"The Cherokees" by Grace Steele Woodward

Wow, I can't believe it's been this long since I last posted a book review! I'm still reading books, I guess I was just preoccupied with other things. Anyway, I've got a new one for you. I guess it's not really a coincidence that this one is also about Cherokees, since these poorly-written books keep angering me this much. Cross-posted from my Goodreads account: The Cherokees by Grace Steele Woodward
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is a great example of the ethnocentric viewpoint that many sympathetic white Americans had towards Native American cultures, and which in some cases persists into current times. Up until modern times, there were very few people who accepted that Natives and Native cultures had the same right to exist as colonists and their self-labelled "white" culture. While there were plenty of sympathizers, their sympathy mostly took the form of trying to rid the Indian of his "savage" nature. "Savage" is a word that occurs many times in this book, always directed at Cherokees. Grace Steele Woodward's position is best exemplified by he of "Kill the Indian, and Save the Man" fame, Captain Richard Pratt.

This feeling of superiority, this ethnocentrism, is pervasive throughout the book. I'll give the final paragraph of the book as an example. The paragraph before this talks about the progress and achievements the Cherokees have made.

"But the coin has two sides. After statehood, full-blood Keetowahs retreated to the flinty hillsides and valleys in eastern Oklahoma, where they sought to keep alive ancient tribal traditions and by this method shut out reality. Eastern Oklahoma Cherokees have yet a long road to travel, if they are to overtake the more progressive members of their proud race. But they may yet throw aside their present lethargic habits, abandon their listless contemplation of the future, and, like Sequoyah, explore the unknown. For, given the proper incentive, no mountain, it seems, is too high to climb, no current too swift to swim, if one is a Cherokee."

I'm not going to list all the problems with that paragraph alone, but the sentiment should be clear enough. Whiter is better, and those people who choose not to blend in with white society have only themselves to blame for not being successful like their mixed-blood relatives. The book starts out similarly patronizing.

While this may not be as difficult a read for a reader who is not as sensitive to the insulting tone of the book, it makes for hard going for someone who is or is descended of one of those "full-blood Keetowahs" who "shut out reality".

Getting past all that however, the book does have some merit as a history. Unfortunately, not enough books have been written about Cherokee history for there to be a clearly superior volume to this one. Many of them deal with specific periods in history, notably the Trail of Tears (not that it shouldn't be written about and remembered, but seriously, our story's not over yet) or the American Civil War. And many of them don't deal with the earliest history. James Mooney's James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees does deal with the early history, but his was written about 1900 and so leaves a large gap for any current reader. At least Woodward's carries on past the Dawes allotment act. While it actually ends in the early 1900s, she does mention some notable names in Cherokee history up into the 30s.

The main problem with the historical aspect of this book is that because it is biased, the author assumes some things that aren't or may not be true. She insists that the early Cherokee were savage and warlike, but the historical record does not support that the Cherokee were especially hostile. They welcomed English and French traders and there were no massacres to be heard of. This is not to say that the Cherokee were especially peaceful. They did their fair share of fighting. But this bias may mislead a less-informed reader to think that the Cherokee were especially warlike in comparison to their neighbors (both white and Indian), when this is not true.

As far as writing, the author isn't really a bad writer, but not especially compelling either. Her prose form is fine, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of explanations of events is lacking. She doesn't normally give birth and death dates for individuals, and often the reader loses track of what year is being discussed as her narrative can jump back and forth.

It should be noted that the author was not a scholar. The ethnocentric viewpoint she embraced as a writer was out of fashion in anthropology well before 1963. In the Journal of American Indian Education she was called "an energetic and gifted housewife". Her bio here notes a college education but not a degree, and not in either history or anthropology. Dedicated student of American Indians she might have been, but not a scholar. I don't say this to say that a lay person cannot write a good history, but that in this case it was obviously detrimental.

In short, I would not suggest this book as a starting point for learning about Cherokee history. Mooney, despite being old, is a good place to start, but there are plenty of more modern books about the Cherokee to read that take advantage of previous research and more modern methods.

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