Native Americans
There is little sadder than the death of a language
The last Yana-speaker in the world died in 1916. When Ishi was born, the Yana were still a small but…
The dangerous charm of Peter Matthiessen
The philandering author of the sublime The Snow Leopard spent a lifetime globe-hopping from the Amazonian jungle to the Siberian tundra at great cost to family life
The mystery of Rapa Nui’s moai may be solved
The vast, painstakingly carved stone figures are thought to represent ancestors – and their partial destruction to signify punishment for their failure as guardians
The world’s most exotic languages are vanishing in a puff of smoke
Among the many ‘rare tongues’ explored by Lorna Gibb is the use of smoke signals by native north Americans, the oldest form of long-distance communication
Bones, bridles and bits – but where’s the horse?
Ancient equine remains provide fascinating clues to migration and warfare – but the animals themselves seem largely absent in William T. Taylor’s history of the horse
A Native American tragedy: Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange, reviewed
Shocked to find that his Cheyenne forebears had been imprisoned in Florida, Orange was inspired to write a story of displacement and abuse spanning generations
Murder by the Mississippi
When the mutilated corpse of a Ku Klux Klan member is discovered, the stability of an entire city is threatened in this tale of racial tension set beside the Mississippi
Once upon a time in the South
To write a first novel of 800 pages is either supremely confident or crazy. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, a professor of…
The great carve-up
At the end of the last century, Simon Winchester bought 123 acres of wooded mountainside in the hamlet of Wassaic,…
Fish out of water
In the Pacific Northwest, Native Americans paint images of salmon on to stones. They say that if you rub those…
The myth of the ‘stolen country’
Last month, in the middle of the COVID panic, a group of freshmen at the University of Connecticut were welcomed…
Male order
The starting point for Taylor Sheridan’s crime-thriller Wind River is explicitly stated at the end when the following words come…
Endurance test
The Revenant is a survival-against-the-odds film that so puts Leonardo DiCaprio through it I bet he was thinking, ‘I wish…
High life
If any of you sees Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, walking around with a begging bowl in his…
