AMERICAN INDIAN QUOTATIONS, compiled and edited by Howard J. Langer (Greenwood Press, Inc., 288 pages, $49.95).
In this volume, Langer presents eight hundred quotations from Native-American warriors, poets, politicians, doctors, athletes, and others, whose lives span four centuries. The words of those selected form a narrative of the history of America’s indigenous people from the time of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) to the present day. Among those featured are Powhatan (1547-1618), leader of the Powhatan Confederacy when the first English settlement was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; Geronimo(1829-1909), medicine man and warrior chief of the Chiricahua Apache in the Southwest; Jim Thorpe (1888-1953), one of America’s greatest all-around athletes; Ira Hayes (1922-55), a U.S. Marine who gained fame during World War II as one of the men photographed raising the flag on Iwo Jima; Ben Nighthorse Campbell (1933- ), elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992;and Leonard Peltier (1944- ), a leader in the American-Indian Movement during the 1970s. Biographical information is provided for each person quoted, and a section of anonymous quotations, prayers, and proverbs is included.
