Southern Indians Research Articles

Agreement between equation-derived body fat estimator and bioelectrical impedance analysis for body fat measurement in middle-aged southern Indians.

Excess body fat (BF) contributes to metabolic syndrome (MetS). The Clínica Universidad de Navarra-Body Adiposity Estimator (CUN-BAE) is an equation-derived body fat estimator proposed to assess BF. However, its efficiency compared to the standard method is unknown. We aimed to compare the efficacy of CUN-BAE with the standard method in estimating BF in southern Indians. We included 351 subjects, with 166 MetS patients and 185 non-MetS subjects. BF was obtained from the standard bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) method and measured by CUN-BAE in the same subjects. We compared the efficacy of CUN-BAE in estimating BF with that of BIA via Bland-Altman plots, intraclass correlation coefficients, concordance correlation coefficients and the kappa index. The mean body fat percentage (BF%) values measured by BIA and CUN-BAE in all the subjects were 28.91 ± 8.94 and 29.22 ± 8.63, respectively. We observed significant absolute agreement between CUN-BAE and BIA for BF%. BIA and CUN-BAE showed good reproducibility for BF%. CUN-BAE had accuracy comparable to BIA for detecting MetS using BF%. Our findings indicate that CUN-BAE provides precise BF estimates similar to the BIA method, making it suitable for routine clinical practice when access to BF measurement devices is limited.

Variations in the anatomical structure of the pterion among populations from various global regions

Anatomical variations in the structure of the pterion were examined in various craniological series represent-ing modern populations from Australia, Melanesia, Southeast Asia, North Asia, America, and Europe, encom-passing 2035 adult crania. The comparison of populations based on the frequency of nonmetric traits revealed significant diversity across regions. Notably, the sphenoparietal connection is most frequent in European and South Asian populations, as well as among Native Americans, while it is least common among African groups. The frontotemporal connection predominates among Australian Aborigines and Melanesians and is also common in African populations but is almost non-existent in Europeans. The X-shaped pterion is most frequently observed in the Eskimos of Chukotka and the Chukchi, as well as among Somali and Tanzanian populations. A high fre-quency of epipteric bones is particularly characteristic of Southern Indians, Burmese, Australians, and Melane-sians. Pairwise comparisons of populations were conducted using Smith's Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD). To visualize the data from individual regions, the method of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) was applied to the matrices of biological distances. The MDS plot for the North Asian region revealed distinct clusters of the Arctic, Baikal, Cen-tral Asian, and Ural groups, aligning with G.F. Debetz's classification based on morphological similarities among populations. In the MDS plot for the South and Southeast Asian, American, and African populations, Australians and Melanesians formed a separate cluster; Pueblo Indians were closely aligned with Peruvians, South Indians with Burmese, Malays merged with Papuans, and African populations were positioned relatively close to each other. In Europe, Caucasian groups formed a distinct cluster. On the combined graph, the populations were clearly divided by regions. The results obtained indicate that the spatial arrangement of populations on the graphs approximately mir-rors their genetic connections and shared origins. This suggests that nonmetric variations in the pterion area are more likely determined by genetic rather than ecological factors and can be considered taxonomically valuable traits at the regional level. Investigating the structure of the pterion in an evolutionary context may shed light on broader questions concerning the evolution of the skull and the mechanisms influencing its formation.

To Risk It All: General Forbes, the Capture of Fort Duquesne, and the Course of Empire in the Ohio Country

To Risk It All: General Forbes, the Capture of Fort Duquesne, and the Course of Empire in the Ohio Country

Prevalence of prediabetes and diabetes among economically backward tribes, Tamilnadu, India

India has the second largest concentration of tribal population in the world. Indian tribes constitute around 8.3% of nation’s total population. To assess the prevalence of Prediabetes and diabetes mellitus among tribal population of Kancheepuram district. Cross sectional study design, Multi stage cluster sampling technique was used, house to house data collection was done for 85 irula tribal people. The Irula are a Scheduled tribe that lives in northern Tamil Nadu and the Nilgiri Hills. They are sort of like a cross between tribals and ordinary southern Indians. structured questionnaire were used to assess demographic variables (gender, age, educational qualification, marital status, family status, occupation, monthly salary and religion). Measurements taken were height, weight, and blood sugar by finger prick method with glucometer. Above 140 to 199 mg/dl considered as prediabetes and 200mg/dl is considered as diabetes. Prevalence of prediabetes and diabetes mellitus among tribes were 49.4%, 25.9%, poor literacy, poverty and substance abuse makes the tribes more prone to prediabetes and diabetes.

A Curse Upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World by Kay Wright Lewis

