Mapping the Promised Land: A Review of Jacksonland by Steve Inskeep

I find maps fascinating, not so much for their directions, as for what their place names reveal. Take Georgia’s map, for example. First, some patriotic names: Jackson (also Jackson County, Jacksonville), Rossville, Jefferson (-ville and County, too), Madison, Monroe, and Washington (& County). Next, names suggesting homesickness, longing to travel, or even beauty: Oxford, Rome, […]

Early Native American Writers

April 3, 2014 · by Brenda Lloyd | in The Story of Books | tagged American history from Indian perspective, Black Hawk, Broken treaties with Indian tribes, Charles Eastman, Cherokee Syllabary, Christian missionaries vs. Native American religious beliefs, Early Native American Writers, Elias Boudinott, Forced removal of Indian tribes, Indian Removal Act, S. Alice Callahan, Sarah Winnemucca, The Battle of Wounded Knee, The Cherokee Phoenix, The Five Civilized Tribes, The Many Tribes of the North American Indian, The Trail of Tears, William Apess | 3 Comments

Others of your accursed race have, in years past, poisoned our peaceful shores. They have taught me what you are . . . I am king in my own land, and will never become the vassal of a mortal like myself. Vile and pusillanimous is he who submits to the yoke of another when […]

A Different Kind of Southern Literary Trail: Part One, New Echota and the Talking Leaves

May 1, 2013 · by Christina Kaylor | in Field Trips | tagged Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Syllabary, Elias Boudinott, John Ross, New Echota, Samuel Worcester, Sequoyah, The Cherokee Phoenix | 4 Comments

Far away from Virginia, fall had already come. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan were dressed up like Indian warriors from whom their names came. Blood red and yellow, ocher and ice blue. He read the road signs with interest now, wondering what lay beneath the names. The Algonquins had named the territory he lived in Great Water, […]