Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140129863 ISBN 13: 9780140129861

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1992

Synopsis

From their first encounters with traders, explorers, missionaries, settlers, and soldiers, to the heyday of "Red Power" during the 1960s and '70s, the relations of Native Americans with white men are explored in a powerful series of documents--seen through Indian eyes and told in Indian voices. Photographs.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Nabokov is professor of American Indian Studies and World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. His previous books include A Forest of Time, Native American Testimony, Native American Architecture (with Robert Easton), Indian Running, Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior, and Architecture of Acoma Pueblo.

From Kirkus Reviews

Another quincentennial book--this one from the Native American point of view: a remarkable collection of 500 years' worth of Indian responses to the encroachment of white civilization. Editor Nabokov (Anthropology and American Indian Studies/Univ. of Wisconsin; Indian Running, 1981, etc.) draws on a wealth of archival sources--letters, government transcripts, newspapers, etc.--as well as some books for the 116 selections, ushered in by extensive introductions. Opening with prophecies of the white man's coming, the stream of entries soon turns black with blood and sorrow: the tragic tale so often told, but rarely with such impact as through these firsthand accounts. ``Brothers--The white men are not friends to the Indians; at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun,'' warns the Shawnee leader Tecumseh to the Osage around 1810. One hundred and sixty years later, an anonymous Oklahoma Indian says, ``When the white man landed on the moon, my father cried...I told him there weren't any Indians on the moon, so stop crying. He said nothing for a long time. Then he said our spirits were there, too- -and he was sure Indians were crying up there, and trying to hide....'' The early chapters, covering up to 1865, were published under the same title in 1978. The new material, more extensive, brings the story up to today's plans by some Native Americans to protest the 1992 celebration of Columbus's arrival. A powerful and affecting work, illustrated throughout by 75 b&w photographs (not seen). -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0140129863
• ISBN 13: 9780140129861
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 496
• Editor: Nabokov Peter