Reviewed by: A Curse Upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World by Kay Wright Lewis Douglas R. Egerton (bio) A Curse Upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World. By Kay Wright Lewis. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018. Pp. 281. $64.95 cloth; $28.95 paper; $27.50 ebook) Even before the arrival of large numbers of enslaved Africans into the British mainland colonies, English colonists were experienced in the tactics of exterminatory warfare. In battles against Irish Catholics and Indigenous Americans, settlers learned how to eradicate some enemies while enslaving others. By the dawn of the nineteenth century, Kay Wright Lewis argues in this provocative study, Americans mastered the rhetoric of race war, and a good many of both races, she convincingly demonstrates, regarded it as a serious threat. Even after emancipation, African American fears of racial extermination continued, reemerging in the writings and speeches of W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X. Southern whites and Caribbean masters learned that racially based conflicts often cut in both directions. As French refugees fled the revolt in Saint Domingue and settled in Charleston, they carried with them stories of the formidable capacity of Black soldiers. Those fears [End Page 341] nearly became reality in South Carolina in 1822 when former bondman Denmark Vesey orchestrated a plot to liberate the enslaved through bloodshed before sailing for Haiti. When questioned by one of his lieutenants over the necessity of wholesale slaughter, Lewis observes, Vesey replied by remarking that "nits make lice," a term earlier used by white settlers regarding southern Indians. These mainland revolts were initially isolated and quickly failed, the author notes, but thanks to the internal slave trade, stories of Vesey and Nat Turner traveled across the South and were passed from one generation to the next, keeping alive ideas of a war to the death. On occasion, Lewis's determination to fit all of her data into her larger theory appears forced. When discussing the late antebellum efforts of lower South fire-eaters to reopen the Atlantic slave trade, the author suggests that the debates—which in fact divided Carolina planters from their Virginia brethren, who wished to sell their surplus laborers to the fresh lands of the frontier South—"set the stage for future ideas about Black labor and Black disposability" (p. 141). Although it was true enough that white southerners united in claiming that abolition would result in a race war and the extermination of freedmen, advocates of the traffic in Africans insisted that it would reduce the price of enslaved labor enough for middle-class farmers to buy and carry bondmen into the western territories. Far from thinking in terms of "disposability," writers such as Louisianan James De Bow argued that modern steamships could quickly ferry captured Africans to the South with little loss of life. De Bow's editorials embraced the language of paternalism and insisted that Africans were better off enslaved by Christian masters than left on their own in the old world, a ghastly argument shared by a good many white Americans regardless of section. Lewis returns to form in her final chapters, however, as the Civil War years witnessed a rebirth of the language of extermination. Northern Democrats, who worried that Black military service would lead to demands for citizenship and voting rights, warned their Black neighbors that Confederates planned to chop captured African [End Page 342] American soldiers into "mincemeat, or [be] quartered and pickled" (p. 179). Conservative Democrats had their agenda, of course, but they were right enough in thinking that Jefferson Davis and his Congress threatened to enslave or execute Black prisoners of war. Even without orders from Richmond, Confederates at Fort Pillow in Tennessee and Marks Mills in Arkansas slaughtered both Black combatants and civilians. Lewis's prose is clear and strong and only rarely lapses into jargon. Although most of her sources are published rather than archival, her dense footnotes reveal both secondary literature and often obscure pamphlets and newspaper editorials. Wisely, Lewis lets these past voices speak for themselves through ample quotations, demonstrating the centrality of fears of mass extermination among both...

The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies ed. by Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien

Reviewed by: The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies ed. by Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien Steven J. Peach (bio) The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies. Edited by Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. xx, 279. $60.00 cloth; $30.00 paper; $60.00 e-book) The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies examines the state of southern Indian history and honors the two scholars who shaped it into a mature field of inquiry, Theda Perdue and her late husband, Michael D. Green. The volume includes original essays from thirteen of the former doctoral students of Perdue and Green, including the volume's editors, Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien. Moving forward in time from the early eighteenth century to today, Native South examines how southern Indians adapted to Euro-American invasion, diseases, and settlement. In addition to chronological breadth, the collection includes numerous themes. Some essays offer a fresh take on Indian removal, intertribal diplomacy, and European-Indian encounters. Others probe new topics altogether, including southern Indian feminism in the 1970s. No matter the focus, each piece bears the imprint of Perdue and Green. During an interview that O'Brien conducted with his retired advisors in 2012, Theda remarked that "Mike and I have had the great good fortune to see our legacy while we're still living" (p. 31). That [End Page 373] legacy is their students. Taking their cue from Perdue and Green, the contributors to Native South employ the ethnohistorical method. It draws upon historical records, archaeological evidence, oral traditions, and indigenous language materials to study the cultures, worldviews, and concerns of indigenous people over time. Ethnohistory first emerged in the mid-1950s when Indians and their non-Indian allies sued the federal government to reclaim lands stolen by white Americans since the nineteenth century. By the 1970s, as Perdue indicated to O'Brien during the interview, the Civil Rights and Red Power Movements prompted white academics to replace "white man's history" with ethnohistory, which put Native people front and center (p. 13). Consequently, the essays in Native South examine the history of indigenous southerners and demonstrate that these peoples creatively blended elements of white American culture with those of traditional culture to address disease, war, land loss, and other factors resulting from Euro-American colonization. Native South challenges popular assumptions about the southern Indians. David A. Nichols reminds us that Indians "had no more innate inclination for violence than their European contemporaries" (p. 33). Nevertheless, the Chickasaws used that stereotype to their advantage. According to Nichols, the eighteenth-century Chickasaws used their fearsome military power as a source of "capital" to secure trade goods from Europeans and preserve influence in the South (p. 37). In the same vein, Tim Alan Garrison uproots the popular notion that Cherokee removal was inevitable. Studying newspapers and legislative votes from southern states that overwhelmingly favored removal, such as Georgia, he excavates a forceful, if small, opposition to removal by white southern jurists and lawmakers. Unfortunately, white southern opposition to removal was "weak, unorganized, and poorly led" (p. 121). Many contributors insert southern Indian women into the larger drama of nineteenth-century U.S. history. Rose Stremlau interprets the letters of Barbara Longknife, a Cherokee who migrated to California [End Page 374] with her immediate family in 1850. A participant in the Gold Rush, Longknife helped formed a "nascent Cherokee diaspora community" in California (p. 175). Like the white American men who left the Northeast to pan for gold in the Sacramento valley, Longknife seized new economic opportunities but struggled to accumulate wealth. Similar to Stremlau, Malinda Maynor Lowery demonstrates that Chickasaw women in the mid-to-late 1800s made American capitalism their own. To that end, they leveraged their position in the influential Colbert matrilineage to pave new avenues to wealth and, more broadly, to empower Chickasaw sovereignty. In Indian Territory, which became the state of Oklahoma in 1907, women of the Cherokee Nation asserted their social and political influence. Focusing on Cherokee jurisprudence, Julie L. Reed argues that the Cherokee Nation balanced the U.S. legal principle of retributive justice with the...

