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Wil Usdi - Thoughts from the Asylum, a Cherokee Novella (Paperback)
Loot Price: R466
Discovery Miles 4 660
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Wil Usdi - Thoughts from the Asylum, a Cherokee Novella (Paperback)
Series: American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series
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Loot Price R466
Discovery Miles 4 660
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Adopted into the Cherokee tribe as a teenager, William Holland
Thomas (1805-1893), known to the Cherokees as Wil Usdi (Little
Will), went on to have a distinguished career as lawyer,
politician, and soldier. He spent the last decades of his life in a
mental hospital, where the pioneering ethnographer James Mooney
interviewed him extensively about Cherokee lifeways. The true story
of Wil Usdi's life forms the basis for this historical novella, the
final published work of fiction by the late award-winning Cherokee
author Robert J. Conley. Conley tells Wil's story through the
recollection of the old man's memories. Wil learns the Cherokee
language while working at a trading post. The chief Yonaguska
adopts the fatherless Wil, seeing to it that the boy dresses like a
Cherokee and, for all practical purposes, becomes one. Later,
representing the Eastern Band of the Cherokees in their
negotiations with the federal government, Wil helps them remain in
their ancestral lands in North Carolina when most other Cherokees
are sent off on the Trail of Tears to the Indian Territory. Thus,
Wil becomes popularly known as the white chief of the tribe. He
continues making money as a merchant and in 1848 is elected to the
North Carolina state senate, where he assists in the creation of a
railroad system to serve the copper mines in neighboring Tennessee.
During the Civil War, he leads a Cherokee battalion in the
Confederate Army and tries to persuade his cousin Jefferson Davis
to expand the battalion of fierce warriors into a regiment. His
achievements make his admission into an insane asylum all the more
tragic. The Wil Usdi of Conley's story is in increasingly bad
health, mistreated in a mental institution that to
twenty-first-century readers is little more than a jail. He dreams
of women and warfare and boyhood games of stickball. Yet even in
his demented state, Wil is proud of his accomplishments and never
loses his conviction that Indians are ""more human than whites.""
Weaving together the disconnected stories of Wil Usdi's life,
Conley's blend of thorough research and imaginative prose gives
readers a deep sense of post-removal Cherokee history.
General
Imprint: |
University of Oklahoma Press
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Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series |
Release date: |
July 2021 |
Authors: |
Robert J Conley
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Foreword by: |
Luther Wilson
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Dimensions: |
216 x 127 x 12mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
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Pages: |
160 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8061-4659-1 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
Genre fiction >
Historical fiction
|
LSN: |
0-8061-4659-1 |
Barcode: |
9780806146591 |
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