Ossiyo,
I can't do you any good on the Blackfoot, but the following
publications are about the Cherokee. (I took this from a bibliography I
got recently from the Cherokee Nation Communications Department but, as
they point out, it is merely a guide, not an "approved" reading list.)
Ballenger, T. L. Around Tahlequah Council Fires. Cherokee Publishing
Co. Inc., Oklahoma City, 1945.
Cunningham, Hugh T. "A History of the Cherokee." Chronicles of
Oklahoma, Okla. City, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Sept. 1930.
Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee
Nation. New York: Anchor Press, 1988.
Gregory, Jack and Rennard Strickland. Starr's History of the
Cherokee Indians. Indian Heritage Association, Fayetteville, Ark., 1967.
Journal of Cherokee Studies. Museum of the Cherokee Indian, P.O.
Box 770A, Cherokee, NC 28719.
King, Duane H., ed. The Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History.
Knoxvill: Univ. of Tenn. Press, 1979.
Mails, Thomas. The Cherokee People. Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1992.
Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokees and Sacred Formulas in the
Cherokees. Nashville: Charles Elder, 1972.
Perdue, Theda. The Cherokee. New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1989.
Sober, Nancy Hope. The Intruders. Ponca City: Cherokee Books, 1991.
Starr, Emmett. Hisotry of the Cherokee Inidans. Okla. City: the
Warden Co., 1921. Republished, Muskogee, OK: Hoffman Printing, 1984.
Strickland, Rennard. Fire and Spirits. Cherokee Law from Clan to
Court. Norman: Univ. of Okla. Press, 1970.
Woodward, Grace Steele. Norman: Univ. of Okla. Press, 1963.
As you can well imagine, you'll have to read between the lines in
all of these. Though I haven't read all of these (about half), I
personally found Mooney's work to be probably the most useful of the
above, except that you really have to filter out a lot of cultural bias.
(If you're not familiar with him, he did ethnographic research for the
US Bureau of Ethnology in the 1880s-1890s.) I would also really
recommend the following two works of fiction by a Cherokee writer.
Conley, Robert J., The Witch of Goingsnake and Other Stories,
Norman: Univ. of Okla. Press, 1988.
Conley, Robert J., Mountain Windsong: A Novel of the Trail of Tears.
Norman: Univ. of Okla. Press, 1992.
If anyone has other suggestions, or criticisms about these books,
I'd love to hear them to.
Wado,
Bill Shelton
INTERNET: william.shelton%mandic@ax.apc.org
--- * UniQWK #29 * I don't care if I'm a lemming, I'm not going!