Searching for the Bright Path

by Carson, James Taylor

• ISBN13: 9780803264175
• ISBN10: 0803264178
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

Blending an engaging narrative style with broader theoretical considerations, James Taylor Carson offers the most complete history to date of the Mississippi Choctaws. Tracing the Choctaws from their origins in the Mississippian cultures of late prehistory to the early nineteenth century, Carson shows how the Choctaws struggled to adapt to life in a New World altered radically by contact while retaining their sense of identity and place. Despite changes in subsistence practices and material culture, the Choctaws made every effort to retain certain core cultural beliefs and sensibilities, a strategy they conceived of as following "the straight bright path." This work also makes a significant theoretical contribution to ethnohistory as Carson confronts common problems in the historical analysis of Native peoples.James Taylor Carson is an associate professor of history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Author Biography

James Taylor Carson is an associate professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Table of Contents

List of Illustration	ix
Series Editors' Introduction	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
INTRODUCTION The Flight, of Oakatibbé	1	(7)
ONE The Mississippian Foundations of Choctaw Culture, 950-1700	8	(18)
TWO The Emergence of a Choctaw Polity, 1700-1805	26	(25)
THREE Change and Persistence in Choctaw Culture, 1700-1805	51	(19)
FOUR The Market Revolution, 1805-30	70	(16)
FIVE The Creation of a Nation, 1819-28	86	(17)
SIX The Great Awakening, 1828-30	103	(9)
SEVEN The Removal Crisis, 1830	112	(15)
CONCLUSION The Return of Oakatibbé	127	(8)
List of Abbreviations for Document Collections	135	(2)
Notes	137	(42)
Index	179