The five largest southeastern Indian groups - the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chicksaws, Creeks and Seminoles - were forced to emigrate west to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. This book contains the Indians' own stories - taken from WPA interviews - of the troubled years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood. During this period, Oklahoma Indians functioned autonomously, holding their own elections, enforcing their own laws and creating their own society from a mixture of old Indian customs and the new ways of the whites. The WPA informants describe the economic realities of the era: a few wealthy Indians, the rest scraping a living out of subsistence farming, hunting and fishing. They talk about education and religion - Native American and Christian - as well as diversions of the time: horse races, fairs, ball games, cornstalk shooting and traditional ceremonies such as the Green Corn Dance. Theda Perdue provides an introduction to each chapter which provides the background necessary to integrate the oral accounts into a more coherent historical overview.
