Yesterday was stormy as I drove to Cartersville, Georgia to present a program entitled “The Native Peoples of Georgia; A Very Brief History.” My audience was the Georgia Chapter of the National Parks Service Trail of Tears Association. I was in “Cherokee Country”- land from which the Cherokee Nation was driven by Georgia law and by federal troops in 1838. That story has dominated a good part of my professional life.
It is often surprising for Georgia audiences to learn that despite the remarkable story of the Cherokees, whose domain included parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee, there is a larger context in which the Creeks (Muscogee) people are the major players for the better part of Georgia and Alabama history.
The subject of the Southeastern Indians is only one of many I will be writing about here. There will be reviews of books that offer insights into the deep south, the land of long leaf pines, especially Georgia. My review of Professor Maya Jasanoff’s satisfying book Liberty’s Exiles is already posted. Though Georgia figures nowhere in the title or description, much of the book is about Georgia’s loyalist refugees and the fate of those Creeks who sided with England in the American Revolution. It is a good example of the kind of book I will be reviewing, featuring Georgia and the South as part of larger events.
Both the Creeks and the Cherokees had gone far down the path of becoming “Europeanized” before removal. But imitation did not inoculate them against demands for removal. Quite the opposite: demand for land by the swelling white population, proved to be politically unstoppable in a democracy. And Cherokee adoption of European ways and laws only enraged most Georgians. More about that under “Creeks and Cherokee.”
There is no longer a need to review only current books. Used book outlets such as Abe Books and links to used book dealers through Amazon Books make acquiring out of print books easy and inexpensive. Sometimes the best books were written before you or I could read.
Another reason to review noncurrent books is that, when released, they likely were reviewed in subscription print media that was expensive. This is especially true of literary and historical periodicals in the age of the Internet. Many have simply folded. In our busy world, few of us have time to go to the library just to read book reviews. And, you may be like me in that, I seldom part with nonfiction books and often go back to re-read passages from books I read long ago, passages that have become more relevant as my focus shifts. So, reviewing older books it will be!
I also want to solicit historical memories – “secret” (or seldom- recalled) family stories from readers. I will give credit for your anecdotes and stories. I reserve the right to decide which ones I use and how to edit them. We all have family stories that were important enough to be repeated over generations, and often we are not aware of how they fit the larger story of our shared history. Stories about my family, especially during the Civil War and the Great Depression, will trigger memories of your own family. And, I will add a few pointed questions that may jog your memory and inspire you to submit something. For example, how did you spend your Christmases as a child and what did your grandmother have to say about Erskine Caldwell, Margaret Mitchell or Lester Maddox? Genealogy is of interest mostly when it is about your own family, so spare us the family trees.