A provocative new biography of the man who forged America's alliance with the Iroquois William Johnson was scarcely more than a boy when he left Ireland and his Gaelic, Catholic family to become a Protestant in the service of Britain's North American empire. In New York by 1738, Johnson moved to the frontiers along the Mohawk River, where he established himself as a fur trader and eventually became a landowner with vast estates; served as principal British intermediary with the Iroquois Confederacy; command British, colonial, and Iroquois forces that defeated the French in the battle of Lake George in 1755; and created the first groups of "rangers," who fought like Indians and led the way to the Patriots' victories in the Revolution. As Fintan O'Toole's superbly researched, colorfully dramatic narrative makes clear, the key to Johnson's signal effectiveness was the style in which he lived as a "white savage." Johnson had two wives, one European, one Mohawk; became fluent in Mohawk; and pioneered the use of Indians as active partners in the making of a new America. O'Toole's masterful use of the extraordinary (often hilariously misspelled) documents written by Irish, Dutch, German, French, and Native American participants in Johnson's drama enlivens the account of this heroic figure's legendary career; it also suggests why Johnson's early multiculturalism unraveled, and why the contradictions of his enterprise created a historical dead end.

This provocative biography profiles William Johnson, an Irish immigrant to Britain's North American empire who became instrumental in forging America's alliance with the Iroquois.

A dramatic, exciting and tragic book about the Irish fur trapper who held the fate of America and the British Empire in his hands. William Johnson began life as a poor Irish Catholic peasant. After converting to Protestantism, he emigrated to America where he became the leading fur trader in the British colony and one of its richest men. He also 'went native', marrying an Indian woman and adopting the religion of her tribe, the Iroquois. When war broke out between the French and English, Johnson held the fate of the British Empire in his hands. If the Indians fought with the French, the British were doomed. A fascinating historical biography of this adventurous man, whose reinvention in the New World made him the first modern American.

From dust jacket: "Who was John Dunn Hunter? Was he a white man who had been kidnapped as a child and raised to manhood by the Osage Indians; who wrote a widely acclaimed account of his captivity that made him the wonder of two continents; whose self appointed mission was to save the American Indian from genocide beyond the Mississippi; and who, finally, was murdered by an Indian as he bravely rallied the scattered forces of his 'Red and White Republic of Fredonia?' Or was John Dunn Hunter a hoax? an arrant imposter who claimed knowledge of the ways of the Indian for enigmatic motives of self aggrandizement?

"Illuminating the complex relationships between tribal informants and twentieth-century anthropologists such as Boas, Parker, and Fenton, who came to their communities to collect stories and artifacts"--Provided by publisher.

Going Native or Going Naïve? is a critical analysis of an esoteric-Indian movement, called white shamanism. This movement, originating from the 1980's New Age boom, redefines the phenomenon of playing Indian. For white shamans and their followers, Indianness turns into a signifier for cultural cloning. By generating a neo-primitivistic bias, white shamanism utilizes esoteric reconceptualizations of ethnicity and identity. In Going Native or Going Naïve?, a retrospective view on psychohistorical and sociopolitical implications of Indianness and (ig)noble savage metaphors should clarify the prefix neo within postmodern adaptations of primitivism. The appropriation of an Indian simulacrum by white shamans as well as white shamanic disciplines connotes a subtle, yet hazardous form of ethnocentrism. Transcending mere market trends and profit margins, white shamanism epitomizes synthetic/cybernetic acculturations. Through investigating the white shamanic matrix, Going Native or Going Naïve? is intended to make these synthesizing processes more transparent.

WHAT IF JAY GATSBY IS A BLACK MAN PASSING AS A WHITE ONE? "Jay Gatsby: A Black Man in Whiteface" expounds upon the thesis that Jay Gatsby, the much beloved hero of "The Great Gatsby", is a man of mixed black and white parentage who pretends and appears to be a white man. Through a close read of the text, a review of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and letters, and a discussion of the racially charged climate of America's Jazz Age, the "Black Gatsby" theory shows how America's troubled conscience about race laces through the novel and that Fitzgerald wrote from his conflicting racial beliefs and his insider/outsider status to support the novel's central theme: the doomed pursuit of the American Dream. Fitzgerald himself said that even the most complimentary contemporary reviewers failed to understand what the novel was about. It is often referred to as a novel where much is said by implication and ellipsis which must be weighed and measured to appreciate its artistic grandeur. "Jay Gatsby: A Black Man in Whiteface" does the weighing and measuring to see what we may have missed in a direct and fun prose style with easily accessible supporting annotation and bibliography so you can follow along.