Reshaping Southern Identity and Politics: Indian Activism during the Civil Rights Era

Reshaping Southern Identity and PoliticsIndian Activism during the Civil Rights Era Denise E. Bates (bio) When asked to summon a set of images from the civil rights era in the South most scholars and students of history invoke such iconic images as lunch counter sit-ins or impassioned speeches delivered by a leader like Martin Luther King Jr., who dominated headlines with his antisegregation campaign. Still others may point to the multiple cases of violence inflicted upon civil rights workers by a group such as the Ku Klux Klan, which regularly made national news. Whatever comes to mind—whether it involves brave young activists, articulate leaders, or race-based violence—these images clearly portray a period that provokes strong emotions tied to the movement for equal rights for black southerners in the face of a long and stable system of white supremacy. This narrative, however, is incomplete. Although the black civil rights movement did indeed capture national attention and spur a revolution in race relations, it was not the only movement that contributed to the reshaping of southern identity and politics during the civil rights era. Things are not that simple. In fact, where civil rights era scholars are generally falling short is in the consideration and incorporation of the political activities and economic development efforts of southern Indians who, in addition to having to navigate a system of racial segregation in a region where they were often overlooked, went on to launch a distinct movement of their own—one that also proved critical to the South’s shifting political and social terrain during the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning with localized efforts in the 1950s and gaining momentum by the 1970s, charismatic Indian activists across the Southeast leveraged the politically precarious positions of southern politicians as they [End Page 125] came under intense scrutiny and were looking for opportunities to improve their images. This opened the door within many southern states for historically significant relationships to be developed between Indian groups and state governments. At the same time, the national Indian political environment was also undergoing dramatic shifts, serving as a prominent catalyst in further shaping the direction of the movement. As a result, southern Indian leaders and activists became heavily involved in intertribal coalitions and alliances, previously unorganized groups developed tribal governments, tribes embarked on new economic ventures, and petitions for federal recognition were submitted by the dozens by groups hailing from the South.1 The southern Indian movement, like the black civil rights movement, was complex and dynamic. The diversity of the South’s Indian populations, which are identified by such characteristics as their locale and political status, dictated the roles that different groups played within the larger movement. The strategies and messages between Indian leaders who served as activists in promoting change also varied, generating some lively debates and offering some great insight into the ideological distinctions present within the movement. While a drive for tribal self-determination framed Indian activism on a national scale, distinguishing it from the mainstream activities of civil rights activists, Indian leaders were influenced by a variety of intellectual traditions.2 There is a great deal of scholarship on the South’s Indian population following World War II that focuses on revitalizing efforts, identity issues, recognition, and tribal development, serving as a strong basis for reimagining the dominant civil rights narrative.3 The diversity of the South makes it impossible to generalize the experiences of southern Native Americans, which is evident in the tendency of the scholarship to focus on specific groups or states. There is a need, however, for a more aggressive assessment of southern racial discourse and how it intersects with the political activities of Indians—much in the manner that the scholarship on black civil rights activism does.4 These narratives are two pieces of a whole that can provide a better understanding of the larger political and economic shifts that characterize the post–World War II South. So how do we unpack such a complex story? The goal of this essay is to contribute to an ongoing conversation that scholars have been engaging in for decades about the broader role of Indian activism during...

NPHS2mutation analysis and primary nephrotic syndrome in southern Indians

Nephrotic syndrome is one of the most commonly diagnosed primary kidney diseases and its progressive forms can lead to chronic kidney disease and or end-stage renal disease. Steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome is defined by resistance to standard steroid therapy and it remains one of the most intractable causes of kidney failure. Mutations in NPHS2, which encodes for podocin, an integral membrane protein of the glomerular epithelial cells (podocytes), represent a frequent cause of steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome worldwide. This study was aimed at screening for known NPHS2 mutations in Indians with nephrotic syndrome. We screened a cohort of 484 subjects from the southern Indian population for the presence of four missense mutations G92C, P118L, R138Q and D160G within the NPHS2 gene using tetra primer ARMS PCR. Our results revealed that these mutations were seen only among the patients (14.02%) and were absent in the controls, suggesting their disease-causing nature. Further categorization revealed that these mutations were together responsible for 18.5% of steroid-resistant cases in our study group. Conversely, the studied mutations were not found in the controls as well as in the patients with steroid-sensitive nephrotic syndrome. This is the first such report from India. More studies are warranted to establish the frequency of NPHS2 mutations in the Asian-Indian population and such analysis may help in developing mutation(s)-specific therapeutic interventions in the future.

Indian craniometric variability and affinities.

