The Natchez Indians
A History to 1735
By James F. Barnett Jr.
The most complete and detailed examination of a vanished tribe
The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 is the story of the Natchez Indians as revealed through accounts of Spanish, English, and French explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and colonists, and in the archaeological record. Because of their strategic location on the Mississippi River, the Nat-chez Indians played a crucial part in the European struggle for control of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The book begins with the brief con-frontation between the Her-nando de Soto expedition and the powerful Quigualtam chiefdom, presumed ances-tors of the Natchez. In the late seventeenth century René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's expedition met the Natchez and initiated sustained European encroachment, exposing the tribe to sickness and the dangers of the Indian slave trade.
The Natchez Indians portrays the way that the Natchez coped with a rapidly changing world, became entangled with the political ambitions of two European superpowers, France and England, and eventually disappeared as a people. The author examines the shifting relationships among the tribe's settlement districts and the settlement districts' relationships with neighboring tribes and with the Europeans. The establishment of a French fort and burgeoning agricultural colony in their midst signaled the beginning of the end for the Natchez people. Barnett has written the most complete and detailed history of the Natchez to date.
James F. Barnett Jr. is the director of the Division of Historic Properties, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. He has published articles in Journal of Mississippi History, Mississippi Archaeology, Southern Quarterly, and other journals.
Illustration-The Great Sun of the Natchez Indians by Le Page du Pratz, courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History
224 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 10 maps, bibliography, index
978-1-57806-988-0 Cloth $40.00S
Courtship and Love among the Enslaved in North Carolina
By Rebecca J. Fraser
A study of the complexities of intimate relationships among slaves on plantations, in towns, and on small farms
Through an examination of various cou-ples who were forced to live in slavery, Rebecca J. Fraser argues that slaves found ways to conduct successful courting relationships. In its focus on the processes of courtship among the enslaved, this study offers further insight into the meanings that structured intimate lives.
Establishing their courtships, often across plantations, the enslaved men and women of antebellum North Carolina worked within and around the slave system to create and maintain meaningful personal relationships that were both of and apart from the world of the plantation. They claimed the right to participate in the social events of courtship and, in the process, challenged and disrupted the southern social order in discreet and covert acts of defiance.
Informed by feminist conceptions of gender, sexuality, power, and resistance, the study argues that the courting relationship afforded the enslaved a significant social space through which they could cultivate alternative identities to those which were imposed upon them in the context of their daily working lives.
Rebecca J. Fraser is lecturer in American studies at the University of East Anglia. Her essays have appeared in Journal of Southern History and Slavery and Abolition.
Illustration-Broomstick wedding by Mary Ashton Livermore, courtesy the author
160 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, bibliography, index978-1-934110-07-2 Cloth $50.00S
Native American Place: Names in Mississippi
Keith A. Baca
A comprehensive guide to the translations and tribal origins of five hundred intriguing designations
Photograph--courtesy the author
Biloxi. Tunica. Pascagoula. Yazoo. Tishomingo. Yalobusha. Tallahatchie. Itta Bena. Yockanookany. Bogue Chitto. These and hundreds of other place names of Native American origin are scattered across the map of Mississippi. Described by writer Willie Morris as "the mysterious, lost euphonious litany," such colorful names, which were given by the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and other tribes, contribute significantly to the state's sense of place. Yet the general public is largely unaware of exact meanings and tribal roots.
Native American Place Names in Mississippi is the first reference book devoted to a subject of interest to residents and visitors alike. From large rivers and towns to tiny creeks and rural communities, Keith A. Baca identifies the most likely meanings of many names with more than one recorded interpretation. He corrects misconceptions that have arisen over the years and translates numerous names for the first time. For the benefit of travelers, he provides the location of each named place. To bring attention to often inconspicuous and unmarked streams he also indicates points where highways cross rivers and creeks with Native American appellations. Sidebars present Native American history, legends, and myths that surround these enigmatic and alluring designations.
Formerly an archaeologist with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Keith A. Baca is an independent researcher and writer living in Starkville, Mississippi. He is the author of the award-winning Indian Mounds of Mississippi: A Visitor's Guide.
JUNE, 160 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 20 b&w illustrations (approx.), mapUnjacketed cloth, 1-57806-954-8 (978-1-57806-954-5)
Paper, 1-57806-955-6 (978-1-57806-955-2)
Thomas Jefferson on Wine
John R. Hailman
The definitive account of a great American’s lifelong passion for wine Painting--Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Sully, courtesy Monticello/Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
In Thomas Jefferson on Wine, John Hailman celebrates a founding father’s lifelong interest in wine and provides unprecedented insight into Jefferson’s character from this unique perspective. In both his personal and public lives, Jefferson wielded his considerable expertise to influence the drinking habits of his friends, other founding fathers, and the American public away from hard liquor toward the healthier pleasures of wine.
An international wine judge and nationally syndicated wine columnist, Hailman discusses how Jefferson’s tastes developed, which wines and foods he preferred at different stages of his life, and how Jefferson became the greatest wine expert of the early American republic. Hailman explores the third president’s fascination with scores of wines from his student days at Williamsburg to his lengthy retirement years at Monticello, using mainly Jefferson’s own words from hundreds of immensely readable and surprisingly modern letters on the subject.
Hailman examines Jefferson’s five critical years in Paris, where he learned about fine wines at Europe’s salons and dinner tables as American Ambassador. The book uses excerpts from Jefferson’s colorful travel journals of his visits to France, Italy, and Germany, as well as his letters to friends and wine merchants, some of whose descendants still produce the wines Jefferson enjoyed. Vivid contemporaneous accounts of dinners at the White House allow readers to experience vicariously Jefferson’s “Champagne diplomacy.” The book concludes with an overview of the current restoration of the vineyards at Monticello and the new Monticello Wine Trail and its numerous world-class Virginia wineries. In Thomas Jefferson on Wine Hailman presents an absorbing and unique view of this towering historical figure.
John R. Hailman, a trial attorney and adjunct professor of law and literature at the University of Mississippi School of Law in Oxford, wrote a wine column that appeared in the Washington Post and in syndication for over a decade with Gannett News Service. Hailman has served as a judge at numerous international wine competitions for over twenty years.
NOVEMBER 2006, 480 pages (approx.), 6 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches, 24 color and 24 b&w images, chronology, appendix, bibliography, index
Cloth, 1-57806-841-X (978-1-57806-841-8)October 18, 2007