Customer Reviews

A Lily Among Thorns: The Mohawk Repatriation of Káteri Tekahkwí:tha

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Mr. Bonaparte's undertaking in this work is an enormous task, and he succeeds very well. This work gives a solid background of the Five Nations of the Iroquois from the seventeenth century and the time of first contact with the Jesuit Missionaries. He uses archeological findings to trace the movement of the Mohawk people over time, and also refutes some errors in the well known "Jesuit Relations" (accounts written by the priests themselves about their experiences in Iroquois and other Nations), written from the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries.

It touches on the alliances that were made between the Five Nations and New France, as well as the Dutch in the region of what is today the Northeast United States and Canada. The struggles between traditionalists and converts is also illustrated.

A work that is written by a man who claims not to be an Historian, yet he has a well organized and interdisciplinary work that has an addictive narrative, filled with smatterings of wit and personal observation.

This work adds a much needed Native American perspective and voice to the works being and having been written about the Iroquois from the seventeenth century to the present.