Download or read book Nations Within written by Tim Mueller and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The land of Louisiana has nourished Native American people since 4000 b.c. Not often thought of as “Indian country,” this southern state has some of the oldest and best-preserved Indian burial sites in the world, as well as distinct native cultures that continue to flourish in the twenty-first century. Nations Within combines amazing photographs with the voices and perspectives of Native Americans to unveil the past and glimpse the future of the four federally recognized sovereign Indian tribes of Louisiana—the Chitimacha, Coushatta, Tunica-Biloxi, and Jena Band of Choctaw—showing how these particular groups have sustained their heritage and managed to thrive despite poverty, discrimination, and near extinction. The oldest, the Chitimacha, have resided along the Atchafalaya Basin for more than six thousand years and achieved federal recognition in 1919. This community has kept its identity through French and Spanish colonial governments, as Acadians flowed into the region, and even as mainstream white American culture seeped into its indigenous way of life and displaced its native tongue. The Tunica-Biloxi tribe, which began efforts to gain recognition in the 1930s and finally achieved that goal in 1981, can trace its roots back to the sixteenth century. Located near Marksville, this nation once considered renting its land for fifty dollars a month as a garbage dump but now owns a multimillion-dollar business that benefits the tribal members and has recovered a fascinating collection of artifacts attesting to its long history. The Coushatta began their journey from Georgia to Louisiana in the late eighteenth century, eventually settling along the southeastern reaches of the Red River. Attaining sovereign status in 1972, the tribe has maintained its basic social tie, the family unit or clan, and continues to practice traditions handed down for centuries, such as the ritual shaving of infants’ hair, flute music, basket weaving, and Indian fry bread. The youngest of the nations is the Jena Band of Choctaw, which chose the Trout Creek area in central Louisiana as its home instead of continuing the trek with other Choctaw forced west along the Trail of Tears. Securing federal recognition only in 1995, the Jena Band focuses its efforts on paving its economic future, raising the educational level of the tribe, and improving health care options for members. This wonderfully conceived book follows some of Louisiana’s many Indians through everyday life as they preserve their culture and prepare for the future within an increasingly complex world. Photographs and text together tell the uniqueness of each tribe and the shining strength of its people.
Download or read book The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana written by Fred B. Kniffen and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although many specialized studies have been written about Louisiana's Indian tribes, no complete account has appeared regarding their long, varied history. The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present is a highly informative study that reconstructs the history and cultural evolution of these people. This study identifies tribal groups, charts their migrations within the state, and discusses their languages and customs. According to the authors, the first descriptions of Louisiana Indians are contained in accounts kept by members of Hernando de Soto's expedition In the 1540s. The next recorders of Indian life were the French in the 1700s. European influences irrevocably marked the Indians' lives. The natives lost tribal lands to the new settlers and replaced many of their weapons and tools with those of the Europeans. Diseases apparently introduced by the Spaniards decimated entire tribes and caused the disappearance of certain tribal languages that had never been recorded. However, much of Indian material culture has survived even to the present, including the dugout canoe, or pirogue, and the beautiful cane basketry of the Chitimacha tribe.According to the authors, current figures show that Louisiana has the third largest native American population in the eastern United States. Several of Louisiana's present-day Indian tribes, such as the Tunica-Biloxi, Choctaw, and Koasati, entered the state in the second half of the eighteenth century. They gradually established settlements throughout the state, at times displacing the native tribes. Today, many of Louisiana's Indians work in business and industry and as farmers and loggers.The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana is a valuable contribution to the literature on Louisiana History. It will be of interest to anthropologists, geographers, historians, and anyone wanting to know more about these important members of Louisiana's population.
Download or read book The Indians of Louisiana written by Fred Bowerman Kniffen and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 1965 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the various groups of Indians, past and present, who occupied Louisiana, describing their history, customs, etc.
