Customer Reviews

Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

As a Mohican scholar and an enrolled member of the still-existing Tribe, i restrict myself to the Mohican chapter of the book, which is riddled with errors and replete with inadequate or no documentation. The author speaks with an authority belied by fundamental misconceptions of linguistics, archeology, and history. Interpretations are romanticized: OK, so we are the 'Noble Redskins' rather than the 'Bloodthirsty Savages', but the Mohican people deserve much, much better than this. Best bet: Wait for a completely rewritten chapter in a second edition.

This is, absolutely, the worst book ever written about the Lenape Indians. It is full of uncorroborated statements, gross errors of fact, bizarre assertions, and linguistic gibberish. There is almost no statement regarding the language, history or religion of the Lenape Indians which bears any resemblance to the findings of any linguist, ethnohistorian, anthropologist or archaeologist who ever wrote anything on these subjects. The "Unami Delaware" poem, on pages 210-213, uses words NEVER known to any Lenape speaker! There is almost nothing in this book to recommend it.

I will leave criticism of Pritchard's linguistics to those who know something about the Munsee language, which I do not. Ditto for the intricacies of Lenape culture. But, speaking as an amateur historian of the New York City area I was quite disappointed in the author's style. He jumps all over the place, and at times I felt like I was reading the non-fiction equivalent to "Finnegan's Wake." After a few chapters I gave up.

The Lenape people deserve a better history.

As a 17 year old and student of early american history and language, I was at first fooled by this book. I was even studying a phony poem in the Unami language in the book. But as I read many, many primary sources and studied the Lenape Language and related languages, I found that this book went very far from the truth. I respect the authors efforts and respect the ordeals he went through to create this piece of work, but do not trust it. Many of the native vocabularies are partly made up and the histories are often assumed, not real. Read this if you must, but do not use this as a teaching tool!

This book doesn't deserve any stars. I am a member of a Mohican research group that has been in existence for several years with the cooperation of the Mohican Nation. The group includes Shirley Dunn, a published author of two books on the Mohicans, based on primary sources of information and very well received by historians. Pritchard did not base his work on the leading scholars of Mohican history: Shirley Dunn, Patrick Frazier, Ted Brasser, or Lion G. Miles. Instead he used novels written for young adults! I have also found mistakes in the Mohican chapter independent of Mohican history as well. It's sloppily written since Pritchard is not clear when he seems to be extrapolating from other northeastern algonkin cultures, borrowing from stories (besides the novels) or engaging in speculation. Only someone who doesn't know anything about Mohican culture or upstate New York would think this book was any good. He has done my Mohican ancestors (including the infamous one who should have been in the book but wasn't) a complete disservice. The author has set back Mohican historical research two hundred years and we will spend years refuting what he has passed off as research.

I agree totally with Raymond Whritenour that this is a terrible book, poorly written, poorly researched, and not worthy of any Indian scholar's notice. The author pretends to know something about native languages but, in fact, knows very little. I supplied him with certain words from the Mohican language but he misquotes me in every case. Chapter 15 on the Mohicans comes close to being an insult to that tribe and the rest of the book manages to dehumanize Algonquians in general. The book's endnotes are virtually useless and provide the reader with no sources for the outlandish statements the author makes. The publisher of this work should be ashamed of himself.

Long, boring and inaccurate. Does the publisher verify informqation? Seems to have been compiled from surveys or hearsay information rather than actual interviews or experience.

I can't personally speak to the historical accuracy of this book, but the purportedly Lenape and Mohican words in this book are not. The author indiscrimately mixes and matches syllables from words in Algonquian languages to come up with Indian "words" no native speaker would ever have used, then puts them together into ungrammatical sentences. Some supposedly Lenape words bear no resemblance to the Lenape language at all, and I suspect that they are actually corruptions of southern Algonquian words (i.e. Indian tribes in Virginia and South Carolina).

You won't learn anything correct about the original languages of New York from this book, in other words. Given the shockingly slapdash linguistic treatment, I can't recommend trusting the history, either.

I don't understand these negative reviews from so called experts, my goodness.

There is no one alive today who knows first hand how things actually were 500 years ago.
Where there is no written record, all the experts in the world are only using "hearsay" and "educated guesses."

Everything we know about Native American culture has been handed down by storytelling
--why is this suddenly criticized?

Sacred and Spiritual visions are respected in Native American culture--why is this book of spiritual vision so negatively treated?

Before such criticism, one should consider praising this effort for putting us on the right path.

What is written in this book is far more truthful and genuine than other works. Just look on the internet and try to find out anything genuine about the history of Native American Manhattan. The majority of Google search returns repeat the tired old lie about 24 dollars worth of trade beads.

As most of us know history books on Native American cultures are filled with lies retold so many times, the lie has been forgotten.

Apparently no one read the introduction in which the author says he started with historical research and continued as a spiritual journey. I would say he had a spiritual vision that is worth sharing.

I recommend this book, with all of its criticisms, to every Native New Yorker, everyone who feels a spiritual connection and every teacher who strives to provide their students with a sense of living history. --Call it a novel if you want, it is still far more educational and interesting than the media trash that fills young minds today.

It's obvious that this book generates a lot of heat. I found this book to be inspiring and eye opening about an important subject that to date has rated a zero on the scale of public awareness.
The true "native New Yorkers" were in fact Native Americans. They made overwhelmingly important contributions to the creation of what we call the United States of America that have been completely edited out of the history books. (I guess the scholars took off that day.) The New York metro area and Hudson Valley are *saturated* with native history and Pritchard does a great job of bringing this history back to life. I defy anyone to read "Native New Yorkers" and not have his view of the portion of the earth called New York changed permanently. Is the scholarship in this first major effort to expose a long buried history flawless? I don't know. I'm sure if there are corrections to made, as there are in every book, they will appear in future editions. I encourage those who found flaws with the book to take advantage of the consciousness raising this book will accomplish and bring their own knowledge about this important subject to the public.