Review by Booklist Review
Perdue and Green illuminate the Cherokee experience, beginning with their first contact with Europeans, around 1540, when the De Soto expedition visited their southern Appalachian territory. Their numbers were decimated by waves of epidemics beginning in 1697, and they ceded half their land to the British in the mid-eighteenth century. The U.S. government first attempted to 'civilize" the Cherokees, but after the War of 1812, the policy of removal took precedence, as the Cherokees and their allies lost the battle of tribal nationalism versus states' rights. After 1836 the Trail of Tears, as the deportation of thousands from their homeland is now called, began in earnest.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This compact book by eminent historians Perdue and Green moves from the time when all Cherokees "lived in the southern Appalachians" to their forced expulsion to the Indian Territory, as American policy morphed from "civilizing" Native Americans to what might today be deemed ethnic cleansing. The Indian Removal Act (1830) fixed in law "a revolutionary program of political and social engineering that caused unimaginable suffering, deaths in the thousands, and emotional pain that lingers to this day." It's a tangled tale of partisan politics and Cherokee power struggles, of juridical argument and economic motive, of bitter personal disputes and changing public policy. Perdue (Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast) and Green (The Cherokee Removal) have written a lucid, readable account of the legal complexities of the 18th-century "right of conquest doctrine" and the 19th-century "emerging doctrine of state rights"; the treaties, alliances, obligations and assurances involved; and the landmark cases Cherokee v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia (one effectively denying Cherokee self-government, one ineffectively affirming Cherokee sovereignty). Over it all hangs the disquieting knowledge that in the history of interaction between Euro-Americans and Indians, Cherokee removal "[exemplifies] a larger history that no one should forget." (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Since the 1970s, scholars have produced a significant number of monographs on Native American history and prehistory. Recognizing that these were written primarily for an academic audience, "The Penguin Library of American Indian History" series has been inaugurated to allow leading scholars in the field to share their expertise with a lay audience. Calloway (history & Native American studies, Dartmouth Coll.; One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark) examines the history of the Shawnee people from the 18th century through their repeated removals by the U.S. government during the 19th century. Particularly poignant is Calloway's description of the development and eventual collapse of the pan-Indian religious revitalization movement led by the Shawnee brothers Tenskwatawa, also known as the Shawnee Prophet, and Tecumseh. Renowned scholars on the ethnohistory of southeastern native peoples and coauthors of The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast, Perdue and Green have produced an excellent overview of the removal of the Cherokee people to Oklahoma from their homelands in southern Appalachia. They pay special attention to the development of the U.S. government's policies concerning the removal of native peoples from lands desired by white settlers. Although the story contained here is tragic, it is also a testament to the resilience of the Cherokee people. Both of these volumes are highly recommended to public and school libraries. Based on the quality of these initial volumes, libraries might also want to consider seriously putting the series on standing order.-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A brief account of the Cherokee people and its tragic encounters with European and American newcomers. One of the first volumes in the new Penguin Library of American Indian History, this study by Perdue and Green (both History/Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) sets the Trail of Tears removals of the 1830s in the context of a long history of conflict, alliance and failed treaties with the British crown and the U.S. government. The former regarded the Cherokees' vast domain, which extended from north Georgia to Kentucky, as a resource to be used when the proper time came, believing "that Indian land fell far short of its potential productivity." Even so, the British preferred the buffer zone that the Cherokees provided between their holdings and those of the French to any other gains, and so crown policy specifically forbade encroachment by land-hungry colonials. The American government had no such scruples; Thomas Jefferson, working from what he considered to be consistent Enlightenment principles, held that the Cherokees were capable of learning to be civilized--which meant going to work in factories, shopping at stores, incurring debt, etc.--and that selling their land to white settlers was the first step toward that end. "He ordered his agents to intensify the pressure on the tribes to sell more and larger tracts of land," write the authors, "and he let it be known that threats, intimidation, and bribery were acceptable tactics to get the job done." In the post-War of 1812 flush of newfound nationalism and the first formulation of Manifest Destiny, the Cherokee were pushed aside while their lands, increasingly, saw encroachment by farmers, miners and other white settlers. For their own good, supposedly, the Cherokees were finally marched off to reservations in eastern Oklahoma--removals that, the authors write, cost the Cherokee people thousands of dead and thousands more unborn. An illuminating history, devoted to an often overlooked and long-suffering people. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
