"This curious and wonderful tall tale contributes to the apocalyptic revision of American history that began with Little Big Man and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It's the tale of Hannali Innominee, a 'Mingo' or natural lord of the 19th-century Choctaw Indian and] a capacious, indomitable giant of the ilk of Paul Bunyan....Lafferty tells it straight: how the Choctaw nation, once removed, reconstituted itself and thrived in Indian territory...., how there came a schism between the rich, part-white, slave-owning, moneylending Choctaws and the 'feudal, compassionate, chauvinistic'...

The two-hundred-year-old myth of the vanishing American Indian still holds some credence in the American Southeast, the region from which tens of thousands of Indians were relocated after passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Yet, as the editors of this volume amply demonstrate, a significant Indian population remained behind after those massive relocations.

The first anthology to focus on the literary work of Native Americans who trace their ancestry to people who stayed in southeastern states after 1830, this volume represents every state and every genre, including short stories,...