The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic

Norman:: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. A square, tight copy. No owner's name or bookplate. Pages are clean and unmarked. No underlining. No highlighting. No margin notes. Illustrated with 6 maps, and 25 plates -- mostly old prints and portraits. This 2nd edition adds a new preface by the author, in which notes that she does "welcome the opportunity to correct a few errors" that appeared in the 1934 original edition. Bound in the publisher's beige cloth. A volume in The Civilization of the American Indian Series. From the publisher: "Here is the story of the Choctaws, a proud and gifted tribe among the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. It is the record of a people whose forced migration form their ancestral homes in the South to what is now Oklahoma and whose subsequent efforts from the Civil War to the close of the century to maintain an autonomous government and institutions form a distinctive and arresting chapter in the history of the West. While the political, social, and economic customs of the Choctaws were closely circumscribed, the thread of Choctaw history was at all times closely interwoven with the larger fabric of American history as a whole. Choctaw law was a curious combination of ancient tribal custom and Anglo-American legal practice; Choctaw churches and schools were copied almost wholly from the white man's society; and Choctaw economic institutions represented an attempt to adjust the customs of tribal control of the land to the white system of individual ownership. Moreover, the greatest problems of the Choctaw people were due to irresistible forces in the life of the more populous race surrounding them, and the main crises in their history -- removal to the West, participation in the Civil War, and final surrender of tribal institutions -- were brought about by these outside influences." . Second edition, corrected.. Hard Cover. Very Good condition./No jacket.. 8vo. xviii, 314pp..