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14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Great Genealogy, Great History, Great SagaAug 02, 2003
By Bill Reid
This book tells the story of my family and other native peoples whose identities were essentially taken from them by Alabama politicians who over several decades mischaracterized them as "Cajans." My great grandfather (Seaborn Reid) and his extended family were living in post-Civil War Washington and Mobile Counties in southeast Alabama where, as free mixed Indian people, his ancestors had made their homes for many years, before the state began to deny their Indian heritage. Eventually, Seaborn would bring his whole family to Mississippi to escape the arbitrary and discriminatory treatment they experienced under Alabama's laws and practices respecting his people. Once in Mississippi, he and his clan were treated as white citizens, and his progeny slowly loss their awareness of their heritage as years went by. Until I read "They Say the Wind is Red," little of this history was known by anybody in the family.So, whether your interest lies in the genealogy of Washington and Mobile County persons, or in the history of that region, or in what is a great telling of how native peoples' identity was taken from them and how they are now seeking to reclaim their rights as members of a tribal community, this is a must-read book.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
amazing truth that touches & hurts...a must readApr 04, 2004
By mike
All I can say is this book helps you understand the difficult, yet enduring tribe of Choctaw that live with honor--- in a harsh country they once owned. This book makes you think and feel for a people who were treated unfairly by their country and their government. This pearl of literature might have been lost in the biased written history books of America if J.A.Matte would have accepted anything less than the truth. Born in a time when women were struggling to be regconized & heard...J.A.Matte became an educator as well as a champion for American history...recorded correctly. This book really touched me & my family. Read it & know the truth.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
A people's determination to endureOct 07, 2002
By Midwest Book Review
Now in a newly revised edition which include a resource guide for Southeastern Indian genealogy, They Say The Wind Red: The Alabama Choctaw Lost In Their Own Land, by Jacqueline Anderson Matte (who testified as an expert witness before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Hearings for federal recognition of the Alabama Choctaw) is a compelling and accurate history of those Choctaw Indians who successfully remained in Alabama, when other southeastern Indian tribes were compelled to relocate to the American West during the 1830s. The Alabama Choctaw were a small band of Native Americans who were often mistaken as being either blacks or cajun, and who stayed in the swamps and pine woods of Mobile and Washington counties in spite of federal government's efforts to remove them. An invaluable addition to the growing library of Native American Studies, They Say The Wind Is Red is very highly recommended history of pride, love of land, danger, and a people's determination to endure and preserve their way of life in spite of severe and enduring hardships.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
History and Geneology of the Alabama Choctaw - MOWAAug 03, 2005
By Darby B Weaver Jr.
For generations, the people living in North Mobile County and Southern Washington County have been lied to, persecuted, and discriminated against. They were forgotten by everyone until this author came along and tried to help them find out who they are.
It was rough growing up in a community where only a handful of people ever had a college education, and only a few more even graduated high school. There were only a few people to reference who had been there and done that.
Mrs. Matte shows the reader why.
Today the children of those who remain are struggling to have themselves identified in a system that desired clean, neat records that provide a near-perfect paper-trail.
The reality is that many of these people were illiterate up until the last 70-80 years. There was no school for indians.
They were not counted in the Census unless they were tax payers.
They were referred to as Cajans or Cajuns, mixed by blood and called Whites, Blacks, or Cajans based on skin color alone, however many people in the same family had features that to the unitiated appeared as all three.
My family shares these traits... My father's father had light colored eyes and light skin. My father is of a terracotta skin tone and my sister has a "tanned" skin tone and both have brown eyes, and I am blond and blue. Yet we are the same family.
My cousins and their cousins are the same.
Thank you Jackie for taking the time to chronicle some of the stories of a people who are truly fighting for their very survival.
This book tells some of those stories.
Sincerely,
Darby Weaver Jr.
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