The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies ed. by Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien (review)

In 2012 Greg O'Brien sat down with Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, two expert historians of the new Native American ethnohistory in the American South. Theda Perdue has served as president of the American Society for Ethnohistory and the Southern Historical Association. Best known for her work on gender among Cherokee Natives, Perdue has published several books on Native American and southern history. Four of her books were coauthored by her husband, Michael D. Green, who passed away in 2013. A distinguished scholar and the founder of the American Indian Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Green focused his research on the Creeks. Together, Perdue and Green, devoted mentors, trained a large number of doctoral students, who in turn became prominent ethnohistorians. In The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies, twelve authors, Green's and Perdue's former doctoral students, contribute their latest scholarship to celebrate and honor the intellectual legacies of their academic parents. The collection opens with the interview Greg O'Brien conducted with Perdue and Green in 2012.

The remaining essays place Native southerners at the center in an attempt to understand their stories "on their own terms" (p. xv). The book focuses on the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, and, predominantly, Cherokee Nations. The volume covers a variety of themes, including warfare and conflict, religion and spirituality, slavery and captivity, economy, politics, race, gender, kinship, and intimacy, highlighting the Natives' agency and legacy through centuries of history. In "The Enterprise of War: The Military Economy of the Chickasaw Indians, 1715–1815," David A. Nichols explains how warfare served vengeance purposes and played a role in building masculinity within the Chickasaw culture. He breaks down the myth that Natives have a "'passion for war,'" arguing that, before European contact, warfare among the nations resulted from cultural needs and spiritual beliefs (p. 33). Greg O'Brien continues to explore a historical conflict between the Chickasaws and their neighboring Choctaw enemies. During the eighteenth century, the two nations stopped fighting and negotiated peace "on their own terms and for their own reasons," far from European influence (p. 47). Christina Snyder uncovers the history of the lesser-known Native American captivity within the early American empire, when Anglo-Americans incorporated Indian war captives into their households, through the story of Andrew Jackson's Indian son, Lyncoya. Tim Alan Garrison stays within the early American republic to discuss the "inevitability" of Indian removal and sheds light on southerners' "very limited but courageous and articulate opposition" to federal government policy (p. 110). Julie L. Reed revisits the execution of key Cherokee removal treaty signers, John Ridge and his faction, by John Ross's clan to bring light to the question of justice within the politically divided nation after forced removal.

Several of the chapters focus on the history of Cherokee women. Rowena McClinton discusses gender and religion in her essay, providing a comparative analysis of the Judeo-Christian character of Eve and her Cherokee counterpart Selu, "the Mother of the Nation" (p. 78). While Selu was attributed qualities of sensitivity, discipline, and hard work, Eve remains associated with feelings of guilt, betrayal, and sin. Cherokee women resisted the Moravian missionaries' attempts to transform their gender responsibilities, rejecting Eve's negative legacy. Rose Stremlau uses the voice of Barbara Longknife, a Cherokee, to reveal a distinctive aspect of the history of the gold rush. Longknife's letters provide a glimpse into the life of a working-class Cherokee woman who witnessed an event that defined the history of the American West. Izumi Ishii's essay, "Cherokee Women and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union," continues to illustrate the involvement of Cherokee women in a national historical moment. Cherokee women, who "had been excluded from institutionalized politics," recovered their leadership roles through the temperance movement and reasserted their...