"Killers Of The Flower Moon" by David Grann, A Reflective Look Back On A Previous Reading

 

"Killers of the Flower Moon" spent a total of 5 weeks on the NY Times Best Sellers List, was a massive financial success, and has recently been turned into a major Hollywood movie.  It tells the story of a long string of murders of Osage Indians in the 1920's in Oklahoma on and around the Osage Reservation.  David Grann, the author, has had a long career as a major writer for several important American magazines including "The New Republic", "The Atlantic Monthly", and "The New York Times Magazine".  He has also published at least five major books most of which have been best sellers.  He is a prolific writer, a highly productive and successful writer, a truly commercial writer.  But, based on this book, which is a wonderful read, he is not now and not likely to ever become a "great writer".  This book is written in a compelling fashion intended to hold the average reader's attention to the very end.  It is well crafted for the commercial market but one should remember that the average American reader is poorly educated with less than a high school education, reads only about 15 minutes a day, and almost never reads a newspaper. Their ability to discriminate between good and lesser quality writing is almost nonexistent. The book will hold your attention and, in my opinion, it is well worth reading because it tells an important historical story about one of our many minority groups in this country, and actually led me to read further about the Osage tribe in fiction.  In addition to being the product of extensive research both in historical documents and interviews with living people, the book is copiously supported with genuine photographs of many of the principal people in the story, both victims and perpetrators.  

During the 1920's and, perhaps, both before and after that decade numerous members of the Osage tribe were murdered in order for their government appointed guardians to assume control of the vast amounts of money tribe members were collecting from the sale of oil drilling rights on the extensive acreage of the reservation.  During that time period, the Osage were collectively and individually among the richest people in America because the reservation land, which the government had assumed was worthless before designating it as the reservation, proved to be the richest oil field in the country at the time.  It became common practice for the Osage to be designated by courts to be incompetent to manage their own money and they were given guardians who were always white and nearly always corrupt.  In the long run, many of those court appointed guardians became the murderers and financial successors to their Osage wards.  The plot of the book is the story from murder to arrest and conviction of what seems to have been only a small percentage of those felonious guardians. The book also leaves little doubt that many more deaths of Osage tribe members were likely also uninvestigated murders.  This book is worth reading and any negative statements I have made about it are indictments of the overall book publishing industry and the average American just as much as they may be directly about the author and his writing style.  I can give him one unreserved commendation in that he is, or his staff are, tremendous researcher(s).   

"The Running Man Flying High For The Glory Of God" by Orville Rogers with Barbara Norris--Book Review

Roger, Orville with Norris, Barbara, The Running Man Flying High For The Glory Of God (Franklin, Tennessee. Clovercroft Publishing, 2016) 

Orville Rogers was born in relatively poor Oklahoma farm family in 1917 and when he was fairly young his father ran off to never be heard from again until Rogers encountered a half-sister when he was nearly eighty and learned that their father had died drunk in a flop house.  But, with the help of mother, grandparents, and a couple of uncles, Orville Rogers accomplished an exemplary life as a commercial airline pilot, oilfield investor, a volunteer pilot for a religious organization upon his retirement, a board member of a couple of religious organizations, and a world record holding elderly runner. He is still alive today at 100 and managed to run a mile on his last birthday. I chose to read this book, which is outside my normal purview, after seeing Orville Rogers featured on a television news show as he approached his centennial.  I always respect and pay attention to elderly achievers and did so even when I could not have been thought to be even approaching that aged status.  I still remember the well known Old Regular Baptist Preacher Clabe Mosley who was said to have preached a three hour sermon on his 102nd birthday when I was only 7 years old.  I have also come to understand that if I wish to live as long as two of my half-sisters and reach centenarian status that I must exercise and maintain as much of my physical condition as I can.  Orville Rogers did not begin running until he was about sixty and is still doing so today although not at the same pace at which he set several senior citizen records.  I thought Orville's book might be something I could learn from in the field of physical fitness for the aged.