Recently published craniometric and genetic studies indicate a predominantly indigenous ancestry of Indian populations. We address this issue with a fuller coverage of Indian craniometrics than any done before. We analyse metrical variability within Indian series, Indians' sexual dimorphism, differences between northern and southern Indians, index-based differences of Indian males from other series, and Indians' multivariate affinities. The relationship between a variable's magnitude and its variability is log-linear. This relationship is strengthened by excluding cranial fractions and series with a sample size less than 30. Male crania are typically larger than female crania, but there are also shape differences. Northern Indians differ from southern Indians in various features including narrower orbits and less pronounced medial protrusion of the orbits. Indians resemble Veddas in having small crania and similar cranial shape. Indians' wider geographic affinities lie with “Caucasoid” populations to the northwest, particularly affecting northern Indians. The latter finding is confirmed from shape-based Mahalanobis-D distances calculated for the best sampled male and female series. Demonstration of a distinctive South Asian craniometric profile and the intermediate status of northern Indians between southern Indians and populations northwest of India confirm the predominantly indigenous ancestry of northern and especially southern Indians.

Choosing sides: loyalists in Revolutionary America

Table of Contents Introduction Loyal Britons Imperial Crisis Loyal Colonies in the Caribbean and North America Loyalist Convictions and Proposals Loyalist Potential Loyalist Women Slaves Indian Allies The Peace Treaty and its Aftermath Refugees in the British Maritimes Chapter 1. Loyalist Predicament Defining Loyalists and Patriots Confronting Mobs (1774) Forced into exile (1775) Guilty until Proven Innocent (1776) An Affair Among Citizens (1776) Chapter 2. Early Loyalist Voices Denouncing the Unnatural Rebellion (1775) Inflamed Rebels and Scattered Friends (1775) Hunting of the Tories (1775) Loyalists Left Unprotected (1775) Requesting Imperial Intervention (1775) Criticizing Common Sense (1776) Rejecting Violence (1776) Chapter 3. Plans for Union Albany Plan (1754) William Smith Jr.'s Plan (1767) Joseph Galloway Plan (1774) John Randolph's Plan (1780) Jonathan Sewell's Plan (1785) Chapter 4. Loyalist Resilience Loyalist Persuasions (1776 & 1777) Expressing Optimism (1778) Confronting Confiscation Laws (1779) Documenting Rebel Weakness (1780) Pledging Declaration of Dependence (1781) Chapter 5. Loyalist Military Involvement Preaching to Loyalist Soldiers (1777) Volunteering Military Assistance (1780) Organizing Loyalist Militia (1781) Recruiting Loyalist Regiments (1781) Loyalist Military Actions (1783) Chapter 6. Loyalist Women A Sister's Lament (1770) Living with the British (1777) Facing British Evacuation (1778) Stricken Smitten of God (1778) Mourning Loyalist Execution (1778) A Mother's Advice (1779) Helpless Widow seeking Relief (1779) Seeking Compensation for Husband's Service (1783) Seeking Compensation for Slave Property (1786) Chapter 7. Slaves Escaping to the British (1775) Competition amongst the King's subjects (1779) Envisioning God with Empire (1781) Negotiating Slave Return (1783) Evading Re-Enslavement (1783) Retrieving Stolen Children (1783) Black Petitions (1783) Book of Negroes (1783) Chapter 8. Indians Relations with Indians (1774) British Recruiting Northern Indians (1775) British Recruiting Southern Indians (1776) Vying for Indian Support (1778) Hessian View of Indians (1777) Accusing Savages of Scalping Europeans (1777) Mohawks Side with the British (1778) Mohawks Request Assistance in Canada (1786) Indians as Beasts of Prey (1783) Chapter 9. Loyalist Losses Loyalists in the Peace Treaty (1783) Despair and Distraction (1782) Dreadful Tidings (1782) Unwavering Devotion (1782) Irrecoverable Debts (1783) Rebel Retaliation (1783) Claiming Losses in Income, Property, and Slaves (1783) Forsaking Britain (1781) Seeking Refuge in Britain (1783) Chapter 10. Loyalist Exile British Nova Scotia (1783) Loyalist Nova Scotia (1784) Predicting the Collapse of the United States (1785) Celebrating the Loyalists (1884)

A Confederate Officer Earns His Command: Chickasaw Diplomacy during the Sectional Crisis

