Russell Thornton has the rare ability to be both keenly observant of the minute details of his environment and intensely introspective. His poetry is full of startling images that will stay with you l
The crows pick at the waste on the asphalt.The men push jingling shopping carts. Or stand and mimic lifein a prison yard. The wild white swan is dead. Where I caughttrout as a child, no trout swim now
The Cherokees: A Population History is the first full-length demographic study of an American Indian group from the protohistorical period to the present. Thornton shows the effects of disease, warfar
A masterful new collection by Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Russell Thornton.The poems in The Broken Face explore a sacramental, imaginative vision within contexts of crime, perception, memory and lov
This demographic overview of North American Indian history describes in detail the holocaust that, even today, white Americans tend to dismiss as an unfortunate concomitant of Manifest Destiny. They w
From poems set in the eastern Mediterranean, with its abiding reverberations of the ancient Greek world, and informed by sacred sites and classical stories, to aseries of sonnet responses to the Gospe
This study of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance movements among North American Indians offers an innovative theory about why these movements arose when they did. Emphasizing the demographic situation of American Indians prior to the movements, Professor Thornton argues that the Ghost Dances were deliberate efforts to accomplish a demographic revitalization of American Indians following their virtual collapse. By joining the movements, he contends, tribes sought to assure survival by increasing their numbers through returning the dead to life. Thornton supports this thesis empirically by closely examining the historical context of the two movements and by assessing tribal participation in them, revealing particularly how population size and decline influenced participation among and within American Indian tribes. He also considers American Indian population change after the Ghost Dance periods and shows that participation in the movements actually did lead the way to a demographic recovery
This study of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance movements among North American Indians offers an innovative theory about why these movements arose when they did. Emphasizing the demographic situation of American Indians prior to the movements, Professor Thornton argues that the Ghost Dances were deliberate efforts to accomplish a demographic revitalization of American Indians following their virtual collapse. By joining the movements, he contends, tribes sought to assure survival by increasing their numbers through returning the dead to life. Thornton supports this thesis empirically by closely examining the historical context of the two movements and by assessing tribal participation in them, revealing particularly how population size and decline influenced participation among and within American Indian tribes. He also considers American Indian population change after the Ghost Dance periods and shows that participation in the movements actually did lead the way to a demographic recovery
"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of
Winter counts - pictorial calendars by which Plains Indians kept track of their past - marked each year with a picture of a memorable event. The Lakota, or Western Sioux, recorded many different even
“The White Man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America. He is too far removed from its formative process. The roots of the tree of his life have not yet grasp
