The complete texts of Myths of the Cherokee and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees by James Mooney, accompanied by an introduction by George Ellison.
... Racial shifter ... are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the U.S. census. Many racial shifters are people who, while looking for their roots, have recently discovered their Native American ancestry ...
126 myths: sacred stories, animal myths, local legends, many more. Plus background on Cherokee history, notes on the myths and parallels. Features 20 maps and illustrations.
In 1789 Washington's administration announced that American Indians would receive equal citizenship as soon as they were "civilized and Christianized". William McLoughlin describes the crucial role missionaries played in the acculturation and "Americanization" of the Cherokee Indians from 1789 to 1839. He compares the methods, successes, and failures of the Moravians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Methodists among the Cherokees. Each denomination offered its own vision of "civilization": Southern missionaries taught the divine ordination of slavery, but northern missionaries taught that God opposed it. Some counseled the Cherokees to "obey the powers that be"; others showed them how civil disobedience might defeat Andrew Jackson's plan to remove the Indians to the West.
In a work that spans nearly two centuries, anthropologist Alan Kilpatrick explores the occult world of the Western Cherokee, expounding on previously collected documents and translating some forty new shamanistic texts that have never been disclosed to outside audiences. For over a hundred and fifty years, the Cherokee Indians have been recording their medico-magical traditions in the native script of the Sequoyah syllabary. These texts, known as idi:gawe':sdi, deal with such esoteric matters as divining the future, protecting oneself from enemies, destroying the power of witches, and purifying one's soul from all forms of supernatural harm. As one of the few scholars able to translate the discourse, Kilpatrick underlines the critical role of transformational language in the ritual performance. His book challenges conventional wisdom about Native American folk medicine, witchcraft, and sorcery by introducing a new body of shamanistic thought and by placing this thought in the context of growing anthropological literature on indigenous folk beliefs.
This is the first modern scholarly edition of what is considered the most detailed ethnographic account of Cherokee life in the late 18th century. Timberlake•s memoirs describe the months he spent living with the Cherokees then escorting a delegation to London to meet King George III. He provides details of daily life, including ceremonies, games, the role of women, the preparation of food, and the creation of weapons, baskets, and pottery. This edition pairs the original text with extensive footnotes and annotiations, a new introduction, index, and more than 100 illustrations, including artifacts, maps, period artwork, and contemporary artwork.
This work makes available for the first time in a single volume a representative collection of the major spiritual texts from the Native American Indian peoples of the East Coast. Elisabeth Tooker, professor of anthropology at Temple University and and editor of The Handbook of North American Indians, presents the sacred traditions of the Iroquois, Winnibego, Fox, Menominee, Delaware, Cherokee and others. Included here are cosmological myths, thanksgiving addresses, dreams and visions, speeches of the shamans, teachings of parents, puberty fasts, blessings, healing rites, stories, songs, ceremonials for fires, hunting wars, feasts and the rituals of various spiritual societies.
This lively, practical text presents a fresh and comprehensive approach to doing qualitative research. The book offers a unique balance of theory and clear-cut choices for customizing every phase of a qualitative study. A scholarly mix of classic and contemporary studies from multiple disciplines provides compelling, field-based examples of the full range of qualitative approaches. Readers learn about adaptive ways of designing studies, collecting data, analyzing data, and reporting findings. Key aspects of the researcher's craft are addressed, such as fieldwork options, the five phases of data analysis (with and without using computer-based software), and how to incorporate the researcher's “declarative” and “reflective” selves into a final report. Ideal for graduate-level courses, the text includes:* Discussions of ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, feminist research, and other approaches.* Instructions for creating a study bank to get a new study started.* End-of-chapter exercises and a semester-long, field-based project.* Quick study boxes, research vignettes, sample studies, and a glossary.* Previews for sections within chapters, and chapter recaps.* Discussion of the place of qualitative research among other social science methods, including mixed methods research.
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.