Download or read book American Indians in Early New Orleans written by Daniel H. Usner, Jr. and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a peace ceremony conducted by Chitimacha diplomats before Governor Bienville’s makeshift cabin in 1718 to a stickball match played by Choctaw teams in 1897 in Athletic Park, American Indians greatly influenced the history and culture of the Crescent City during its first two hundred years. In American Indians in Early New Orleans, Daniel H. Usner lays to rest assumptions that American Indian communities vanished long ago from urban south Louisiana and recovers the experiences of Native Americans in Old New Orleans from their perspective. Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, American Indians controlled the narrow strip of land between the Mississippi River and present-day Lake Pontchartrain to transport goods, harvest resources, and perform rituals. The birth and growth of colonial New Orleans depended upon the materials and services provided by Native inhabitants as liaisons, traders, soldiers, and even slaves. Despite losing much of their homeland and political power after the Louisiana Purchase, Lower Mississippi Valley Indians refused to retreat from New Orleans’s streets and markets; throughout the 1800s, Choctaw and other nearby communities improvised ways of expressing their cultural autonomy and economic interests—as peddlers, laborers, and performers—in the face of prejudice and hostility from non-Indian residents. Numerous other American Indian tribes, forcibly removed from the southeastern United States, underwent a painful passage through the city before being transported farther up the Mississippi River. At the dawn of the twentieth century, a few Indian communities on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain continued to maintain their creative relationship with New Orleans by regularly vending crafts and plants in the French Market. In this groundbreaking narrative, Usner explores the array of ways that Native people used this river port city, from its founding to the World War I era, and demonstrates their crucial role in New Orleans’s history.
Download or read book Recognition Odysseys written by Brian Klopotek and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares the experiences of three central Louisiana Indian tribes with federal tribal recognition policy to illuminate the complex relationship between recognition policy and American Indian racial and tribal identities.
Download or read book Flora of Louisiana written by Margaret Stones and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1991-05-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many years ago, during a long, confining illness in her native Australia, Margaret Stones whiled away the hours drawing the wildflowers friends placed at her bedside. Today she is acclaimed as one of the world's most distinguished botanical artists. Stones served for twenty-five years as the principal illustrator for Curtis's Botanical Magazine, contributing more than 400 drawings. She has also completed a six-volume illustrated work, The Endemic Flora of Tasmania, and has worked under commission for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England, the Royal Horticultural Society of England, and similar institutions the world over.In 1976, as part of the United States' bicentennial celebration, Louisiana State University commissioned Stones to execute six watercolor renderings of Louisiana flora. This initial project was so successful that Stones was asked to draw a much larger number of the state's native plants. Today Stones has completed more than 200 watercolors, all of which are maintained in the LSU Libraries' E. A. McIlhenny Natural History Collection. The drawings represent not only a collection of exquisite botanical art but an accurate scientific record of Louisiana's lush, varied, and beautiful flora.Flora of Louisiana reproduces the great bulk of Stones's collection. The volume contains more than 200 pages of full-color and black-and-white illustrations. Each drawing is accompanied by a short text that gives information about the plant, including a physical description and details about habitat and growing conditions.The publications of Flora of Louisiana is set to coincide with the first of several international exhibitions of Stones's drawings, beginning in April, 1991.
Download or read book Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians written by Sophie White and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a sweeping range of archival, visual, and material evidence, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians examines perceptions of Indians in French colonial Louisiana and demonstrates that material culture—especially dress—was central to the elaboration of discourses about race. At the heart of France's seventeenth-century plans for colonizing New France was a formal policy—Frenchification. Intended to turn Indians into Catholic subjects of the king, it also carried with it the belief that Indians could become French through religion, language, and culture. This fluid and mutable conception of identity carried a risk: while Indians had the potential to become French, the French could themselves be transformed into Indians. French officials had effectively admitted defeat of their policy by the time Louisiana became a province of New France in 1682. But it was here, in Upper Louisiana, that proponents of French-Indian intermarriage finally claimed some success with Frenchification. For supporters, proof of the policy's success lay in the appearance and material possessions of Indian wives and daughters of Frenchmen. Through a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach to the material sources, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians offers a distinctive and original reading of the contours and chronology of racialization in early America. While focused on Louisiana, the methodological model offered in this innovative book shows that dress can take center stage in the investigation of colonial societies—for the process of colonization was built on encounters mediated by appearance.
