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Jose A. Ochoa, Jr. Book Review For Native America

Jose A. Ochoa, Jr. History 301

Book Review

J. Leitch Wright, Jr.,The Only Land They Knew: The Tragic Story of the Native Americans in the Old South.( New York: The Free Press, 1981), 371 pages.

   The late historian, J. Leitch Wright, Jr.. was a professor at Florida State University when he wrote this ambitious work which covers a 400,000 square mile region in  300 years. He endeavored to document the effects of "the interactions of two aboriginal cultures, both facing sudden transformation by the intervention of a third, more advanced technological society" (Indians, Africans and white Europeans interacting in the Southern United States.) (Anonymous 2003)

   Wright apparently feels that the Europeans ( primarily the Spanish and the English since he does not feel the French left timely documentation) had left quite enough material concerning their experiences in the New World and there had been adequate documentation of the African experience. (J. Leitch Wright 1981, p.2 ) but he felt the Native Americans needed to have an equal voice as well. 

   In Wright's own words:

"I have focused on Indians in the South...Since the Southern Indians did not write, one often has to wonder what they were thinking...To compensate for the lack of traditional historical stories, I have turned to scholars in other disciplines including archeology, linguistics, ethnography, anthropology, oral history, demography and geography...even using this broader ethno historical approach, it is apparent that important aspects of Indian history are obscured, perhaps lost forever." (ibid.,p.ix.)

   It is the subtitle of this book that lets you know where Wright's sentiments are as he recounts the lost People like the Westos,...