Weaving alliances with other women: Chitimacha Indian work in the new South

Abstract

"Friendships that Christine Paul (1874-1946) sustained with Mary Bradford (1869-1954) and Caroline Dormon (1888-1971) at different times in her life offer an all too scarce vantage point from which Daniel Usner explores the condition of American Indians in the Jim Crow South. 'Aspects that, for the most part, have not been addressed in historical works' according to Devon Mihesuah, 'are the feelings and emotions of Native women, the relationships among them, and their observations of non-Natives.' In Weaving Alliances with Other Women, Usner hopes to overcome this neglect for one Indigenous community in the southern United States. In Christine Paul's respective exchanges of information and insight with two non-Indian women, thanks to the survival of her invaluable correspondence with Bradford and Dormon, Usner attempts to ascertain what Rebecca Sharpless called a 'bivocal representation' of relationships fraught with important social, economic, and cultural tensions. Interacting closely within a social web largely woven with woven objects, the identities of these three women nonetheless developed along very separate paths--paths mapped-out by their unequal positions in the New South"--Provided by publisher