The book was written with a named ghost writer, Barbara Norris, and I am not a fan of ghost written books.  But at 97 or 98, I can understand why Orville Rogers might have thought it was wise to use a professional writer if for no other reason than to ensure that the job would be finished in the event he died.  I am only superficially aware of Clovercroft Publishing, the vanity press which Rogers and Norris used to produce the book.  But the book itself is professionally acceptable in terms of printing, paper, photographic reproduction, and most other areas.  It does have a typical amount of typographical errors which one is likely to find in books from such companies.  

Orville Rogers led a sufficiently interesting life to keep me reading until the end when, at times, I knew I had better things to do with my time.   The book moves along in a manner which keeps the reader awake without ever approaching the status of literature.  Rogers and Norris tell his life story in a direct timeline fashion from poor Oklahoma farm boy to millionaire pilot, investor, runner, and religious believer.  But, for my original purpose of learning about physical fitness for the elderly, the book fall short.  It simply discusses how Rogers met Kenneth H. Cooper, M. D., who runs the Cooper Clinic in Dallas and wrote the early physical fitness book "Aerobics" in 1968 and has been a well known proponent of running and physical fitness for many years.  The book virtually leaves training routines untouched and focuses primarily on the religious life of Orville Rogers.  Shortly after I read the book, I saw in the media that Orville Rogers family threw a major birthday party for his 100th birthday and collectively ran a hundred miles in his honor with Mr. Rogers joining his family for the last mile.  It is good to know that even at 100 he has not given up running in which field he holds several world records for competitors in their 80's and 90's.  

If you are seeking an autobiography about an airline pilot or a religious believer and volunteer, you will find this book worth reading.  If you are looking for literature or advice or running, don't bother.  But I still hope Orville Rogers lives another hundred years and runs every day of his life. 

 

Reviewing The Works Of Theda Purdue

Perdue, Theda: Mixed Blood Indians Racial Construction In The Early South (Athens, Georgia, University Of Georgia  Press, 2005)
Perdue, Theda & Michael D. Green: The Cherokee Removal A Brief History With Documents (New York, Bedford Books, 1995)

As I mentioned in an earlier book review of John M. Ehle's "Trail Of Tears The Rise And Fall Of The Cherokee Nation",  recently I have been doing research about a particular historical Cherokee Chief and have been reading extensively about the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee areas.  Theda Perdue is clearly recognized as one of the best informed and well written experts on both Native Americans in general and the Cherokee in particular.  Dr. Perdue is a Professor Emerita in the history department of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and was previously employed as a professor of history at the University of Kentucky.  She has written extensively about the Cherokee and other Native American tribes.  She is the author or co-author of nine books primarily about Native Americans.  She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship along with several other awards and fellowships and has held several high level positions in professional organizations.  Dr. Perdue's work is well respected by both academics and well read laymen.  

The first of her books which I read was "Mixed Blood Indians Racial Construction In The Early South".  It is an excellent book and my respect for it led me to read "The Cherokee Removal A Brief History With Documents" which Dr. Perdue co-edited with the late Dr. Michael D. Green who had also taught at the University Of Kentucky and the University Of North Carolina.  Dr. Green had also written extensively on Native American topics.  "Mixed Blood Indians..." is an excellent book and was originally delivered as a Lamar Lecture at Mercer University where Dr. Perdue had been a law student before deciding to change the focus of her academic and professional life to history.  The book is well written, extremely well documented with primary source material and a delight to read.  It does an excellent job of  explaining the complicated story of how the Cherokee and other eastern native peoples intermingled with the white settlers in the region, intermarrying, and eventually producing many of the most important leaders of the Cherokee via intermarriage.  These mixed blood children, often the products of marriages between Cherokee, Creek, and native women from several other tribes with white traders, became some of the most influential leaders in the Cherokee tribe especially.  Among these mixed blood leaders were three men who collectively and singularly played major roles in Cherokee history: James Vann, Major Ridge, and Charles Renatus Hicks.  

Dr. Perdue also does an excellent job of addressing the complicated cultural adjustments involved in the interchanges between white settlers and the Native Americans with whom they lived in close proximity and, at times, conflict.  The book also addresses the roles many of these mixed blood children played in the wars of America and in the Cherokee Removal, one of the blackest periods in the history of both the Cherokee and the country.  The book is not a light read by any means since it was originally written for academic presentation but it is well worth the read.  I recommend it highly.  

