Synopses & Reviews
Side by side with the westward drift of white Americans in the 1830's was the forced migration of the Five Civilized Tribes from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Both groups were deployed against the tribes of the prairies, both breaking the soil of the undeveloped hinterland. Both were striving in the years before the Civil War to found schoois, churches, and towns, as well as to preserve orderly development through government and laws.
In this book Grant Foreman brings to light the singular effect the westward movement of Indians had in the cultivation and settlement of the Trans-Mississippi region. It shows the Indian genius at its best and conveys the importance of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles to the nascent culture of the plains. Their achievements between 1830 and 1860
were of vast importance in the making of America.
Review
"In separate sections, the author takes up successively the adventures of the five tribes, mixing the important with the unimportant, the dramatic with the tedious....His style is by no means difficult or pretentious, and it is touched with sympathy and indignation." New York Times
Review
"One of the important sources for the history of the Indians in the Southeast." Florida Historical Quarterly
Review
"An historiographical summation...of the trek of the five great Southeastern Indian tribes from their old homes to the Indian territory west of the Mississippi....The author has done splendidly what he set out to do, and the resulting volume is a contribution of value to frontier history." American Anthropologist
Review
"Mr. Foreman's account is pure history, sober and fully documented, although heroism and romance show through its scholarship." Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Grant Foreman (1869-1953), known as the dean of American Indian historians, was the author of Indian Removal, The Five Civilized Tribes, and Sequoyah and editor of Ethan Allen Hitchcock?s Traveler in Indian Territory, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press.