Signed by candlelight in a crowded house in the old Cherokee capital, New Echota, Georgia, the Treaty of 1835 set in motion a mournful chain of events that was to force the Indians of the Cherokee Nation from their ancestral homelands in North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia into the Indian Territory beyond the Mississippi, that was to sweep them west over a route so marked with disease and death that it would ever afterward be know as the Trail of Tears.

Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People

History

Wilkins, Thurman

Americas

Macmillan

Beginning with the birth of the Cherokee patriarch Major Ridge in the 1770’s, Thurman Wilkins tells the events that led to the Trail of Tears, through the eyes of the illustrious Ridge family. Major Ridge and his Connecticut-educated son John were willing to abandon the rich tribal homelands in North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia and emigrate west to the Indian Territory to escape the white invaders. During the decades of fruitless negotiations that culminated in the infamous Treaty of New Echota, Georgia, in 1835, the Ridges and their relatives Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie became persuaded that further protests by the Cherokees would lead only to their annihilation at the hands of the whites. The pro-treaty Ridge faction was opposed by fiery John Ross, the leader of the majority National Party, who wanted to stay and fight in the Southeast against all odds. In this revised edition of his great work, Thurman Wilkins addresses the new scholarship of the past fifteen years and reconsiders the important questions raised by Cherokee history aficionados: Were Major Ridge and John Ridge paid off by the United States for their support of removal? If not, how did these Cherokee patriots come to change their minds about emigrating west? Was Chief John Ross a hero or a villain? Since Cherokee Tragedy was first published in 1970, it has been valued as a penetrating social and political history of neither the whole Cherokee Nation-nor just the Ridge family- from the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the 1838 Trail of Tears and the subsequent “execution” of the Ridges in Indian Territory.

Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People (Volume 169) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

University of Oklahoma Press

Nearly a century after John Muir's death, his works remain in print, his name is familiar, and his thought is much with us. How Muir's life made him a leader and brought him insights destined to resonate for decades is the central question underlying this biography by Thurman Wilkins. Profoundly attached to dramatic wild places and plants, and to the Sierra and the redwoods in particular, Muir spearheaded efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks. Muir's wilderness ethic, as revealed in his books, letters, and journals, rests on his conception of the proper relationship between human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life. In the last decades of his life, John Muir was committed to preserving wild places for their own sake, because of their spiritual and aesthetic values. He became the acknowledged leader of the preservation wing of the conservation movement, and today the half-million-strong Sierra Club that he founded for mountain advocacy and headed until his death continues to shape legislation and public opinion regarding the wilds.

John Muir: Apostle of Nature (Oklahoma Western Biographies)

Professionals & Academics

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Nearly a century after John Muir’s death, his works remain in print, his name is familiar, and his thought is much with us. How Muir’s life made him a leader and brought him insights destined to resonate for decades is the central question underlying this biography by Thurman Wilkins.
Profoundly attached to dramatic wild places and plants, and to the Sierra and the redwoods in particular, Muir spearheaded efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks. Muir’s wilderness ethic, as revealed in his books, letters, and journals, rests on his conception of the proper relationship between human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life.

John Muir: Apostle of Nature (Volume 8) (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)

Historical

This extensively revised edition of Thurman Wilkins’s masterful and engaging biography - well illustrated in color and black-and-white - draws on new information and recent scholarship to place Thomas Moran more securely in the milieu of the Gilded Age. It also portrays more fully the controversies that surrounded the art of Moran’s time, as he became "the Dean of American Painters." The American West was the subject of Thomas Moran’s greatest artistic triumphs - Yosemite, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, Zion Canyon, the Virgin River, Colorado’s Mountain of the Holy Cross, and the Grand Tetons - but his travels with Ferdinand V. Hayden’s geological surveys of the Upper Yellowstone were matched by trips to his native Britain and to Venice, Florida, the Spanish Southwest, and Old Mexico. These scenes inspired memorable landscapes and seascapes, as did the sojourns of the Moran family in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and East Hampton, Long Island, when they retreated from the demands of the New York art scene. In the 1880s Moran and his artist wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, also threw themselves into the etching craze of the period, creating some of the finest prints produced in the United States. Moran was an artist happy in his work. He wrote, "I have always held that the grandest, most beautiful, or wonderful in nature, would, in capable hands, make the grandest, most beautiful, or wonderful pictures." The New York Times said of the first edition of this unique account of his life, "Moran’s mastery comes through clearly and awesomely and often, pleasurably." Readers will find the new edition equally enjoyable.

Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Clarence King Was A Geologist Who Played A Major Part In Uncovering California's Great Diamond Hoax Of The Early 1870s. This Book Covers The Prominent Role King Played In The Fortieth Parallel Survey, His Experiences In Mountaineering, Cattle Ranching, European Travel, And More.

Clarence King: A Biography

Hinkley, Caroline Lawson

Science & Math

University of New Mexico Press

Clarence King Was A Geologist Who Played A Major Part In Uncovering California's Great Diamond Hoax Of The Early 1870s. This Book Covers The Prominent Role King Played In The Fortieth Parallel Survey, His Experiences In Mountaineering, Cattle Ranching, European Travel, And More.

King, Clarence

Literary Licensing, LLC

Literature & Fiction

Literary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilkins, Thurman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wilkins, Thurman

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilkins, Thurman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People

Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People (Volume 169) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

John Muir: Apostle of Nature (Oklahoma Western Biographies)

John Muir: Apostle of Nature (Volume 8) (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)

Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains

Clarence King: A Biography

Clarence King: A Biography

Clarence King: A Biography