|  Letters
Does the Greek letter chi
stand for Chicago?
Action anthro footnote
The article about the Meskwaki experiment (“Where
the Action Was,” April/04) was of particular interest
to me. I recall Sol Tax talking about his action anthropology program
as I was girding up to write a history department dissertation,
“A History of the Fox Indians,” whose official sponsor
was Daniel Boorstin, with Sol being the real mentor. For a variety
of circumstances I ended up with only the ABD. However, I had completed
the first several chapters tracing the Sak (Sauk) and Fox tribes
(or perhaps clans) from the first European awareness of them in
the Jesuit records. Several years ago, after volunteering at the
Newberry Library before moving to San Diego, I polished up those
pages and gave them to the Newberry’s Ayer Collection.
An interesting sidelight to the Meskwaki history is that after
being moved west of the Mississippi by President Jackson they returned
to harvest their crops. The Illinois militia chased them back. One
of the companies involved was commanded by “A. Lincoln,”
although it did not participate in the skirmish. One of my old friends
from Hyde Park High School days, Hugh Martin, has inherited the
family farm in Little York, Illinois, where the skirmish took place
and where one of his ancestors actually was killed.
Eugene Telser, AM’50
San Diego
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