matthew Restall
Double jeopardy : Indian women in Jesuit missions of Nueva Vizcaya / Susan M. Deeds
Women's voices from the frontier : San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala in the late eighteenth century / Leslie S. Offutt
Rethinking Malinche / Frances Karttunen.

Extensive notes.

....and one I'm surprised hasn't been reviewed here before.

If you want to understand the shifting perspectives of Spanish conquerers, European settlers, and American heirs of colonized California toward its Native inhabitants, then start with this readable outline, which traces these shifts over time with numerous quotations and documentary examples of how the whites perceived their "root-digger" neighbors.

What makes this book particularly convincing is that it refuses either to demonize all white efforts on behalf of Native rights or to idealize them as so many of the early missionaries did, righteously convinced they were helping and uplifting the very people who were dying in the thousands of violence, culture shock, and European diseases against which they had no defense.

This book belongs on every shelf dedicated to the history of California.

An easy read, but one filled with wisdom. Excellent examples of success and failure among this nation's philanthropists. Anyone contemplating significant philanthropy now or in the future should buy this book and refer to it once a year. Good overview and inspiring stories of the heart, mind and soul behind remarkable donors.

This book discusses the demographic changes, and their political effects, occuring as the frontier was settled in the 1850's, and the impact that this had upon the contributions the state later made to the Civil War. Crucial to a real understanding of midwest poltics and the history of the mid-Victorian period.

This is the only book in print on the Ioway Indian tribe, originally located in Iowa, and now in two branches, one in Kansas-Nebraska and one in Oklahoma. The first edition was hardback and published in 1979; this second edition is paperback and published in 1995, with a valuable NEW section about the modern Ioway. The updated version listed here has an additional and very useful chapter that brings the book up to contemporary times.

"This account is the first extensive ethnohistory of the Ioway Indians, whose influence -- out of all proportion to their numbers -- stemmed partly from the strategic location of their homeland between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. ...Beginning with archaeological sites in northeast Iowa, Martha Royce Blaine traces Ioway history from ancient to modern times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French, Spanish, and English traders vied for the tribe's favor and for permission to cross their lands. The Ioways fought in the French and Indian War in New York, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, but ultimately their influence waned as they slowly lost control of their sovereignty and territory. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ioways were separated in reservations in Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory [Oklahoma]. A new preface by the author carries the story to modern times and discusses the present status of and issues concerning the Oklahoma and the Kansas and Nebraska Ioways." [From the book cover]

This is an essential book for members of the tribe, for those researching the Ioway's history and culture, and for anyone interested in the history and landscape of the American Midwest. Some have remarked the book is a bit academic in its approach rather than aimed at the popular market. I am a member of the Ioway tribe myself, and am a scholar of our language, history, archaeology, and culture, and I highly recommend it.
Every Iowa tribal member should have a copy of this book, as well as anyone else interested in Iowa history!

This is one of the volumes in the long and extensive "Indians of North America" series. It provides a good and brief introduction to the culture and history of the Iroquois tribes. Children who wish to learn more about native Americans will enjoy it, as will adults. We all learn of the importance of the League and their impact on the American Revolution as well as their impact today.

Found the old Bar BC in Teton Park and couldn't wait to find out more about the folks that ran the dude ranch and all about it!

Note: This book was originally published in hardcover under the title AMERICAN ECCLESIASTES. Why the title was changed for the paperback edition is unclear.

James Pattie is remembered solely for a book he published in 1831 entitled THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF JAMES O. PATTIE. The book recounted his experiences as a trapper and wanderer in the Far West between 1825 and 1830, experiences he shared with his traveling companion, his father Sylvester. After trapping throughout New Mexico and Arizona, the men journeyed to California where Sylvester died in [1828]. After continuing on to San Francisco, James boarded a ship for Mexico, across which he walked by way of Mexico City, and then boarded another ship on the Gulf for New Orleans. Destitute, he was able to borrow $40 from Senator Josiah Johnston, a family friend, to pay for passage aboard a steamboat to Cincinnati. It was there that he met publisher Timothy Flint, who published Pattie's narrative.

Since the book was first published it has held the attention of historians and others interested in first-hand accounts of the early West. Often it has been disparaged as a work filled with inaccuracies, half-truths, and tall tales; it was even claimed that Pattie, with Flint's help, made the whole thing up. Richard Batman has taken a fine-toothed comb to the Narrative with the purpose of separating fact from fiction wherever possible. He is able to show that quite a bit of what Pattie wrote is indeed based in fact. His descriptions of the geography he traveled over are often remarkably accurate. Batman wonders if Pattie kept a diary of some kind, since certain details (a rainstorm, for example, that can be verified from other journals that cite the event) are too specifically drawn to be recalled years later from memory. Where he errs the most is in his depictions of his own actions and responses. Zelig-like, Pattie blended in with the background scenery, rarely if ever making an impression on those he encountered (one trapper who spent time with him remembered his horse but not him). Yet in the Narrative he puts himself in the forefront and gives himself all kinds of heroic (at least "manly") qualities. Many of these incidents occurred in California where Pattie felt he was treated with great indignities; Batman is quick to point out where they might have been figments of his imagination. He also fills out Pattie's life, making the book a biography of the man. Unfortunately, but typically it seems, Pattie vanishes from the scene shortly after his book was published, never heard from again. Batman has done a great service with this book, not only helping to clarify a major historical record, but through his own researches adding much information about Pattie and life in the Far West at the end of the 1820s. Highly recommended for anyone interested in this period in American history.

My own ancestery is represented in this book (Jack Harry I) as he is called by our family. The uncle of our Great Grandfather Jack Harry II. I am from Anadarko, OK and this finally explains many of the stories and locations we all heard about as a kid, from Shirley Hill to the Tonkawa hills masssacre sites, and the understanding of how some of our people have the name Chisolm. The narrow tightrope of turmoil the tribes walked to wind up in Binger / Anadarko / Apache and Lawton is made visible and helps greatly to understand stories that we heard as kids. The previous area I search was the Texas Indian Papers and the Smithsonian, which give tidbits but not the mechanism of the period. I am deeply appreciative for this book and although it is a bit specialized, it goes beyond mere history and leaves me amazed at the people like Jessee Chisholm who did their best in a difficult time.