Oklahoma Books

This is a fascinating account of the numerous Indian delegations to (mainly) Washington, DC, over the course of more than a century (1800-1900). The first Indian delegation occurred in 1710, when four Mohawk chiefs (known as "The Four Kings") were brought to England for a month-long visit and a meeting with Queen Anne. The Indians were the hit of London and drew crowds wherever they went. During the American Revolution, Indians often visited George Washington at his headquarters, as the Americans tried to keep the natives friendly and neutral.

After the country gained its independence, inviting Indian delegates to Washington, DC, became a general policy - a policy that had psychological implications as well as diplomatic purposes: Washington leaders wanted the Indians to see the power and might of the whites in the hope that it would discourage the thought of uprisings. Indian delegations were often treated as visiting royalty might be treated, and left laded with gifts and tributes. (Of course, like most people or groups up against governmental bureaucracy the Indians also left Washington with little of substance gained.)

Viola, rather than just relating one visit after another, arranges his information in chapters by themes: visiting the Great Father, financing the delegations, Indian life in Washington, diversions, etc. This thematic presentation is much more interesting than a straight chronological one would be. The book is well written and thoroughly researched, and is well illustrated, too. It's an engaging and highly informative look at a rarely studied topic in Indian-white relations.

This book, focused on the confrontation among the Indians of the Oriental forests y the Anglo-American pioneers of the XVII century, intends to illuminate some parts of a historical canvas which very often has not distinguished with clarity in the story.
And since the way to tell the process of colonization of North America is being subject of study nowadays of a deep reviewing , in which concern to the reasons and behavior of the conquerors as well in what it refers to cultural and moral valuation of the defeated , what in the past t was drawn as the romantic march to the West of a crowd of heroic pioneers animated by the desire of pious life and faced to the perfidy of the wild red skin was not under the most recent discoveries in a vast operation of plunder, foray and genocide .
So the study is concentrated the complex relations maintained through the XVII and XVIII the Colony Anglo-Americans and the tribes of the Great Lakes (Iroquois, Cherokees, Delaware, Onondagas, Algonquin, Creeks, Chickasaws) who crossed and sowed along the Appalachians, the first frontier before the great white expansion toward the West.
Wilbur Jacobs was History professor in Santa Barbara University and paid special attention to the tenacious fight held librated by the forest tribes to preserve the received land of the ancestors and defend themselves of the ecologic calamities that the innovations in the agriculture and the stock farm brought within.

I really enjoy reading about the hardships endured when living in a strange land, so of course i loved this book. I thought Mrs. Hurmence plotted it well and she really described the events well. I enjoyed reading it and I well read it again.

This was a good, well-written, interesting book. It gives you a peak at the horrible lives of people living thousands of years ago. It is a good overview while at the same time it gives you enough detail that you really understand what was going on. You should really read this book, although it's not a pleasent topic, as such. It creates some vivid pictures in your mind, but ones that could be importnat in many lines of work.

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Review of Eastertown by Max Crawford (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003)

I don't know who Edith Kinney Gaylord is but the flyleaf to Max Crawford's novel Eastertown (U. of Oklahoma Press) gives her credit for her "generosity" in making the publication possible; if that means the book wouldn't have been published without her support, then we can all be grateful for it. This is, I think, Crawford's best, and it's a masterful work, coming as it does after a long career of having published around a dozen books, the early ones by large New York houses before he was struck by the well-known mid-list blues and was sent into exile before his talent had found full flower. Banned for not making the best-seller list. And given the current climate for literary publishing, it's all the more crucial that small and university presses continue to find the Edith Kenny Gaylords of the world willing to keep the flame alive.

Eastertown is a kind of old-fashioned novel set just before the Korean War in a small West Texas town, and the soaring, sometimes challenging omniscient narration allows for the fullest expression of its citizens' voices: the banker, the high school principal, the superintendent, a teacher, a talented young woman who went off to New York to be an actress and returned, a secretary, two high school girls, several boys (among other things, the novel is an astonishingly rich and vivid testament to the wonder and joy of being a boy in such a place and time), an attorney, a Sheriff, a newspaper publisher, an old veteran - to name only a few who get space in this capacious story to have their dreams and failures, their deepest yearnings and blackest fears, aired out by an authorial voice that is rich and quirky. The episodes that form the events of the story are the many public occasions of small-town life in an earlier America: school plays, religious and historical pageants, a trial, an election, a graduation ceremony, a collective gathering as a tragedy unfolds.

Chief among these characters is one unforgettable and ill-fated family - the Bavenders, the husband a quiet science teacher who worked on the "bomb" in Los Alamos during the war; his two sons, Dudley and Van, and his wife, daughter of the town's richest man and afflicted by addictions and a general unhappiness. While the novel traces the fate of each, it is broadly embellishing the lives of everyone around them by exploring their internal lives and by reaching into their histories.

This is a novel whose characters seep into your consciousness so deeply that you know once the story's over they're going to be part of your future.

This incredible compilation captures the essence of living in a proud town with humble beginnings. Beautiful photographs with detailed information draw the reader into the diverse history that makes the city so special. Highly recommend!

A most powerful, gripping, moving experience. El Indio Jesus gently takes the reader into dark places of the human condition, but sheds the light of reason, logic, cultural realities, and the kind of truth that embraces love at its core. Simply put, El Indio Jesus is a masterpiece.

Poet David Ray bares his soul to us in "The Endless Search." Readers will share his childhood, perhaps to recollect the pain of isolation, loss and disappointment each of us has had. Who would want to be a child again, to relive such burning moments for himself and his sister, as David Ray has described for us.

"The Endless Search" has a luminous side, a love of life. The author's search for love, given and received, circles in frustration with absent and flawed parents. David Ray does not blame them; he tells the truth with just enough distance for the reader to feel the peace after the turmoil, the forgiveness and love that infuse "The Endless Search."

The book provides illuminating scenes of poverty, family caretakers, orphanages, the Great Depression on Oklahoma farms and in small towns, a few prosperous relatives and the cousin who plays with a $50 toy electric train. There is the guardian trained in psychology who turns out to be both Swengali and a child abuser. A meeting with James Jones, author of "From Here to Eternity," leads to nightmare weeks in Louney Handy's Illinois writers colony. Her unpredicable praise-and-torment behavior is another example of a search that appears endless, that of the author seeking professional recognition and income.

A gifted story teller and craftsman, writing in clear, easy languaage, David Ray illuminates the prose of "The Endless Search" with his poems. They, too, are clear, understandable, vivid. His poetry resonates with enjoyablee tones and rhythms reminiscent of Whitman and Frost.

"The Endless Search" is a book to read and read again. It can serve as a guidebook to David Ray's other published poetry, a treasure of American literature.

The Yuchis, a Native American people originating in the southeastern United States, were forcibly relocated to the Indian Territory (along with their neighboring Native American tribes) in the 1830s. More than seventy years later, much of their traditional way of life still survived into the early 1900s and was observed and recorded by anthropologist Frank G. Speck (1881-1950) during the years 1904 to 1908. Speck documented numerous facets of Yuchi culture, including language, subsistence practices, decorative arts, domestic architecture, clothing, religious beliefs and rituals, healing practices, mythology, music, social and political organizations, warfare, games, and life transition rituals and customs from birth to burial. Ethnology Of The Yuchi Indians remains as a seminal introduction to the history and the culture of this Native American peoples and is a welcome and renewed addition to the library of Native American Studies.