John ross cherokee chief biography of abraham

By John M. Oskison
Edited and with an Introduction by Lionel Larré
University of Nebraska Press (2022)
276 pages

Review by Herman Peterson

Probably written in the 1930s and unpublished until now, the editor Lionel Larré used John Milton Oskison’s original manuscript on John Ross, which is housed at the University of Tulsa Library.

It remained unpublished during the author’s lifetime because several of the reviewers thought it needed more scholarly apparatus, which Oskison, a popular author and journalist, considered unnecessary. The book also includes a few fictionalized conversations.

Oskison did not claim to be a historian, but that is what the reviewers would have preferred.

John ross cherokee chief family tree

However, Oskison (1874-1947) was a “man of letters,” as college graduates were called in his day, earning his degree from Stanford University in 1898. He wrote short stories, novels, historical fiction, and biographies.

He w