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Excerpt from Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years With the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers: With Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A. D. 1812 to A. D. 1842 Ten years ago I returned from the area of the Mississippi Valley to New York, my native State, after many years' residence and exploratory travels of that quarter of the Union. Having become extensively known, personally, and as an author, and my name having been associated with several distinguished actors in our western history, the wish has often been expressed to see some record of the events as they occurred. In yielding to this wish, it must not be supposed that the writer is about to submit an autobiography of himself; nor yet a methodical record of his times - tasks which, were he ever so well qualified for, he does not at all aspire to, and which, indeed, he has not now the leisure, if he had the desire, to undertake. Still, his position on the frontiers, and especially in connection with the management of the Indian tribes, is believed to have been one of marked interest, and to have involved him in events and passages often of thrilling and general moment. And the recital of these, in the simple and unimposing forms of a diary, even in the instances where they may be thought to fail in awakening deep sympathy, or creating high excitement, will be found, he thinks, to possess a living moral undertone. In the perpetual conflict between civilized and barbaric life, during the settlement of the West, the recital will often recall incidents of toil and peril, and frequently show the open or concealed murderer, with his uplifted knife, or deadly gun. As a record of opinion, it will not be too much to say, that the authors approvals are ever on the side of virtue, honor, and right; that misconception is sometimes prevented by it, and truth always vindicated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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In Mana: A History of a Western Category Nicolas Meylan proposes a critical account of Western imaginations of mana, a word belonging originally to Oceanic languages but borrowed by European languages in which it acquired the meaning ‘supernatural power.’ While mana is best known for its tenure in the disciplines studying religion, Nicolas Meylan situates such academic uses in a wider context, analyzing the ways Westerners conceptualized mana in the earlier colonial context as well as its mobilizations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by (video)game designers and Neo-Pagan witches. This focus on various Western uses of mana allows for the critical investigation of the ways power has been mystified in conjunction with religion.