Bookshelf

THIRTEEN MOONS

THIRTEEN MOONS. (Charles Frazier, Random House Publishing Group, 432 pp., hardcover - $26.95)

Charles Frazier's THIRTEEN MOONS is the story of one man's life spanning a century of change. At age 12, orphan Will Cooper is given a horse, a key and a map and is sent on a journey through the wilderness to the edge of the Cherokee Nation.

Will is a bound boy, obliged to run a remote Indian trading post. As he fulfills his duty, Will finds a father in Bear, a Cherokee chief, and is adopted by him and his people, developing relationships that ultimately forge Will's character. All the while, his love of Claire, the enigmatic and captivating charge of volatile and powerful Featherstone, will forever rule Will's heart.

THIRTEEN MOONS takes us from the wilderness, across the South, up and down the Mississippi and to the urban clamor of a raw Washington City. Throughout, Will is swept along as the beauty of the 19th century gives way to the telephones, automobiles and encroaching railways of the 20th. Steeped in history, rich in insight and filled with moments of sudden beauty, THIRTEEN MOONS is a work of fiction by an American master. The book will also be translated and printed in the Cherokee language. (December)

RECENT

DEMANDING THE CHEROKEE NATION: Indian Autonomy and American Culture

DEMANDING THE CHEROKEE NATION: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900. (Andrew Denson, University of Nebraska Press, 320 pp., cloth - $55)

DEMANDING THE CHEROKEE NATION examines 19th-century Cherokee political rhetoric to address an enigma in American Indian history: the contradiction between the sovereignty of Indian nations and the political weakness of Indian communities. Making use of a rich collection of petitions, appeals, newspaper editorials and other public records, Andrew Denson describes the ways in which Cherokees represented their people and their nation to non-Indians after their forced removal to Indian Territory in the 1830s. He argues that Cherokee writings on nationhood document a decades-long effort by tribal leaders to find a new model for American Indian relations in which Indian nations could coexist with a modernizing United States.

Most non-Natives in the 19th century assumed that American development and progress necessitated the end of tribal autonomy, that at best the Indian nation was a transitional state for Native people on the way to assimilation. As Denson shows, however, Cherokee leaders found a variety of ways in which the Indian nation, as they defined it, belonged in the modern world. Tribal leaders responded to developments in the U.S. and adapted their defense of Indian autonomy to the great changes transforming American life in the middle and late 19th century. In particular, Cherokees in several ways found new justification for Indian nationhood in American industrialization.

Andrew Denson is an assistant professor of history at Western Carolina University. (2004)

WILL ROGERS SAYS. (Edited by Reba Collins, Council Oak Books, 260 pp., hardcover - $11.95)

Read by the most sophisticated audiences in the world, Will Rogers also spoke to and for the great normal majority. He tackled the most complex ideas and cut them down to size. A flying reporter, he traveled the world and wrote about events as if they were happening in the next county. Since the Will Rogers Memorial opened in November 1938, many of the 25 million visitors to the shrine have asked for his "gags," his jokes or his "sayings." Thousands of other folk have written to ask what Rogers had to say on particular topics - what sage remarks he made on Hoover, taxes, the depression or Hollywood, among other things. Choice bits of his wit and wisdom on many subjects fill the pages of this book. Selected by the memorial staff members from collected writings of Will Rogers (in 22 volumes), the sayings will make you nod your head and say, "You know, he's right about that." You will want to repeat them to friends over coffee. You can use them to spice up a speech or a column. Or to do your heart good as you chuckle to yourself on a long plane trip.

Dr. Reba Collins took over as director of the Will Rogers Memorial and Research Center in 1975 after spending 18 years at Central State University in Edmond, Okla., where she held all academic ranks in the Department of Journalism and served as head of public relations. (2003)

CHEROKEE MESSENGER: Volume 12 in the Civilization of the American Indian Series. (Althea Bass, University of Oklahoma Press, 360 pp., paperback - $24.95)

"He is wise; he has something to say. Let us call him 'A-tse-nu-s-ti,' the messenger." This is the story of Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester (1798-1859), "messenger" and missionary to the Cherokees from 1825 to 1859 under the auspices of the American Board of Foreign Missions. One of Worcester's earliest accomplishments was to set Sequoyah's syllabary in type so that he and Elias Boudinot could print the bilingual Cherokee Phoenix.

After the removal to Indian Territory, he helped establish the Cherokee Advocate, edited by William Ross, and issued almanacs, gospels, hymnals, bible and other books in the Cherokee, Creek and Choctaw languages. He served the Cherokees in numerous roles including those of preacher, teacher, postmaster, legal advisor, doctor and organizer of temperance societies. His story is the Cherokee story.

Althea Bass taught at the University of Oklahoma and was the author of several books on Indian history. (1996)

- Travis Snell