A Confederate Officer Earns His Command: Chickasaw Diplomacy during the Sectional Crisis Daniel Flaherty (bio) Albert Pike, the principal Confederate emissary for Indian Territory, arrived at North Fork Town in the Creek Nation on June 25, 1861, to negotiate treaties of alliance with the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indians. Despite Confederate desires simply to assume the role of guardian previously occupied by the federal government, Pike treated his counterparts as sovereign diplomats. 1 Pike recognized that the nations' representatives wanted their troops to fight only for the protection of their own territory, and the treaties his government offered often satisfied this demand. And yet, the Indian forces also had to fit into the overarching Confederate plans. Thus, when the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles rode into battle in November 1861, they followed the orders of Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, the Mississippi-born man who had served as their US Indian Agent for the previous five years. Like many of his contemporaries, Cooper had earned his position as a commanding officer in the Confederate army due to political expediency more than his aptitude as a soldier. 2 As a young army officer in the Mexican War he had won the confidence of Colonel Jefferson Davis during the Monterrey and Buena Vista campaigns, and it is likely that Davis used his political influence as secretary of war to facilitate Cooper's appointment as the agent to the Choctaws in May 1853. But Cooper's personal relationship with Davis alone could not have secured his position as the commanding officer of the First Regiment of Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles. Unlike many of his counterparts, Douglas Cooper owed his initial position as a Confederate commanding officer more to the political maneuvering of Chickasaw political elites than to those of his American patrons. Although the Confederate treaty with [End Page 82] the Chickasaws and Choctaws stated that the president of the Confederate States would appoint the commanding officer for their troops, Article 49 also guaranteed that the troops from those nations would serve only to protect their respective territories. 3 Whoever commanded these troops, therefore, had to enjoy the confidence of all governing bodies concerned, especially because the Chickasaws and Choctaws questioned the motives of both federal and state interests in the years preceding the Civil War. Before cannons ever fired on Fort Sumter, the events of "bloody Kansas" imperiled the Union in the 1850s by exposing national fears about the expansion of slavery into western territories. Chickasaws and Choctaws, however, worried more about their continued ownership of their lands because the Kansas-Nebraska Act that had resolved the crisis had reduced the amount of territory reserved for removed Indians in order to stave off sectional confrontation over western expansion. Although neither nation was directly affected by the settlements, the act and its aftermath provided multiple opportunities for the two nations to become intricately aware of the growing sectional divide among Americans. 4 As the sectional crisis unfolded, therefore, both nations responded early to the break-up of the United States. Chickasaws and Choctaws pursued diplomatic activities designed to assert their autonomous sovereignty by aligning with the Confederacy. However, both nations maintained a cautious attitude regarding both Confederate and Union desires for land in Indian Territory. During the May session of the Chickasaw Legislature, elected officials declared their independence from the United States and officially invited an alliance with the Confederacy. Determined to demonstrate autonomy, the Chickasaws appointed Cooper "major General of the Chickasaw Nation." 5 Further, they adopted him as a member of their nation, an action that blended traditional native and modern Western concepts of diplomacy. 6 The adoption of Cooper into the Chickasaw Nation resembled a form of kinship diplomacy used among colonial-era southern Indians to ensure the Confederacy's primary diplomat to the Chickasaw would protect their own interests as well as those of his own government. Further, the act helped push his position as commanding officer of the initial combined Choctaw and Chickasaw forces past the Choctaw government, whose members may have questioned Cooper's growing influence in their national affairs. [End Page 83] From his first appointment as Choctaw Agent in 1853, Cooper became intimately involved...

Spirits of the Air: Birds and American Indians in the South

How birds shaped the world view of the southern Indians? Before the massive environmental change wrought by the European colonization of the South, hundreds of species of birds filled the region's flyways in immeasurable numbers. Before disease, war, and displacement altered the South's earliest human landscape, Native Americans hunted and ate birds and made tools and weapons from their beaks, bones, and talons. More significant to Shepard Krech III, Indians adorned themselves with feathers, invoked avian powers in ceremonies and dances, and incorporated bird imagery on pottery, carvings, and jewelry. Krech, a renowned authority on Native American interactions with nature, reveals as never before the omnipresence of birds in Native American life. From the time of the earliest known renderings of winged creatures in stone and earthworks through the nineteenth century, when Native southerners took part in decimating bird species with highly valued, fashionable plumage, "Spirits of the Air" examines the complex and changeable influences of birds on the Native American world view. We learn of birds for which places and people were named; birds common in iconography and oral traditions; birds important in ritual and healing; and birds feared for their links to witches and other malevolent forces. Still other birds had no meaning for Native Americans. Krech shows us these invisible animals too, enriching our understanding of both the Indian-bird dynamic and the incredible diversity of winged life once found in the South. A crowning work drawing on Krech's distinguished career in anthropology and natural history, "Spirits of the Air" recovers vanished worlds and shows us our own anew.

Association of calpain 10 gene polymorphisms with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Southern Indians

The aim was to investigate the association between the CAPN10 gene single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) −44 (rs2975760), −43 (rs3792267), −19 (rs3842570), and −63 (rs5030952) and type 2 diabetes mellitus in an Asian Indian population in Southern India. A total of 1443 subjects, 794 normal glucose tolerant (NGT) and 649 type 2 diabetes mellitus subjects, were randomly selected from the Chennai Urban Rural Epidemiology Study. These subjects were genotyped for the 4 CAPN10 SNPs using polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism and validated by direct sequencing. None of the 4 SNPs showed any significant differences in the genotypic distribution among the NGT and type 2 diabetes mellitus subjects ( P = .20, .86, .34, and .39 for SNPs −44, −43, −19, and −63, respectively). The NGT subjects with the 11 genotype of the SNP −63 had significantly higher 2-hour postload plasma glucose (mean ± SD, 5.66 ± 1.05 mmol/L) levels compared with the combined 12 and 22 genotype group (5.33 ± 1.11 mmol/L, P = .004). The P value remained significant even after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, smoking, and alcohol consumption (nominal P = .008). No significant difference in the biochemical parameters was observed when the subjects were stratified according to the other SNPs. The 2111 haplotype corresponding to SNPs −44, −43, −19, and −63 showed a significant difference in the proportion among NGT (0.18) and type 2 diabetes mellitus subjects (0.22, nominal P = .014). Although the Bonferroni correction based on the asymptotic test does not preserve this significance, the test based on the empirical distribution remained significant. In conclusion, our study raises the possibility that the 2111 haplotype of SNPs −44, −43, −19, and −63 may be associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, although none of these SNPs may be individually associated with diabetes.

Risk factors for myocardial infarction among low socioeconomic status South Indian population.

