Chevy Chase Non Fiction Book Club - Native American Heritage Month

"Born of Lakes and Plains" by Anne Farrar Hyde

Anne F. Hyde, a historian of the American West, is professor of history at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.

The Chevy Chase Library elevator currently out of service and undergoing modernization replacement. This program is held in the downstairs meeting room, and it is only accessible by the stairs.

"A New Yorker Best Book of 2022

A fresh history of the West grounded in the lives of mixed-descent Native families who first bridged and then collided with racial boundaries.
Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Native peoples--Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others--formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous. These families built cosmopolitan trade centers from Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes to Bellevue on the Missouri River, Bent's Fort in the southern Plains, and Fort Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest. Their family names are often imprinted on the landscape, but their voices have long been muted in our histories. Anne F. Hyde's pathbreaking history restores them in full.

Vividly combining the panoramic and the particular, Born of Lakes and Plains follows five mixed-descent families whose lives intertwined major events: imperial battles over the fur trade; the first extensions of American authority west of the Appalachians; the ravages of imported disease; the violence of Indian removal; encroaching American settlement; and, following the Civil War, the disasters of Indian war, reservations policy, and allotment. During the pivotal nineteenth century, mixed-descent people who had once occupied a middle ground became a racial problem drawing hostility from all sides. Their identities were challenged by the pseudo-science of blood quantum--the instrument of allotment policy--and their traditions by the Indian schools established to erase Native ways. As Anne F. Hyde shows, they navigated the hard choices they faced as they had for centuries: by relying on the rich resources of family and kin. Here is an indelible western history with a new human face." - MCPL Catalog.

Join our friendly book group! Each month we read either a non-fiction (first Wednesday at 3:30) or fiction (third Wednesday at 3:30) selection. Titles are announced a month before,and copies are available at the Circulaiton Desk. Discussion questions are provided with the selection.

Want to read more non-fiction? Enjoy other non-fiction titles in our MCPL catalog. 

Questions about this program? Contact Chevy Chase Library at: 240-773-9590

Looking for more fun things to do at MCPL? 

Check out the library's website to see what you can do with a library card. Don't have a card right now?  No worries!  Find out how to Get a Library Card.

Accommodation Requests

People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing should request English-language captioning or sign-language interpretation at least five days before the library-sponsored program they plan to attend. Contact the Assistant Facilities and Accessibility Program Manager at 240-777-0002 with all other accommodation requests.

Upcoming Events