Nabokov Peter (Ed.) : Native American Testimony

This history of Native American and white relations moves from encounters with early explorers and settlers to the present day growth of Indian power and concerns

Anthropologist Nabokov ( Two Leggings ) here reorganizes his impressive 1978 book of the same title and expands it with additional material on relations between Native Americans and whites to cover the reservation period of the mid-1800s to the present. This unique history is told in the voices of the vanquished Indians as they contemplate the whites' invasion of the continent and observe threats to their survival and that of their culture. Using government documents, recorded speeches, newspaper interviews and autobiographies, Nabokov revivifies the words of Sitting Bull, Ely Parker, Tecumseh and others as they speak on such themes as first encounters with Christianity, education in government schools and defiance of the status quo in the 1960s and '70s. Coupled with Nabokov's lucid lead-ins, the testimony recorded here offers a compelling alternative view of U.S. history. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

From the author of the classic Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior ( LJ 6/15/67), this collection of documents, drawn from North American Indian oral culture and from government transcripts, reservation newspapers, and autobiographies, spans 500 years of interchange between Indians and whites. Based on sound ethnology, with eloquent and informed chapter introductions, it consists of two parts. The first nine chapters were originally published as Native American Testimony: An Anthology of Indian- White Relations; First Encounters to Dispossession (Crowell, 1978). This part begins with prophecies of white people's arrival and chronicles responses to explorers, traders, missionaries, settlers, and government presence. The earlier anthology has been expanded by the addition of a longer second part, "Reservation to Resurgence," in which materials up to the present are included. Here land allotment (the Dawes Act), old ways versus white ways, the Native American Church, patriotism, and "New Indian Wars" are observed. Frequent hopeless ness is described: in the words of a Crow elder, "Our hearts were on the ground." In the tradition of Charles Hamilton's Cry of the Thunderbird (1950), this book com plements Wilcomb E. Washburn's huge The American Indian and the United States ( LJ 4/15/74, o.p.); for the effectiveness of many oral transcriptions it may be compared with Virginia Irving Arm strong's I Have Spoken ( LJ 9/15/71). Native American Testimony is highly recommended.
- Margaret W. Norton, Fenwick High Sch., Oak Park, Ill.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.