The second Perdue book I read, "The Cherokee Removal A Brief History With Documents" did not please me as well as "Mixed Blood Indians...".  The book does an excellent job of placing a large selection of key historical documents or documentary fragments in one place for the reader who does not wish to do major research.  Each key segment of the book is prefaced with a short discussion from the editors to place the document in question in appropriate historical perspective.  But it doe not have a source listing at the end of the book which would have improved it greatly.  It also uses Socratic questioning at the end of most sections of the book which I believe tends to discomfit the casual reader.  While the book was probably intended to be primarily an academic work for classroom use, it covers a topic with a great deal of appeal to the ordinary non-academic reader and would have better benefited that segment of the readership if a more direct didactic method had been used in these segment ending comments.  

One of the most informative sections of the book contains several letters written by young Cherokee children in the mission schools of the time and sheds a great deal of light on the topics of acculturation, education, and the many hardships of removal and the period of conflict leading up to the removal by President Andrew Jackson.  The book is well worth reading and I am certain that the other works of Dr. Perdue and Dr. Green are also worthy of inspection.  I will look forward to my next encounter with a work by either of these authors. 

"Trail Of Tears The Rise And Fall Of The Cherokee Nation" by John Ehle Book Review

 

"Trail Of Tears.." book cover Anchor Books

Ehle, John, Trail Of Tears The Rise And Fall Of The Cherokee Nation (New York: Anchor Books 1988)

Several months ago, I began a research project connected to the Eastern Band Of The Cherokee, primarily about one particular chief from the late nineteenth century.  I have not set the earth on fire with the research due to a variety of other demands on my time.  But I have been wending my way through a long list of books, articles, and other media about the Cherokee.  The book has been positively reviewed more than once, sold a reasonably successful number of copies, and was well received by the general public.  But I found it cumbersome to read, inadequately documented, and worst of all, highly fictionalized.  Admittedly, Mr. Ehle's major stock in trade has always been fiction and he has been successful as a novelist.  He also grew up in the same area of the country in which the book is set.  I do not deny that he has a plethora of knowledge about the subjects of the book.  But his writing style, in addition to the freely administered fictionalization, is awkward, disjointed, and at less than academic standards for a book which was marketed as history.  I did slog on through the book and finished it in a period of time in which I might have read two similarly sized works.  The book is not all bad and is worth reading for the person who is not seeking well resourced and documented history.  The text contains no footnotes and the reader must decide to go to a "Notes" section in the back to determine if a particular segment was even sourced and documented when they meet a passage needing source documentation.  The "Notes" are simply inserted with a page number and a quote from the beginning of the notated segment to identify it.  The work would have been much more satisfactory to me if it had been footnoted in some particular style of documentation such as Chicago Style or MLA.  The simple act of numbering the notes in each chapter sequentially and placing the notes at the ends of chapters would have been better for the academically oriented reader.

John M. Ehle Photo by Wikipedia

I have no doubt that Mr. Ehle did far more than adequate research before he wrote the book and it does appear that it might be the product of a lifetime of study and personal experience on the subject.  For me the best part of the book was the extensive use of personal correspondence of several people from the period under discussion.  Mr. Ehle uses many letters and military reports from first level sources and they enhance the work a great deal.  In particular, a series of letters from the march west from a soldier L. B. Webster to his recently married wife at home shed a great deal of light on conditions along the Trail Of Tears.  They show a soldier who was in command of a portion of the tribe who was compassionate and deeply affected by the death, disease, and mistreatment he saw being perpetrated against the Cherokee people.  Several documents from General John E. Wool, who was in charge of the mission, also work well to provide insight into the military thinking which led to the deaths of several thousand people. The book also gives interesting insights into the life and motivations of President Andrew Jackson and how he brought about one of the most horrifying acts in US Government history.   If you wish to read about the Trail Of Tears, the book is worth reading but I would suggest that it be supported with other, better written, less fictionalized, and more appropriately documented works.