Download or read book Jockomo written by Shane Lief and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jockomo: The Native Roots of Mardi Gras Indians celebrates the transcendent experience of Mardi Gras, encompassing both ancient and current traditions of New Orleans. The Mardi Gras Indians are a renowned and beloved fixture of New Orleans public culture. Yet very little is known about the indigenous roots of their cultural practices. For the first time, this book explores the Native American ceremonial traditions that influenced the development of the Mardi Gras Indian cultural system. Jockomo reveals the complex story of exchanges that have taken place over the past three centuries, generating new ways of singing and speaking, with many languages mixing as people’s lives overlapped. Contemporary photographs by John McCusker and archival images combine to offer a complementary narrative to the text. From the depictions of eighteenth-century Native American musical processions to the first known photo of Mardi Gras Indians, Jockomo is a visual feast, displaying the evolution of cultural traditions throughout the history of New Orleans. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Mardi Gras Indians had become a recognized local tradition. Over the course of the next one hundred years, their unique practices would move from the periphery to the very center of public consciousness as a quintessentially New Orleanian form of music and performance, even while retaining some of the most ancient features of Native American culture and language. Jockomo offers a new way of seeing and hearing the blended legacies of New Orleans.
Download or read book Indians Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy written by Daniel H. Usner Jr. and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering book Daniel Usner examines the economic and cultural interactions among the Indians, Europeans, and African slaves of colonial Louisiana, including the province of West Florida. Rather than focusing on a single cultural group or on a particular economic activity, this study traces the complex social linkages among Indian villages, colonial plantations, hunting camps, military outposts, and port towns across a large region of pre-cotton South. Usner begins by providing a chronological overview of events from French settlement of the area in 1699 to Spanish acquisition of West Florida after the Revolution. He then shows how early confrontations and transactions shaped the formation of Louisiana into a distinct colonial region with a social system based on mutual needs of subsistence. Usner's focus on commerce allows him to illuminate the motives in the contest for empire among the French, English, and Spanish, as well as to trace the personal networks of communication and exchange that existed among the territory's inhabitants. By revealing the economic and social world of early Louisianians, he lays the groundwork for a better understanding of later Southern society.
Download or read book Mardi Gras Indians written by Michael Smith and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 1905 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sociological study of the African American carnival revelers in New Orleans who dress in Native American-influenced costumes. One of the most dazzling elements of the Mardi Gras celebrations, the Mardi Gras Indians receive the attention and respect of carnival-goers for their elaborately beaded costumes and entertaining dances. But what few realize about the groups is that the parading is more than just for show. Costuming, dancing, and all the rituals of these groups are acts of cultural preservation that date back more than a century. In this book, author Michael P. Smith addresses the sociological issues surrounding the mislabeled and rarely understood Maroon groups now known as “Mardi Gras Indians.” His textual analysis of the culture examines its African origins and how the participants help to develop the African American cultural identity. He looks at how some African Americans resisted efforts to suppress traditions that are re-emerging in modern society. Researched and documented by generations of oral and written history, this work clearly outlines the mistaken identification of the Mardi Gras Indians as just an entertainment element of the carnival season. It also shows the vital role this traditional culture plays in the community, much as the black Spiritual Churches do, in preserving an authentic base for the unique cultural heritage of blacks in New Orleans. This work illustrates how the Mardi Gras Indians are a part of the New Orleans second-line tradition. A dynamic element of this book is the collection of more than one hundred color photos. These prints capture the striking beauty of spectacles with a purpose far greater than entertaining. Combined with authoritative text by Smith, the visual images round out this examination of the roots of the Mardi Gras Indians and current practices of the whole range of African American cultural societies and parading groups in the Crescent City.