BackgroundAs longevity increases, cases of myocardial infarction (MI) are likely to be more. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major global health problem reaching epidemic proportions in the Indian subcontinent, also among low socio-economic status (SES) and thin individuals.ObjectivesThe present study was undertaken to elicit risk factors for MI among low SES Southern Indians and to find out its association with body mass index (BMI).Materials and methodsA case-control study of patients with MI matched against healthy control subjects was carried out in a tertiary care teaching hospital. Standard methods were followed to elicit risk factors and BMI. Chi-square and Fishers exact test for categorical versus categorical, to show relationship with risk factors were analyzed.ResultsA total of 949 patients (male (M) = 692 and post menopausal female (F) = 257) and 611 age and sex matched healthy controls were included. In our study, BMI was below 23 in 48.2% of patients and below 21 in 22.5%. The risk of developing MI was significantly more in males (odds ratio (OR) = 3.3, 95% confidence interval (C.I.) = 2.69-4.13), among females with post-menopausal duration (PMD) of more than or equal to 3 years (OR = 9.27, 95% C.I. = 6.36-13.50) and in those with BMI less than 23 with one or other risk factors (P = 0.002, OR = 1.38, 95% C.I. = 1.13-1.70).ConclusionBMI cannot be considered as a lone independent risk factor, as the study population had low BMI but had one or more modifiable risk factors. It would be advisable to keep BMI at least 21 kg/m2 for screening program. Health education on life style modification and programs to diagnose and control diabetes and hypertension have to be initiated at community level in order to reduce the occurrence.

Frequency of lactose malabsorption among healthy southern and northern Indian populations by genetic analysis and lactose hydrogen breath and tolerance tests

Lactose malabsorption (LM), the inability to break down lactose into glucose and galactose, is due to a deficiency in the small intestinal lactase phlorizin hydrolase enzyme. Ethnic and geographic variations of LM are known. The aim of this study was to compare the frequency of LM in healthy southern and northern Indian populations. A total of 153 healthy volunteers (76 from southern and 77 from northern India) were evaluated for LM by using a lactose tolerance test (LTT), a lactose hydrogen breath test (lactose HBT), and polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism to identify the lactase gene C/T-13910 polymorphism (confirmed by sequencing). Volunteers from southern and northern India were comparable in age and sex. The LTT result was abnormal in 88.2% of southern Indians and in 66.2% of northern Indians (P = 0.001). The lactose HBT result was abnormal in 78.9% of southern Indians and in 57.1% of northern Indians (P = 0.003). The CC genotype was present in 86.8% and 67.5% (P = 0.002), the CT genotype was present in 13.2% and 26.0% (P = 0.036), and the TT genotype was present in 0% and 6.5% (P = 0.03) of southern and northern Indians, respectively. The frequency of symptoms after the lactose load (47.4% compared with 15.6%; P < 0.001) and peak concentrations of breath hydrogen (88.5 +/- 71.9 compared with 55.4 +/- 61.9 ppm; P = 0.003), both of which might indicate the degree of lactase deficiency, were higher in southern than in northern Indians. The frequency and degree of LM is higher in southern than in northern Indian healthy populations because of genetic differences in these populations.

Delusions of Chiefdoms: An Ethnohistorian’s Viewpoint

Delusions of ChiefdomsAn Ethnohistorian’s Viewpoint Greg O’Brien (bio) There is much to ponder in archaeologist Timothy Pauketat’s indictment of the community of American archeologists who study the Mississippian era of the Mississippi Valley and South. The implications of his ideas go beyond fractious archaeological debates and need also to be considered by ethnohistorians of the Native South. Many of us who study the postcontact, and usually post-Mississippian, age of Indian-European contact in the South nonetheless utilize the same evolutionary-based understandings of how Mississippian chiefdoms worked that are criticized by Pauketat. We do so in order to establish a baseline for interpreting later cultural expressions and changes we see in the documents and oral histories produced in the colonial era. I suspect that many of us trained in history, even those like me who had a doctoral field in cultural anthropology, have not thought overly critically about the way that archaeologists portray Mississippian chiefdoms. We can quote the tripartite formula of simple, complex, and paramount chiefdoms that “cycled” from lesser to greater complexity and back again during the Mississippian era (ca. AD 1000–1600). We enumerate the “characteristics” of Mississippian chiefdoms without much thought: that is, that large multiple mound sites designate complex and paramount chiefdoms with social, political, and economic hierarchy and centralization as an operating principle, with outlying “satellite communities” under the sway of a central town, elite management of rare trade goods from far-flung places, and elite control of labor and agricultural resources. Using this basic formula, as Pauketat makes clear about even many archaeologists, we then generalize about all Mississippian settlements, altering our portrayal only according to chiefdom size and perceived complexity. [End Page 104] Other than the obvious overgeneralizations and incomplete understandings, inherent in too readily employing this evolutionary interpretation to precontact Southern Indians, there is another omission that Pauketat makes abundantly clear: that we need a historical focus on the Mississippian world. Utilizing a historical understanding does not mean searching for nonexistent documentary evidence in dusty archives, but rather to realize that all of the human past—whether documented in writing or not—constitutes history, and history means change over time, including human-directed abrupt change. Rather than seeing change among precontact Indians as occurring only in gradual, or developmental, hundred- or thousand-year sequences, Pauketat advises archaeologists to be alert for sudden changes and quick developments of new cultural expressions, technology, and political arrangements, especially when examining the Mississippian era. What is hidden in the anthropological terms used to describe Mississippian polities, Pauketat argues, are “the histories of governance, resistance, foreign relations, militarization, incorporation, provincialization, colonization, and migration (among other things).”1 Put another way, how much do we really know about how Cahokia operated on a day-to-day basis and how the expansion of “Mississippian” culture occurred, as opposed to what we think we know by theorizing about idealized “chiefdoms”? Moreover, how do we account for regional and spatial variability, as well as temporal changeability, if we rely too heavily on an idealized notion of how Mississippian societies operated? Trained as a historian, I find Pauketat’s perspective refreshing and characterized by common sense. Postcontact Indian history is replete with analysis of fast-paced change creating “new worlds” for Indians, colonizers, and African slaves alike. Pauketat suggests that for us to view precontact Indian history as any less capable of dramatic change or cultural variety, as something that was naturally and predictably evolving, limits our understanding of the possible and flies in the face of archaeological evidence. Pauketat is especially eager for us to reconsider the role of Cahokia in the history of the Mississippi Valley and the South. Cahokia, when we ethnohistorians think about it at all, is usually considered a larger-than-usual paramount chiefdom that reached its pinnacle of power and size around AD 1100 and “cycled” back down into obsolescence before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Though admirable and curious [End Page 105] for its immense scale, Cahokia seems to have had little impact on the postcontact Native South. Pauketat and other archaeologists want us to reconsider Cahokia within the history of the South. Although the bulk of his work...

