NewSouth Books would like to congratulate Virginia Pounds Brown, author of The World of the Southern Indians: Tribes, Leaders, and Customs from Prehistoric Times to the Present, on winning the Alabama Historical Association’s Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award for contributions to Alabama history.

The Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award is given every other year to a distinguished professional whose work encourages “joint historical endeavors and mutual understanding among nonprofessional and professional historians.” Past winners of the award include Ed Bridges, Hardy Jackson and Leah Rawls Atkins.

Brown is former librarian, bookstore owner, and publisher who began writing to fill gaps in the available history of her native Alabama and the surrounding region. NewSouth republished her classic, accessible guide to Southern Native American tribes, The World of the Southern Indians, earlier this year, and will soon re-release the companion volume, Southern Indian Myths and Legends. NewSouth also published her autobiographical Mother & Me: An Intimate Memoir of Her Last Years, and the young adult novel The Gold Disc of Coosa: A Boy of the Mound Builders Meets DeSoto.

It is especially fitting that Brown should win an award named for historian Virginia Hamilton, since NewSouth recently also published Hamilton’s memoir Teddy’s Child: Growing Up in the Anxious Southern Gentry Between the Great Wars. Hamilton became the second woman to earn a PhD from the University of Alabama Department of History and has written numerous award-winning books.

The World of the Southern Indians: Tribes, Leaders, and Customs from Prehistoric Times to the Present, by Virginia Pounds Brown, is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

NewSouth Books never published Grand Old Days of Birmingham Golf, 1898-1930 by Virginia Pounds Brown, fondly recalled in a story by Ian Thompson that ran February 17 in The Birmingham News. But we are lucky to have acquired rights to reissue two classic works by the author, The World of the Southern Indians and Southern Indians Myths and Legends.

These books are are lively accounts of Native American life written for students ages 10 and up. Virginia Pounds Brown wrote these texts to fill gaps in the available history of her native Alabama. A former librarian and bookseller, Mrs. Brown wanted to make available to students research on Native American life that was engagingly presented. Many thousands of copies later, Linda Andrews of Hoover Public Library in Homewood, Alabama says, “These books are just as relevant today as they were when they were first published 20 years ago and just as needed — our old library copies have been loved a little too much!”

The World of the Southern Indians provides the story of the South’s
first people from prehistoric times to the present, focusing on the five great tribes: Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles. Also included is a dictionary of place names of Indian origin and a chronology of important dates. This practical primer proves an enjoyable
and informative read for young and old alike. It would be well served inside the classroom, and equally deserves a place on the shelf of any library. Booklist lauds the text as “a solid bank of information.”

In stories ranging from creation tales to exciting stories of
monsters and spirit folk, Southern Indian Myths and Legends provides informative, enjoyable first-hand accounts of the myths and legends that are the foundation of Southern Indian cultural history. Virginia Pounds Brown and co-author Laurella Owens have performed an important service in preserving and transmitting these stories, and NewSouth Books is proud to make them available once again to educators and young readers.

The World of the Southern Indians is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com or from your favorite retail or online bookseller. Southern Indian Myths and Legends is forthcoming in late fall 2011.

Jacqueline Matte, author of They Say the Wind is Red, had a Letter to the Editor posted in the Birmingham News on October 25, 2006. Matte writes that she is pleased with the paper’s article about Calcedeaver Elementary School as “Gov. Bob Riley’s poster child for Alabama’s Reading Initiative program”; however, she says that the children who attend the school, mostly “poor Native Americans,” should be recognized as part of the Mowa Band of Choctaw Indians, a tribe still seeking to be recognized by the federal government. Matte also mentions an opportunity she had to interact with the children at that school and to speak with them about her book. From her letter:

I was invited by Calcedeaver’s librarian to speak to the students during the school’s “Meet an Author” program. I talked with them about my book (their history) They Say the Wind is Red: The Alabama Choctaws Lost in Their Own Land. At the end of my talk, we had a question-and-answer session. It was wonderful and inspiring.

I do not understand why The News did not identify the “poor Native American” students, but perhaps it has to do with politics. Nonetheless, they deserve the positive publicity.

Read the full article at the Birmingham News.

They Say the Wind is Red is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.