Download or read book Indians of Louisiana written by Donald Ricky and published by Somerset Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the various groups of Indians, past and present, who occupied Louisiana, describing their history, customs, etc.
Download or read book A Whole Country in Commotion written by Patrick G. Williams and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together the work of prominent scholars and rising stars in southern, western, and Indian history, A Whole Country in Commotion explores lesser-known aspects of one of the better-known episodes in U.S. history. While the purchase has been seen as a great boon for the United States, doubling the size of the new nation and securing American navigation on the Mississippi River, it also brought turmoil to many. Looking past the triumphal aspects of the purchase, this book examines the “negotiations among peoples, nations and empires that preceded and followed the actual transfer of territory.” Its nine essays highlight the “commotion” the purchase stirred up—among nations, among Louisiana residents and newcomers, even among those who remained east of the Mississippi. Many of these essays look at the portion of the Louisiana territory that would become Arkansas to illustrate the profound impact of the purchase on the diverse populations of the American Southwest. Others explore the woeful commotion brought to many thousands of lives as Jefferson's “noble bargain” set the stage for the forced migration of native and African Americans from the east to the west of the Mississippi.
Download or read book A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes Within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America written by Albert Gallatin and published by Arx Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2008 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1836. In series: Archaeologia Americana; v. 2.
Download or read book Natchez Country written by George Edward Milne and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This manuscript focuses on the interactions between Native Americans and European colonists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly the relationships that developed between the French and the Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw peoples. Milne's history of the Lower Mississippi Valley and its peoples provides the most comprehensive and detailed account of the Natchez in particular, from La Salle's first encounter with what would become Louisiana to the ultimate disappearance of the Natchez by the end of the 1730s. In crafting this narrative, George Milne also analyzes the ways in which French attitudes about race and slavery influenced native North American Indians in the vicinity of French colonial settlements on the Gulf coast, and how in turn Native Americans adopted and/or resisted colonial ideology"--
Download or read book Louisiana A History written by Joe Gray Taylor and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1984-05-17 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the earliest colonists through the latest Mardi Gras, Louisiana has had a history as exotic as that of any state. Even its political corruption--extending from French governors for whom office was exploitable property through the "Louisiana Hayride" following the death of Huey Long--seems to have had a glamorous side. Handing the colony of Louisiana back and forth between their empires, the French and Spanish left a legacy that lives in such forms as the architecture of the Vieux Carre and a civil law deriving from the Napoleonic Code. Acadian refugees, German farmers, black slaves and free blacks, along with Italians, Irish, and the "Kaintucks" who helped Andrew Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans added to the state's distinctiveness. Made rich by sugar cane, cotton, and Mississippi River commerce before the Civil War, Louisiana faced poverty afterward. Battles between Bourbon Democrats and Reconstruction Republicans followed, ultimately involving the Custom House Ring and the Knights of the White Camelia. By methods that remain controversial, Huey Long ended "government by gentlemen" with economic transformations other had sought. Gas, oil, and industrialization have additionally "Americanized" the state. Something of Louisiana's historic joie de vivre remains, however, to the gratification of residents and visitors alike; both will enjoy Joe Gray Taylor's telling of the story.
Download or read book The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana written by Fred Bowerman Kniffen and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana written by Fred Bowerman Kniffen and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Louisiana Indians including Atakapa, Opelousa, Pacana, Caddo, Tunica, Koroa, Yazoo, Taensa, Avoyel, Muskogeans, Houma, Bayougoula, Acolapissa, Tangipahoa, Quinapisa, Mugulasha, Okelousa, Chitimacha, Washa, Chawasha, Choctaw, Taensa, Natchez, Chickasaw, Talapoosa, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Apalachee, Koasati, Alabama, Apache, Yatasi, and Chawasha tribes.
