Light on the Path: The Anthropology and History of the Southeastern Indians

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 296 pages
• Published by: University Alabama Press February 12, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0817352872
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0817352875
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

Reader Reviews
This collection of essays honors the memory of anthropologist Charles Hudson who charted brilliantly the course of Hernando de Soto's exploration of the Southeast. Read Hudson if you're at all interested in Spanish explorers and the Indians they met. Most of the contributors of the ten essays in this book seem to be young anthropologists who were students of Hudson. These essays focus on Indians of the Southeastern United States in the proto and early-historic periods. As is usual with collections of this sort, some you find better, more interesting, and more important than others. This collection is wide ranging and probably of interest only to persons who already know quite a bit about the subject. Essays include: beavers and their role in SE folklore, migration myths, the Westo Indians, the Tsali affair among the Cherokees, Indian/White intermarriage, acculturation and adaptation, and others. If there is one subject that dominates the book it is the slave trade between Indian tribes and Whites as it was very important in the 17th Century Southeast. I wouldn't call this essential reading, nor are any of the essays earth-shattering, but there are enough moments of interest and enlightenment to engage people interested in the subject. The authors are a bit quirky in places -- for example in talking about beavers -- but that also keeps the essays from being as dryasdust. Smallchief