Molecular detection of the ruminal bacterium,Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens, in feces from rural residents of southern India

Objective: This study was undertaken to determine whether Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens, a butyrate-producing bacterium present in the rumen of cattle, could be detected in the feces of healthy southern Indians. Subjects and methods: Feces were collected from 25 children and 25 adults from a village and from 25 children living in a town in southern India. Four cow dung samples were also collected from the village. DNA was extracted and real-time PCR was carried out using primers targeted at 16S rDNA sequences peculiar to B. fibrisolvens. Amplicons were subjected to temporal temperature gradient electrophoresis (TTGE) and DNA sequencing. Phylogenetic analysis was done. Results: B. fibrisolvens rDNA was detected in feces of 13 adults (52%) and 15 children (60%) from the village, but not in urban children. In TTGE, amplicons from children and from cattle migrated as a single band, with only one sample showing a second band. Sequencing revealed 12 novel sequences (accessed in GenBank, 8 from children, 4 from dung) closely similar to the ATCC strain of B. fibrisolvens. Conclusions: B. fibrisolvens, a microorganism found in cattle, colonizes the human gastrointestinal tract in rural southern India.

Editors' Introduction: A Line in the Sand

Editors' IntroductionA Line in the Sand James Taylor Carson, Robbie Ethridge, and Greg O'Brien We are worried. We have decided to take our stand, to draw a line in the sand. We are worried about our poverty of memory and the consequences of remembering one part of our past to the exclusion of all the rest. Central themes in Southern history and Southern studies abound. To U. B. Phillips it was slavery. To Frank Owsley it was sectionalism and agrarianism. Grady McWhinney drew our attention to the Celtic survivals while Walter Johnson nominated the interstate slave trade. Other themes predominate after the Civil War—continuity versus change, the Prussian Road, progressivism, and civil rights, to cite a few examples. Each of these themes and most of the others, in practice, captures only the barest sliver of the South's deep history and experience, for such themes tend to find their origins in the early nineteenth century. Taken together, the metanarrative that arises from these themes only leaves us with an Old South that lasted but a handful of decades after the War of 1812, a New South that is still chugging along, and a deep impression that Southern social relations were singly derived from and are still predicated on the binary racial construct of black and white. Yet, human beings have inhabited what we know as the South for as much as fifteen thousand years. Furthermore, the history of these fifteen thousand years has been marked by the rise and fall of a number of different societies as well as the immigration and emigration into and out of the region of various peoples of Native American, European, African, Near Eastern, Asian, and Latino descent, among others. In the past decade or so, we have witnessed and ourselves contributed to a fluorescence of scholarly work about the Native peoples of the American South. We have also been seriously disappointed since most of [End Page ix] these works remain outside of, or only marginal to, the conventional cannons of mainstream Southern history, Southern literature, Southern art, and Southern studies.1 So, in July 2005 we spent a few days with a chalkboard at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in the Barnard Observatory on the campus of the University of Mississippi to plot an evangelical enterprise. The message was simple—that in order to write a comprehensive history of the American South, one must consider the Indian experience, that Indians mattered in the course of Southern history, and that scholars exclude them from the region's major narratives at their peril. The central question of this journal is, what was and is the full social history of the South? We understand that to answer this question requires us to open the field of inquiry beyond the black/white dichotomy and beyond the Civil War and modern eras, and we think one way to do this is to include the Indian experiences in our stories of the South. In fact, we understand every general topic of importance to scholars of the South—race, slavery, gender, culture, economics, politics, international relations, even the Civil War—to have an Indian component, with Indians sometimes being the determinative force in shaping Southern trends at particular times. We thus inaugurate this new academic journal in order to enable and to facilitate the incorporation of scholarly work being done on the Southern Indians into the broader scholarship on the American South and the United States in general. We propose that including Indians into the story of the American South will help move us toward our larger goal of constructing a more comprehensive history of the South and the Southern experience because doing so challenges several foundational precepts about the South and expands our understandings of what the South is and was. For one, considering the Native experience in the South necessarily questions and complicates the binary black/white racial construct because Indians were neither "black" nor "white." And although Native South is primarily dedicated to a full accounting of the Indian presence in the South, we understand that to do so requires examining the relationships and connections between Southern Indians and other people as...

