<p>William Bartram has rightly been hailed as an astute, perceptive chronicler of Native American societies. In some ways he was able to see beyond the dominant ideologies of his day, some of which divided the world s peoples into categories based on perceived savagism and civility. This was a noble effort, and worthy of praise more than two centuries later. Bartram could also use Native American civilization as a foil for an emerging white American society he saw as crass and grasping. Writing in this romantic mode, he was capable of downplaying the extent to which Native communities were fully part of the modern world that they and European invaders created together. THE FLOWER HUNTER AND THE PEOPLE tries to capture both of these aspects of Bartram's works. Its main purpose is to introduce Bartram s writings on Southeastern Native Americans, and to let Bartram and his indigenous consultants tell their stories in their own words. Along the way, readers should also consider this underlying fact, which rarely strayed from the Flower Hunter s mind. William Bartram was a guest in the Native Southeast. He traveled on paths smoothed, figuratively and literally, by Native Americans. He stayed in Muskogees' houses, ate Cherokees' food, and was, at times of their choosing, permitted glimpses of his hosts' worldviews and lifeways. It would be too much of a stretch to say that Native people co-authored the passages concerning their societies in Bartram, but the things they allowed Bartram to record bore cultural and political weight in their own times, and they can speak to us in ours as well.</p>

Flower Hunter & the People

History

Matthew Jennings

Americas

Mercer University Press

People have called the land near the Ocmulgee River in present-day central Georgia home for a long time, perhaps as many as 17,000 years, and each successive group has left its mark on the landscape. Mississippian-era people erected the towering Great Temple Mound and other large earthworks around 1,000 years ago. In the late 17th century, Ocmulgee flourished as a center of trade between the Creek Indians and their English neighbors. In the 19th century, railroads did irreparable damage to the site in the name of progress and profit, slicing through it twice. Preservation efforts bore fruit in the 1930s, when Ocmulgee National Monument was created. Since then, people from all over the world have visited Ocmulgee. They come for many reasons, but they invariably leave with a reverence for the place and the people who built it hundreds of years ago and those who have maintained it in recent decades.

Ocmulgee National Monument

Arcadia Publishing Library Editions

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Books by Matthew Jennings

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Flower Hunter & the People

Ocmulgee National Monument