Our Native American Heritage

 

"To the victors belong the spoils."

For far too long the story of Native Americans has been told and written by the conquerors.  What has been fascinating to me as I have done my own genealogy  has been how interwoven native American ancestral lines have been interwoven with nearly every culture to venture into America.  Powhatan and his tribe inhabited the lands around Jamestown that our adventuring ancestors landed upon.  It was the generosity of the native Americans that provisioned a starving colony and opened the floodgate for more to follow.  Those folks wrote the history.

However, that is being remedied.  Richard Thornton, Architect and City Planner, has started a fantastic website www.historyrevealedmedia.com and publishes a newsletter that can be subscribed to by emailing him at peopleofonefire@aol.com.  In addition, Don Greene has done prodigious genealogical research that he has published in Shawnee Heritage and Shawnee Heritage II connecting those early Native Americans with their modern day descendants. 

James Alexander Thom has succeeded in writing wonderful historical fiction through the eyes of native Americans such as Tecumseh and Warrior Woman, though he is most famous for Follow the River, the story of Mary Draper Engles who was captured by one of my distant cousins, Chief Cornstalk. 

What a revelation it was to me to find my own connection with these people of whom I had only read.  Even though I had been researching Creek History for fifteen years in order to write the novel Swimming with Serpents that will be published in the Fall of 2012 by Mercer University Press, I did not realize that I al so had a family connection there with Josiah Francis, 3 rd cousin 6 times removed.  But it was a visit to Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, Florida, that demonstrated to me how well the history of Native Americans can be presented in a manner that befits their contributions to our country.  We must admit that many of our Native American museums lack the quality of other museums and present our heritage in a manner I call Cigar Store Indian History. We must do a better job of telling our history!

  

 

inole War. So little information is available about who fought in the Creek Wars, died in those Wars, where they lived, where they hid, where they wound up. I would love to know! If you have a .ged file that you would like added to the genealogy file that I have shared with you, please send it to me. I will attempt to find the time to post these stories in this section of Souther-style.

 

Welcome

 

 

 

 

 

Genealogy Biographical Sketches Shawnee Heritage Creek Genealogy Mission San Luis Share your family's

 

 

 

Posted by Jack Read more Comments (15) 17.01.