When James Mooney lived with and studied the Cherokee between 1887 and 1900, they were the largest and most important Indian tribe in the United States. His dispassionate account of their history from the time of their first contact with whites until the end of the nineteenth century is more than a sequence of battles won and lost, treaties signed and broken, towns destroyed and people massacred. There is humanity along with inhumanity in the relations between the Cherokee and other groups, Indian and non-Indian; there is fortitude and persistence balanced with disillusionment and frustration. In these respects, the history of the Cherokee epitomizes the experience of most Native Americans. The Cherokee Nation ceased to exist as a political entity seven years after the initial study was done, when Oklahoma became a state.In the introduction to the original publication of this history in 1900, James Mooney commented that "there is change indeed in dress and outward seeming, but the heart of the Indian is still his own." This history was originally included in the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.It was republished under the auspices of the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, at the request of the Governing Body of the Cherokee Nation, in 1975, with new introductory material and supplementary illustrations from the archives. The volume has a foreword from W.W. Keeler, chief of the Cherokee Nation, and an introduction by Richard Mack Bettis, president of the Tulsa Tsa-La-Gi-Ya Cherokee Community.

When James Mooney lived with and studied the Cherokee between 1887 and 1900, they were the largest and most important Indian tribe in the United States. His dispassionate account of their history from the time of their first contact with whites until the end of the nineteenth century is more than a sequence of battles won and lost, treaties signed and broken, towns destroyed and people massacred. There is humanity along with inhumanity in the relations between the Cherokee and other groups, Indian and non-Indian; there is fortitude and persistence balanced with disillusionment and frustration. In these respects, the history of the Cherokee epitomizes the experience of most Native Americans. The Cherokee Nation ceased to exist as a political entity seven years after the initial study was done, when Oklahoma became a state.

In the introduction to the original publication of this history in 1900, James Mooney commented that "there is change indeed in dress and outward seeming, but the heart of the Indian is still his own." This history was originally included in the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.

It was republished under the auspices of the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, at the request of the Governing Body of the Cherokee Nation, in 1975, with new introductory material and supplementary illustrations from the archives. The volume has a foreword from W.W. Keeler, chief of the Cherokee Nation, and an introduction by Richard Mack Bettis, president of the Tulsa Tsa-La-Gi-Ya Cherokee Community.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingAcentsa -a centss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for e

Responding to the rapid spread of the Ghost Dance among tribes of the western United States in the early 1890s, James Mooney set out to describe and understand the phenomenon. He visited Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet, at his home in Nevada and traced the progress of the Ghost Dance from place to place, describing the ritual and recording the distinctive song lyrics of seven separate tribes. His classic work (first published in 1896 and here reprinted in its entirety for the first time) includes succinct cultural and historical introductions to each of those tribal groups and depicts the Ghost Dance among the Sioux, the fears it raised of an Indian outbreak, and the military occupation of the Sioux reservations culminating in the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Seeking to demonstrate that the Ghost Dance was a legitimate religious movement, Mooney prefaced his study with a historical survey of comparable millenarian movements among other American Indian groups. In addition to his work on the Ghost Dance, James Mooney is best remembered for his extraordinarily detailed studies of the Cherokee Indians of the Southeast and the Kiowa and other tribes of the southern plains, and for his advocacy of American Indian religious freedom. Raymond J. DeMallie, director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, has edited James R. Walker's Lakota Society (1982) andThe Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984), both published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Comprehensive selection of 126 myths, including sacred stories, animal myths, local legends, wonder stories, historical traditions and miscellaneous myths and legends. Also, extensive background on Cherokee history, notes on the myths, parallels between Cherokee and other myths, much more. 20 maps and illustrations.