Red Eagle's Children
232 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
6 illustrations
Hardcover
Release Date:16 Oct 2012
ISBN:9780817317706
Red Eagle's Children
Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al.
University of Alabama Press
Red Eagle’s Children presents the legal proceedings in an inheritance dispute that serves as an unexpected window on the intersection of two cultural and legal systems: Creek Indian and Euro-American.
Case 1299: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. appeared in the Chancery Court of Mobile in 1846 when William “Red Eagle” Weatherford’s son by the Indian woman Supalamy sued his half siblings fathered by Weatherford with two other Creek women, Polly Moniac and Mary Stiggins, for a greater share of Weatherford’s estate. While the court recognized William Jr. as the son of William Sr., he nevertheless lost his petition for inheritance due to the lack of legal evidence concerning the marriage of his biological mother to William Sr. The case, which went to the Alabama Supreme Court in 1851, provides a record of an attempt to interrelate and, perhaps, manipulate differences in cultures as they played out within the ritualized, arcane world of antebellum Alabama jurisprudence.
Although the case has value in the classic mold of salvage ethnography of Creek Indian culture, Red Eagle’s Children, edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight, shows that its more enduring value lies in being a source for historical ethnography—that is, for anthropological analyses of cultural dynamics of the past
events that complement the narratives of professional historians.
events that complement the narratives of professional historians.
Contributors
David I. Durham / Robbie Ethridge / Judith
Knight / J. Anthony Paredes / Paul M. Pruitt
Jr. / Nina Gail Thrower / Robert Thrower /
Gregory A. Waselkov
David I. Durham / Robbie Ethridge / Judith
Knight / J. Anthony Paredes / Paul M. Pruitt
Jr. / Nina Gail Thrower / Robert Thrower /
Gregory A. Waselkov
Red Eagle’s Children is a very interesting book, and a well-conceived one. It touches the necessary bases in terms of providing background information and analysis of the case in question, and its editors have recruited a very strong roster of specialists to write the individual chapters.’
—Joshua Piker, author of Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America
List of Illustrations
Introduction by J. Anthony Paredes
1. A Brief Sketch of Creek Country in the Early Nineteenth Century by Robbie Ethridge
2. Formation of the Tensaw Community by Gregory A. Waselkov
3. Early Alabama Law and Chancery Practice by David I. Durham and Paul M. Pruitt Jr.
4. Edited Transcript of Case 1299: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. by Judith Knight
5. A Modern Creek Indian Reflection on Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. by Nina Gail Thrower (recorded and transcribed by Robert Thrower)
Appendix: Reproduction of "Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama, during January Term and a Part of June Term, 1852. Reported by J. W. Shepherd. Vol. XX."
References
List of Contributors
Index
