The Bone Picker
The Bone Picker

Author: Devon A. Mihesuah

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2024-10-08

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0806195142

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Under the shadow of gray clouds, three children venture into the woods, where they spot the corpse of an old man on a scaffold. Suddenly a wild figure emerges, with long fingernails and tangled hair. It is the Hattak fullih nipi foni, the bone picker, who comes to tear off rotting flesh with his fingernails. Only the Choctaws who adhere to the old ways will speak of him. The frightening bone picker is just one of many entities, scary and mysterious, who lurk behind every page of this spine-tingling collection of Native fiction, written by award-winning Choctaw author Devon A. Mihesuah. Choctaw lore features a large pantheon of deities. These beings created the first people, taught them how to hunt, and warned them of impending danger. Their stories are not meant simply to entertain: each entity has a purpose in its behavior and a lesson to share—to those who take heed. As a Choctaw citizen, with deep ties to Indian Territory and Oklahoma, Mihesuah grew up hearing the stories of her ancestors. In the tradition of Native storytelling, she spins tales that move back and forth fluidly across time. The ancient beings, we discover, followed the tribe from their original homelands in Mississippi and are now ever-present influences on tribal consciousness. While some of the horrors told here are “real life” in nature, the art of fiction that Mihesuah employs reveals surprising outcomes or alternative histories. It turns out the things that scare us the most can lead to the answers we are seeking and even ensure our very survival.

Galactic Passages
Galactic Passages

Author: ,Dean

Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

Published: 2021-01-13

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1642997129

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After destroying the Muudia Portal passage and saving their home worlds, the newly assembled V-357 crew are faced with many dangers from inside and outside their ship. As they search for the true passage home, the crew struggles to sustain their just mission despite becoming the most-wanted criminals in a new dimension. Along the way, the science given them before their journey is proven to be faulty. The hope of ever seeing their homes again becomes fractured at a foundational level. Through creativity and friends in unexpected places, the V-357 crew press forward; only because they can't go back. Their harrowing journey draws them ever-closer to a mysterious being more powerful than they've ever experienced or imagine!

The Roads of My Relations
The Roads of My Relations

Author: Devon A. Mihesuah

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0816543186

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"I've traveled a lot of roads, but never alone. My relations are with me," says Billie McKenney, one of the matriarchs of the complex family of Choctaws searching for peace as the white world rapidly encroaches on their tribal land, politics, and values. In her first collection of stories, Native American writer Devon A. Mihesuah chronicles the lives of several generations of a close-knit Choctaw family as they are forced from their traditional homeland in nineteenth-century Mississippi and endure unspeakable sorrows during their journey before settling in southeastern Oklahoma. Blending family lore, stark realism, and vivid imagination, The Roads of My Relations relays a strong sense of Choctaw culture and world view in absorbing tales of history and legend. Unfolding through the voices and actions of family members, confused half-bloods, and unlikely heroes—not all of them living or even human—the stories tell of the horrors of forced removal, the turbulence of post Civil War Indian Territory, the terrifying violence suffered at the hands of immortal Crow witches, and the family's ultimate survival against forces of evil. Time-traveling ghosts, mysterious medicine men, and eerie shape-shifters share the pages with proud matriarchs, mischievous schoolgirls, and loving siblings. Together, these interwoven stories express the strength and persistence of a tribe whose identity and pride have survived the disruptions of colonialism. With The Roads of My Relations, Devon A. Mihesuah has created a universal and timeless exploration of heritage, spirituality, and the importance of preserving and passing on tradition.

Train Beyond the Mountains
Train Beyond the Mountains

Author: Rick Antonson

Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd

Published: 2023-04-18

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1771644885

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A captivating journey blending memoir, history, and biography that takes the reader on one of the world's most famous trains and tells of carving the dramatic route it follows, while pondering other international railways through the eyes of travellers past and present. Rick Antonson has ridden trains in more than thirty-five countries—but almost everything he thinks he knows about train travel changes when he boards the Rocky Mountaineer with his ten-year-old grandson, Riley. As they wind over trestles and through tunnels, each mile of track uncovers stories of dynamite and discovery, surveyors and schemers, explorers and visionaries, and the people who helped to build Canada against the odds of geography and politics. Surrounded by a wild landscape that sparks imagination, fellow passengers recount train travels in other countries, get nostalgic for the era of steam locomotives, and consider life’s unfinished journeys. Peppered with spirited dialogue, heartrending vignettes, and intriguing anecdotes, Train Beyond the Mountains is a travelogue with urgency: to make your travel dreams happen now. As one passenger muses, "The mistake we make is that we think we have time."

Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians
Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians

Author: John R. Swanton

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2001-04-05

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0817311092

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Long considered the undisputed authority on the Indians of the southern United States, anthropologist John Swanton published this history as the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) Bulletin 103 in 1931. Swanton's descriptions are drawn from earlier records—including those of DuPratz and Romans—and from Choctaw informants. His long association with the Choctaws is evident in the thorough detailing of their customs and way of life and in his sensitivity to the presentation of their native culture. Included are descriptions of such subjects as clans, division of labor between sexes, games, religion, war customs, and burial rites. The Choctaws were, in general, peaceful farmers living in Mississippi and southwestern Alabama until they were moved to Oklahoma in successive waves beginning in 1830, after the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. This edition includes a new foreword by Kenneth Carleton placing Swanton's work in the context of his times. The continued value of Swanton's original research makes Source Material the most comprehensive book ever published on the Choctaw people.

Tap Roots
Tap Roots

Author: James H. Street

Publisher: eNet Press

Published: 2014-05-22

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 1618864572

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In the second novel of the Dabney family saga, Sam'l Dabney is no longer "ol' man Dabney's brat" but has become a rich and successful aristocrat of such great influence that some call him the Father of Mississippi and Alabama. Old and dying, he and Tishomingo, a prince of the Choctaws, are all who are left of the group who fled the Promised Land. After Sam's death, the Dabney family, strong, greedy, and imbued with raw courage, jeers at fate and dares the impossible. They secede from Mississippi, organize an independent republic called the Free State of Lebanon, and wage a no-quarter war against the might and millions of the Confederacy at a time when the Union seemed doomed. Some die in battle, others on the gallows, and only a few live to see the tiny spark they kindled blaze into a fire for freedom. The family is led by Sam's son, Hoab, a shouting abolitionist and religious zealot, whose secret is still carefully guarded and, if ever revealed, may rock the South. He and wife, Shellie, and their children — Cormac, red-headed Morna, in spirit much like her great-aunt, Honoria, and the twins Aven and Bruce continue Sam's legacy — the tap root that pushed through the loam and into the red clay bed of the valley and from which the Dabney legacy continues to flourish. They are joined by others — neighbor Claiborne MacIvor, who loved two Dabney women; Keith Alexander, the morose and unbelievably handsome Black Knight of Vengeance; and Reverend Kirkland, the pudgy little preacher who told a great denomination, "I'll see you in hell before I surrender my rights. I am but a feeble ripple, but behind me comes the whirlwind." Tap Roots begins in 1858 and moves to a thunderous climax in 1865. The book is based on the true story of the "free state of Jones" in which the farmers and workmen of Jones County in Mississippi decide to succeed from both the United States and the Confederacy. In this part of the South there were few if any plantations, most people worked their own farms and held no slaves and they strongly resented being required "to fight a rich man's war". The majority of settlers were also of Scots-Irish decent and did not believe in slavery, so they decided to form a Republic of free men. Tap Roots was a best seller and later made into a film starring Susan Hayward.