An important eye witness account of trading among the Chickasaw Indians in Alabama during the mid 1700s.

This is a very good book. It is considered a bible of the Indian culture of the southeast. The autjor lived in the 18th century so contains some good first-hand knowledge; however, there is some misinformation due to his interpretation of events that he wasn't involved in. ( )

Another obscure text on North American colonial themes for Nick Hudson's class, and everything is fpelt like thif, but like Ponteach, this one is quite decent and suprisingly openminded--showing the better side of the "colonial hand". A wealth of information on the material culture and life practices of the Cherokee, Choctaw and affiliated peoples in the 18th century (pre-Trail of Tears), with amusing focal points (the putative and almost superhuman heroics of the native warriors take up much space, in campfire fashion) and ultimately the formulation of a strong challenge to European values by the easygoing wealthfreeëdness of the noble savs. I like that he cares about learning from them and representing them positively and right, and I can forgive him some of his inevitable flaws (anti-black racism, solipsism, etc.). ( )

Adair too had his kink. He believed all the Indians of American to be descended from the Jews: the same laws, usages; rites and ceremonies, the same sacrifices, priests, prophets, fasts and festivals, almost the same religion, and that they all spoke Hebrew. For altho he writes particularly of the Southern Indians only, the Catawbas, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, with whom alone he was personally acquainted, yet he generalises whatever he found among them, and brings himself to believe that the hundred languages of America, differing fundamentally every one from every other, as much as Greek from Gothic, have yet all one common prototype. He was a trader, a man of learning, a self-taught Hebraist, a strong religionist, and of as sound a mind as Don Quixot in whatever did not touch his religious chivalry. His book contains a great deal of real instruction on it's subject, only requiring the reader to be constantly on his guard against the wonderful obliquities of his theory.

(TJ To John Adams, June 11, 1812.)
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbc3&fileName=rbc0001_2007jeffca...