In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession And Survival [Hardcover]

Paula M. Marks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 1998

Award-winning historian Paula Mitchell Marks reconfirms her status as one of the foremost contemporary chroniclers of the American West with this often appalling, yet always engrossing, account of American Indian cultures under siege from 1607 to the present. In a dazzling synthesis of the latest research with masterful storytelling, Marks portrays the systematic dispossession of America's original inhabitants over centuries of broken promises and bloody persecutions. Well-known events and personalities -- the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Trail of Tears, Geronimo, to name a few -- are juxtaposed with lesser-known but equally pivotal episodes such as the Navajos' Long Walk, the Snake Indian resistance, and more.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The unfair and often brutal treatment of American Indians is a well-documented saga. Personalities and events such as Chief Joseph, Geronimo, the Trail of Tears, and the massacre at Wounded Knee are now familiar history, even if representative of a radically different era. But conflict still rages, as demonstrated in the legal challenges to Indian claims of limited sovereignty and the controversies caused by the existence of casinos on some reservations. This is complex and detailed history indeed, and Paula Mitchell Marks ambitiously grasps at nearly four centuries of conflict in In a Barren Land, beginning with the first European settlements in America and extending to the courtroom showdowns of the 1990s. As she deftly demonstrates, there has been plenty of heartbreak along the way: devastating diseases; massacres; lies; broken treaties; loss of ancient hunting, fishing, and burial grounds to private development and federal control; and rampant poverty on many reservations. Though Marks writes from the Indian's perspective, she works to avoid a good-versus-evil treatment of relations, explaining, for instance, how Indians were often aggressive and brutal in their attempts to check white migration onto their lands, and how tribes continue to receive large subsidies from the federal government even as they assert greater independence. In retracing their steps as a people, Marks illustrates how contemporary Indians occupy a gray area in U.S. society, wedged somewhere between assimilation and a collective desire for detachment that clearly indicates that there are many chapters yet to be written.

From Publishers Weekly

Marks has proven herself a skilled historian, having won the Western Writers of America Award for Precious Dust. However, her latest will probably be viewed as a valiant, but flawed, effort. She has taken on a topic?American Indians' forced divestiture of their ancestral lands by European immigrants?that is perhaps impossible to properly embrace in a single volume. Marks not only spans a good portion of a continent, but also follows, in chronological order, the full 500 years of Native American-European relations, from their first encounters with each other to Indian land claims of the 1990s. In the first half especially, Marks's attempts to cover every instance of Indian removal undermines her book's cohesion (just when the reader is getting acquainted with John Ross and the Cherokees, up pop the Chickasaws). As time?and pages?go by, the government's Indian policy becomes more unified, and so does Marks's narrative. If the sheer amplitude of the persecutions is daunting, there is still something to be gained by the recitation of it; we can look back and proclaim our ancestors despicable, now that Americans have stolen all the land humanly possible from its first inhabitants. It also becomes clear that less has changed over the past millennium than we might like to think, and that John C. Calhoun's early-19th-century dictum on the treatment of Native American still holds: "Our views of their interest, and not their own, ought to govern them." 8-page b&w photo insert.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (March 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688141439
• ISBN-13: 978-0688141431
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,484,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Indian Culture is diversly spread throughout the south, May 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession And Survival (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book to read if you are searching for more information about Indian movements west and the details of the movements. I bought the book specifically to find out more about the Cherokee East Indians and their movement west to Join the Oklahoma and Texas Indians already in place. John Ross, of course went to Washington, and tried to use his understanding and influence to affect the longevity of the Cherokee nation. Unfortunately, Andrew Jackson and his Federal Troops saw the world differently and Cherokees were being driven out of Georgia with the discovery of gold. Other tribes were dispersed as well. The movement west was called by some, the Trail of Tears of 1838, but this book describes in detail a larger period of time with a much wider scope to include many tribes, and the details of their destinations and their plight in arriving there. The book is candid about the people who became interlopers, i.e., became so normal to see about the place that they were put to work and became tribal members. Many had married indian women, and the author details that many had no skills to speak of. In fact, the author details, many became blacksmiths for lack of any other trade and the Indians welcomed them to their homeplace to practice such trades. Todays excellent automobile mechanics are of Cherokee or other Indian Ancestory and they possess uncanny analytical skills which are probably due to the Indian Ancestory. You will enjoy reading the book because it has new points of view which you will probably not see in other Indian publications , and it will, no doubt, help you to answer your Indian questions.