What both the 17th century philosophe Poulain and 20th century feminist Beauvoir said of men writing about women applies also to men writing about goddesses and matriarchy. Since stumbling upon the story of Bottle Woman, the Grandmother Moon Goddess of the Cherokees—and having a revelation similar to Lucius’ in The Golden Ass, when the Mother Goddess herself appears to him in all her terrible beauty[2]—I have learned to tread cautiously in the literature of feminism, women’s history and anthropology.
Tipping the scales at nearly six pounds, The Archaeology of Ancient North America represents the latest and weightiest word on its subject. As Dorothy Parker remarked of a thick collection of poetry she reviewed in her day, it runs the gamut from A to B. The two authors have made archeology (as we usually spell it) a deader and dryer subject than it need be—unless you consider they are mostly all wet to begin with. Search in vain for more than a passing reference to Cherokee or Choctaw (two native heritages I’m interested in).
Gaylord Carlyle Hinshaw, a descendant of the last principal war chief of the Shawnee Tribe of Indians, has devoted his adult life to uncovering the past—the earth’s history and his own Native heritage.
The concept of the noble savage can be traced to the earliest accounts of American Indians. It was championed by poets, dramatists and philosophers. Not until the author Chateaubriand, a Breton nobleman who actually lived among the North American Indians, published Atala: Or, The Love and Constancy of Two Savages in the Desert in 1801 did the image of Indians substantially change in the minds of Europeans and their descendants in America.
It is widely accepted that STRs are non-coding in nature and are therefore not implicated in gene expression. By the same token, scientists used to think that single variations in the number of repeats (STRs) in your autosomal profile could not be correlated with population or ancestry, that you needed at least four STR alleles to reach meaningful conclusions.
As is well known, the mountains stretching north from the seat of the Apalache Indians in Georgia were named after this powerful tribe—or vice versa.
Male Haplogroup Distribution Tells Real Story of Human Migrations, Not Mitochondrial Lineages.
It has been 20 years since the genetic survey of Melungeons by Jones. This overview of studies of Melungeons from a genetic perspective by Donald N. Yates took shape first in 2002 and led to a chapter in Ancestors and Enemies: Essays on Melungeons (Phoenix: Panther’s Lodge, 2013).
If anyone thinks the ancient citizens of Mexico were dumb bunnies or primitive pagans, please read this prayer translated from Uto-Aztecan. Its rhetoric, wisdom and stylistic power is palpable today.
Hundreds of antiquarian maps and the artist’s own colored drawings enhance the value of the work. An example is on p. 32, “Nagoochee Valley, Detail of Jacques LeMoyne Map.” An important map of the author’s own creation on p. 30 is entitled, “Ethnic Groups Living on the South Atlantic Coast before the Arrival of the Spanish.”