Martial Races: the Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (review)

Reviewed by: Martial Races: the Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 Keith Surridge (bio) Heather Streets , Martial Races: the Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), xi + 241 pages, hardback, £50 (ISBN 0 7190 6962 9). It is well known that within the British Empire there were peoples who, because of their supposed military traditions and cultures, regularly supplied recruits to the British army. Better known as 'martial races', these groups, in particular the Sikhs of Punjab and the Gurkhas from Nepal, provided the empire with its elite soldiers. Until now, littlework has been done to explain why the British regarded these men as especially martial. However, Heather Streets has finally carried out this necessary investigation and, in a stimulating, cogently argued and well-written book, has laid bare British notions of what constituted a martial race and its importance to Britain's imperial standing. Importantly, Streets explains that military efficiency was not the sole reason forthis policy: the need for martial races within the army was necessary to offset fears regarding masculine and racial degeneration within both imperial and British society and culture. [End Page 146] Although the book focuses primarily on Britain's Indian forces, and essentially on the Sikhs and Gurkhas, it also examines the role played by the Scottish Highlanders. Highland regiments were often linked to the Sikhs and Gurkhas, especially after the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58. Together, these troops were considered the best examples of manhood Britain and India had to offer. These were the shock troops of empire, the go anywhere, do anything men who kept the 'watch and ward' on the imperial frontiers, particularly the North-West Frontier of the Indian Empire. This association of the Highlanders with the Sikhs and Gurkhas is well-known, but their links to martial race ideology has not been studied. Thus, Streets attempts to show, and I think successfully, 'that the historically specific context in which martial race ideology became dominant was neither a "metropolitan" nor an "imperial" matter, but one that transcended both' (3). At the time of the Indian Mutiny, the Highlanders already stood out as much for their military capabilities as for the distinctive uniforms, and already had a reputation as elite troops, especially since the Crimean War (1854-56). When Highlanders and Sikhs were successfully paired they became the object of fervent admiration. The Gurkhas too had played their part during the Mutiny, their loyalty evident. In response to the massacres of British women and children by the mutineers, the enormous press coverage, with many reports provided by army officers, stressed the bravery and loyalty of the Sikhs and Gurkhas, as well as the martial skills of the Highlanders. Following the Mutiny it was decided that the Indian forces, which until the early twentieth century were divided into three armies, those of Bengal, Bombay and Madras, should never again be recruited mainly from one group. Beforehand, for the larger and more active Bengal army, the British had relied mainly on high caste Brahmins and Muslim soldiers from Oudh (Awadh), who had been based in their own regiments. It was then decided that recruiting policy should be altered, and that regiments should be of mixed castes and religions, the most obvious manifestation of the principle of divide and rule. However, these recommendations were subsequently ignored. By 1887, alongside the Gurkhas, most recruits for the Bengal Army came from the Punjab, which had remained loyal during the Mutiny and where the Sikhs dominated, although Punjabi Muslims were also prized as recruits. Indeed, by 1914, 75% of the Indian army comprised those alleged martial races. Moreover, with the growth of race ideology British recruiters were concerned they should have the right sort of troops to fight a Russian invasion of India through Afghanistan, which was expected at any time and remained the focus of British fears until 1907. Thus northern, [End Page 147] lighter skinned Indians, believed to have originated from ancient 'Aryan' conquerors, were considered far superior troops to the darker skinned southern Indians who comprised the Madras and Bombay armies. The irony here was that the latter forces had remained loyal...

The Expanding Burden of Air Pollution on Health: The Case of Sickle Cell Disease

TAA3-O-08 Introduction: The effects of air pollution in children have been explored using, predominantly, respiratory diseases outcomes, and nothing has been done to evaluate cardiac and/or vascular air pollution effects. Sickle cell disease is a chronic hematologic disease highly prevalent in countries with high percentages of sub-Saharan Africans and southern Indians decedents. This study was developed to assess the impact of air pollutants on sickle cell morbidity in children and adolescents. Methods: we examined the associations between daily air pollutants concentrations (PM10, SO2, NO2, CO, and O3) and sickle cell (ICD10th revision: D57) emergency room visits, from February 2001 to April 2004. We applied a case-crossover analysis with referent exposure days chosen using the time-stratified approach such that exposures on the case day were compared with exposures on days of the same year, month, and with the same value of temperature as the case day, controlling for day of the week. Season, weather, and slowly varying covariates were controlled for by matching. Effects estimates were also stratified by the 2 main causes of sickle cell emergency room visits, pain, and respiratory infections. Results: Interquartile range increases of the 3-day moving averages of PM10 (25.9 μg/m3), NO2 (64.8 μg/m3), SO2 (8.1 μg/m3), CO (1.2 ppm), and O3 (57.2 μg/m3) were associated with increases of 19.2% (95% CI, 11.2–27.8), 15.6% (95% CI, 6.3–25.8), 14.5% (95% CI, 6.6–23.0), 15.1% (95% CI, 7.7–23.1), and 10.0% (95% CI, 1.3–18.6) in total sickle cell emergency room visits, respectively. When the analyses were stratified by pain, the main clinical manifestation of vase-occlusion process, increases in visits of sickle cell patients with pain (23.1%; 95% CI, 11.0–36.5) due to an interquartile range increase of the 3-day moving averages of PM10 were 43% higher than in sickle cell patients without pain. Similar results were found when matching by day of the week or on every third day. Conclusions: This study found that the effects of air pollutants on children's health are not limited to respiratory diseases. Also, among sickle cell patients, the main manifestation of adverse effect was associated with inflammatory process of vases, reproducing results already observed among healthy and nonhealthy adults and elderly people. Finally, this study showed that the burden of air pollution on health has not been definitively estimated and other outcomes deserve further investigation.