Wolf That I Am (Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory (Paperback))

The Mesquakies―popularly known as the Fox, or Sac and Fox, Indians―were a large and powerful people in the Great Lakes region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Now they live on approximately 3,000 acres of communal property near Tama, Iowa, surrounded by white middle-class farmers.

Wolf That I Am is the story of a young white academic’s encounter with the Mesquakies whom he got to know while collecting folklore for his dissertation. Fred McTaggart had expected to find a dying oral culture. Instead, he found a thriving way of life based on families and clans, linking the present-day Mesquakie Indians with previous generations, including ancestors who lived before the world was created in its present form. This encounter with a people who live ideas instead of thinking them inspired McTaggart to unlock secrets within himself.

Fred McTaggart received his doctorate from the University of Iowa and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Newberry Library?s Center for the History of the American Indian in Chicago.

William T. Hagan is retired Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. His numerous books on American Indian subjects include The Sac and Fox Indians; United States–Comanche Relations; Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief; and Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indian, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press.