Wallace, Anthony F. C

New York. 1970. January 1970. Knopf. 1st Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket . The history and culture of the great Iroquois nation, their destruction and demoralization, and their cultural revival at the hands of the Indian visionary, Handsome Lake. 384 pages + index. hardcover. Illustrated with 8 pages of halftones and 2 maps. Jacket drawing by Lorence Bjorklund. keywords: American Indian History Seneca. FROM THE PUBLISHER - This book about the greatest of the northeastern Indian tribes re-creates an extraordinary culture and narrates the epic story of the collapse and renascence of a people. The author portrays the life and culture of the Seneca first at the apex of their power, when this proud tribe dominated the Iroquois Confederacy, made its influence felt all the way to the Ohio Country, and served as a balance in North America between the French and English. He then tells of the impact o the French and Indian Wars on the Seneca and describes the steady deterioration of their culture and morale until, after their grievous reversal during the American Revolution, they were confined to reservations. He unfolds their extraordinary revitalization through the visions and prophecies of Handsome Lake, a minor chieftain, a reformed alcoholic who combined pagan and Quaker Christian elements in his teaching and succeeded in restoring the cultural health of his people. Anthony F. C. Wallace illuminates the complexity and intuitive sophistication of the Seneca - their mystic-therapeutic insistence on the importance of dreams, their ritualization (by adoption) of vengeance - to lend a new intensity to our understanding of the confrontation between the Indian and the white man. Today Handsome Lake's religion is still practiced in the longhouses of Canadian and New York State reservations, providing one of the bridges between the ancient Seneca culture and their tribal identity in the modern world, a precarious balance that the author describes in scholarly and compassionate detail. inventory #21385