All The World's A Stage

A Very Hannah Holiday

So for those of you who don't know, I play Hannah Le Corbeau in House of Cards, a PBEM set in the Amber universe using the Everway System. (Links on the sidebar for the curious.)

Hannah is modeled (loosely) off of Susan La Flesche. Dr. La Flesche was the first Native American doctor. She was a member of the Omaha tribe - her father was the Chief.

I've had a metric ton of Hannah-related wish-reading on my Amazon list for awhile now, and well over half of it showed up this holiday.

From my lovely GMs, I got "Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.: Omaha Indian Leader and Reformer" by Benson Tong. (My father also got me this book! So now I have 2 - I really need to start an ebay pile.)

From my Friend Paul, I got "The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples" by Tim Flannery. I've put off starting that one because it's not what I consider light reading and I want to be in the right mindset for it.

From my Daddy, the flood of books. I don't know what he did to get these books, some of which are out of print. Some of these very clearly are old library books sold off in library sales. As mentioned, he got me Susan's biography, because bless him, the concept of rechecking Amazon after Thanksgiving never occured. I need to go update over there now. He also picked me up a couple others I bought in early fall - "The Middle Five" and "Ke-ma-ha" by Francis La Flesche (Susan's brother).

But he still did very good and came through with 2 I haven't been able to find anywhere. Plus, "Ke-ma-ha" is a hardcover!

"Homeward The Arrow's Flight" by Marion Marsh Brown is what I'd call a fictionalized biography. It's Susan's life full of dialog. I think it's written for high schoolers. Just from flipping it open to the medical school years and reading dialogue with her and Frank, I know I'm going to enjoy it more than the biography, even though it's clearly far less factually accurate just due to the fact the author couldn't have known what Susan said or what she was thinking. Much less her siblings and parents etc.

"Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe" by Robin Ridington & Dennis Hastings (In'aska) is the story of the Sacred Pole of the Omaha and how it was retrieved by the tribe from the Smithsonian, where Francis La Flesche had placed it. The back cover reads "[the authors] ingeniously adopt the conventions of Omaha oral narratives to tell the story and convey the significance.... This unique blend of Omaha poetics, ethnography, and ethnohistory is a significant contribution to our understanding of the religious life of Native Americans.

In a funny aside, my father also tried to get me a book called, "Bright Eyes" which is a bio of Susan's sister. What we got was a romance novel of the same title by Catherine Anderson. My mom wants to read it when I'm done.

Posted by Liz at December 25, 2005 8:21 PM