Customer Reviews

Osceola's Legacy (Alabama Fire Ant)

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I thought this work was marvelous. It's prodigiously and compassionately researched and written, exploring such varied facets of a single individual's life from what his parentage was (and how that may have shaped his identity,) what he wore (and how *that* may have shaped his identity,) the mistakes he made during his lifetime, who he might have been romantically involved with, and the disposition of his body after his death.

It's not a very theoretically-oriented text, but as a biography of the most famous Seminole who ever lived -- I though it made Osceola jump off the page. Only note of warning: this does contain a rather graphic couple of chapters on both Osceola's decapitation by his doctor immediately following his death and the exhumation of his corpse in the sixties. Sensitive readers should be aware of this.

BTW, Dr. Wickman is currently the Director of the Department of Anthropology and Geneaology at the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and was formerly the state of Florida's historian. I'm not saying this makes her unimpeachable as an historian, but I really do think she knows what she's talking about.

If you're into reading heavy-handed college textbooks then this book is for you! Exhaustively researched and abstrusely (look that one up!) written, it makes Osceola's dynamic and fascinating life as exciting as stale crackers. The author even has the audacity to rate other researchers in the back. The research is exhastive and you will be too once you finish this book. It gave my dictionary a good workout tho!

I wanted to request a refund on the amount of money that had been wasted on this terrible piece of writing, but it was much more fun to use the book in building a fire. Wickman's research was padantic; obsessively detailed. However, there was no linear (or other) thinking involved in the final synthesis. In fact, having read the same research literature as Dr. Wickman had poured through, it is amazing to me that someone could write so many pages that are comprehensible only to people who have actually read the same research literature. Her writing evokes a rememberance of a criticism of Henry James (slightly reworded): "This author (not a writer) fills a much needed void." Let us pray that the Seminole Tribe of Florida will soon experience a void that once was occupied by this author. Osceola was a great War Chief, and a very interesting individual. Wickman's work does great injustice to both legacies.