Parins Publishes Cherokee Biography

Sequoyah Research Center
News Release
April 20, 2006
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501-371-7585

Parins Publishes Cherokee Biography

James W. Parins, Associate Director of the Sequoyah Research Center, is the author of Elias Cornelius Boudinot: A Life on the Border, recently released by the University of Nebraska Press.

The book chronicles the often tumultuous life of the son of Elias and Harriet Gold Boudinot. The elder Boudinot is known in history as the first editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first tribal newspaper published in America; signer of the infamous New Echota Treaty of 1835 that precipitated the Cherokee Trail of Tears; and the victim of a Cherokee execution squad sent out in retaliation against Treaty Party members.

The circumstances of his father’s life and controversial death and the common resentment against Treaty Party members among the Cherokee people often placed the younger Boudinot at odds with the policies of the Cherokee Nation. Parins tells a compelling story of the life of this Cherokee newspaper editor, Civil War soldier, lawyer, and entrepreneur.

An internationally known scholar, Parins is recognized for his work in Cherokee biography. Elias Cornelius Boudinot appears as a title in the Indian Lives Series of books by the University of Nebraska Press. In 1991, Parins published John Rollin Ridge: His Life and Times in the same series. His latest work distinguishes him as the only biographer who has published two titles as Indian Lives.