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(More customer reviews)Excellent book filled with info about various southern tribes surnames; especially within the Cherokee. If you are researching family connections within your tree, I highly recommend. An interesting and easy read.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South (Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures)
On the southern frontier in the eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, European men—including traders, soldiers, and governmentagents—sometimes married Native women. Children of these unions wereknown by whites as "half-breeds." The Indian societies into which theywere born, however, had no corresponding concepts of race or "blood."Moreover, counter to European customs and laws, Native lineage wastraced through the mother only. No familial status or rights stemmedfrom the father.
"Mixed Blood" Indians looks at a fascinatingarray of such birth- and kin-related issues as they were alternatelymisunderstood and astutely exploited by both Native and Europeancultures. Theda Perdue discusses the assimilation of non-Indians intoNative societies, their descendants' participation in tribal life, andthe white cultural assumptions conveyed in the designation "mixedblood." In addition to unions between European men and Native women,Perdue also considers the special cases arising from the presence ofwhite women and African men and women in Indian society.
From thecolonial through the early national era, "mixed bloods" were often inthe middle of struggles between white expansionism and Native culturalsurvival. That these "half-breeds" often resisted appeals to their"civilized" blood helped foster an enduring image of Natives as fickleallies of white politicians, missionaries, and entrepreneurs. "MixedBlood" Indians rereads a number of early writings to show us theNative outlook on these misperceptions and to make clear that race istoo simple a measure of their—or any peoples'—motives.
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