Origins of North American Dropout Culture

Lost history viewed through cracks in the cartographies of control, including "tri-racial isolate" communities, buccaneers, "white Indians", black Islamic movements, the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, the Métis nation, scandalous eugenics theories, rural communes, and many other aspects of North American autonomous cultures.

If you're at all interested in American history, this study of "Dropout Culture" is an amazing read. I had NO idea that there was such a vivid and thriving counterculture back 100 or 200 years or more: Americans who walked away from all the norms and mores of early American capitalism and sought a different reality. This sometimes reads like a William S Burroughs fantasy of anarchist utopia-- "Cities of the Red Night" or "The Western Lands" or "The Place of Dead Roads"-- where "pirates" make their own compacts and live without laws and governments.
I loved this odd and compelling look at an alternate past I had never imagined existed. (from a review by Chris Ward)

A festschrift honoring the late historian Hugo Prosper Leaming Bey of the Moorish Science Temple.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface, Ron Sakolsky

Dedication, Jim Koehnline

1. Homage To Hugo Prosper Leaming-Bey

1 “lines for the tribe of Ben Ishmael" John Knoepfle

2 “The Ben Ishmael Tribe: Fugitive Nation of the Old Northwest" Hugo Prosper Leaming

3 “Lost Ancestors: An Introduction to Pooch Van Dunk" Peter Lamborn Wilson

4 “Indian Heritage" Pooch Van Dunk

5 “Owning Difference" Gail Tremblay

1. Discovering Our Ancestors: The Hidden History Of North America

6 “Wounded Knee" Meridel LeSueur

7 “Legend of the Great Dismal Maroons" James Koehnline

8 “Caliban's Masque: Spiritual Anarchy and the Wild Man in Colonial America" Peter Lamborn Wilson

9 “Cornelius Plockhoy and the Beginnings of the American Communal Tradition" Timothy Miller

10 “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century" Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh

11 “'Anarchy' in the American Revolution" David Porter

12 “Henry Tufts, Land Pirate" Neal Keating

13 “Keep Your Powder Dry: Two Insurrections in Post-Revolutionary America" Paul Z. Simons

14 “Transform and Rebel: The Calico Indians and the Anti-Rent War" Thom Metzger

15 “The Iroquois Influence on Women's Rights" Sally Roesch Wagner

16 “Gone to Prophetstown: Rumor and History in the Story of Pan-Indian Resistance" Rachel Buff

17 “The African-Seminole Indians" Doug Sivad

18 “A New Nation in Their Hearts: The Historical Evolution of the Metis People" Richard Kees

19 “Return From Without: Louis Riel and Liminal Space" Darren S. Wershler-Henry

20 “Beneath the Tundra, the Permafrost (A Few thoughts on Barrenness)" Jordan Zinovich

1. Imagining Futures Past

21 “Trickster" Joy Harjo

22 “1992 (Part 1)" Guillermo Gomez-Pena

23 “Manifest Manners: The Long Gaze of Christopher Columbus" Gerald Vizenor

24 “The Dream of Injun Joe: A Page from the Alcatraz Seminars" Jack Forbes

25 “The Downfall of Disease-Giver" Carlos Cortez

Notes on Contributors