NATIVE AMERICAN TESTIMONY

Another quincentennial book—this one from the Native American point of view: a remarkable collection of 500 years' worth of Indian responses to the encroachment of white civilization. Editor Nabokov (Anthropology and American Indian Studies/Univ. of Wisconsin; Indian Running, 1981, etc.) draws on a wealth of archival sources—letters, government transcripts, newspapers, etc.—as well as some books for the 116 selections, ushered in by extensive introductions. Opening with prophecies of the white man's coming, the stream of entries soon turns black with blood and sorrow: the tragic tale so often told, but rarely with such impact as through these firsthand accounts. ``Brothers—The white men are not friends to the Indians; at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun,'' warns the Shawnee leader Tecumseh to the Osage around 1810. One hundred and sixty years later, an anonymous Oklahoma Indian says, ``When the white man landed on the moon, my father cried...I told him there weren't any Indians on the moon, so stop crying. He said nothing for a long time. Then he said our spirits were there, too- -and he was sure Indians were crying up there, and trying to hide....'' The early chapters, covering up to 1865, were published under the same title in 1978. The new material, more extensive, brings the story up to today's plans by some Native Americans to protest the 1992 celebration of Columbus's arrival. A powerful and affecting work, illustrated throughout by 75 b&w photographs (not seen).