Touch the Earth

Touch the Earth by Terry c. mcluhan. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780671785642.

"We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding strams with tangled growth, as wild. Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was tame. Earth was boutiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it wild for us, it was that for us the Wild West began." TOUCH THE EARTH is a selection of statements and writings by North American Indians, chosen to illuminate the course of Indian history and the abiding values of Indian life. Together they recount the pain of the Indian as he watched the white man kill the wild herbs and overrun the sacred lands of his ancestors. Mystified at first by the white mans ways, the Indian tone guves way first to anger, then desperation and, finally hopelessness. More than 50 pages of photographs, taken by the American photographer Edward S. Curtis in the early years of this century, complement the text.