Portrait of Southeastern American Indian spiritual practitioner Paul Russell based on interviews by the author in Tennessee in 1996 covering a wide range of topics.

"When we lived beyond the great waters there were twelve clans belonging to the Cherokee tribe. And back in the old country in which we lived the country was subject to great floods." So begins the earliest and most complete version of the story of the origins and migrations of the Cherokee people, as recited by a noted member of the Keetoowah Society. First recorded in English by Cornsilk (William Eubanks) from the oral version in Cherokee by Sahkiyah (Soggy) Sanders in an 1890s Indian Territory newspaper, this tribal narrative has now been edited and published anew after over a hundred...

"Echo the heart" is the literal meaning of tchojoho, a word in the little known Native American language of Tihanama. This addition to Cherokee Chapbooks contains the only word-list, English glossary translations and specimens of the Tihanama language.

Son pocos los momentos de nuestras vidas en los que nos encontramos con un texto electrizante. Nos da esa sensacion de que "esto era lo que me estaba perdiendo ." En el mundo de los nativos norteamericanos, donde la comunicacion oral ocupa el lugar de la palabra escrita, esa revelacion suele ocurrir cuando escuchamos por primera vez -o comprendemos por primera vez- la historia del origen, la naturaleza y el caracter de nuestra gente. En el pasado, esas narraciones se relataban en las recitaciones ceremoniales que tenian lugar durante los encuentros, para asegurar que se transmitieran a las...