Bill Wright’s new photographic study continues his series on American Indian tribes in Texas. Historian John Gesick contributes a historical essay that tells the story of the tribe’s migration from the woodlands of the northeast to the deserts of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico.
Wright and Gesick followed the Kickapoo during the summer as they worked as migrant farm workers and to their sacred homeland of Nacimiento, Coahuila, where they still live in traditional wickiups and practice the religion of their forefathers.
Among the many highlights of the text, is a Kickapoo story in the oral tradition, relating Col. Ranald MacKenzie’s raid into the Kickapoo hunting camp near Remolino, Mexico, in 1873--a story never before in print; a description of the Kickapoo social infrastructure, detailing the construction and meaning of their dwelling, language, religion, and political organization in Texas and Mexico; a recounting of Wright’s and Gesick’s experience when they accompanied three young Kickapoos on a hunt and the significance of deer to the tribe.
The Kickapoo of Texas pride themselves in safeguarding their traditions amid the overwhelming momentum of western culture. Historical photographs of the tribe collected from family albums as well as from national museum collections document the visual history, and Bill Wright’s contemporary photographs illuminate the present life and culture.
Mary Cristopher Nunley, Ph.D., anthropologist and Kickapoo scholar, in her introduction to "The Texas Kickapoo" provides an insight and understanding into the Kickapoo culture.
ISBN 0-87404-239-9, cloth, $45.00
12x9,150 pg., duotones, biblio.
To order, write: Texas Western Press, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968-0633---or use the Texas Western Press toll-free number (for ordering only): (800) 488-3789---or order by e-mail