Cultural Transformation of A Native American Family and Its Tribe 1763-1995

"Joel Spring has written a compelling book....a useful addition to the literature on 19th-century forced acculturation of Native Americans."—American Scientist"Begun as a personal quest to recover his Native American roots, Joel Spring's project evolved into an interesting and valuable book that describes the intertwining of his own mixed-blood Choctaw ancestors and over one hundred years of history of that tribe's dealings with the U.S. government...the book weaves a complicated web of interrelationships between the agendas of federal and state governments, Protestant missionaries, and white educators, and the desires of Native Americans."—Teachers College Record"...a welcome and highly readable contribution to scholarship in the fields of history, anthropology, education, and American Indian studies. Morevoer, the book promises to be a significant contribution to the tribes whose histories Spring chronicles."—Anthropology and Education Quarterly

• Contents: Preface. Part I: Choctaws, Cherokees, and a Mixed-Blood Family Prior to Removal. A Basket of Apples. Indian Policy as Ideological Management. The Ghost Dance, Schools, and Social Classes. The Missionaries and Their Schools. Removal, Betrayal, and Death. Part II: A Choctaw Family and Its Tribe After Removal. The Choctaw Republic and Its People. Academies, Christian Families, and Anglo-Saxon Culture. "I am a slave instead of the Negroes": Segregation and Language. From Thomas Jefferson to Henry Ford: The End of the Choctaw Republic. Afterword: The Role of Schooling in Modern Society.