Research Catalog

Spirits of the air : birds & American Indians in the South / Shepard Krech III.

Title: Spirits of the air : birds & American Indians in the South / Shepard Krech III.
Author: Krech, Shepard, III, 1944-
Publication: Athens : University of Georgia Press, ©2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	E78.S65 K74 2009	Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 245 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), color maps; 28 cm.

Summary

Before the massive environmental change wrought by the European colonization of the South, hundreds of species of birds filled the region's flyways in immeasurable numbers. Before disease, war, and displacement altered the South's earliest human landscape, Native Americans hunted and ate birds and made tools and weapons from their beaks, bones, and talons. More significant to Shepard Krech III, Indians adorned themselves with feathers, invoked avian powers in ceremonies and dances, and incorporated bird imagery on pottery, carvings, and jewelry. Krech, a renowned authority on Native American interactions with nature, reveals as never before the omnipresence of birds in Native American life. From the time of the earliest known renderings of winged creatures in stone and earthworks through the nineteenth century, when Native southerners took part in decimating bird species with highly valued, fashionable plumage, Spirits of the Air examines the complex and changeable influences of birds on the Native American worldview. We learn of birds for which places and people were named; birds common in iconography and oral traditions; birds important in ritual and healing; and birds feared for their links to witches and other malevolent forces. Still other birds had no meaning for Native Americans. Krech shows us these invisible animals too, enriching our understanding of both the Indian-bird dynamic and the incredible diversity of winged life once found in the South. A crowning work drawing on Krech's distinguished career in anthropology and natural history, Spirits of the Air recovers vanished worlds and shows us our own anew.

Series Statement

Environmental history and the American South

Uniform Title

Environmental history and the American South.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-237) and index.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

Birds and American Indians -- The birds -- Subsistence -- Material culture -- Imagery -- Descent and power -- War and peace -- Spirituality -- Bird spirits and spirit-birds -- Sacred and secular narratives -- Human impact on birds -- Visible and invisible birds.

ISBN

9780820328157
0820328154

LCCN

2008016949

OCLC

225090624
SCSB-9939142

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library