Reviewed by:

• A Kingdom of Water: Adaptation and Survival in the Houma Nation by J. Daniel d'Oney
• Elizabeth Ellis

A Kingdom of Water: Adaptation and Survival in the Houma Nation is an accessible and engaging account of more than three centuries of Houma adaptation and resilience. This work also explicitly engages with the United Houma Nation's ongoing fight for federal recognition and is informed by the author's conversations with Houma community members. J. Daniel d'Oney's blending of contemporary political context and expansive historical research is sure to be of interest to scholars of Louisiana history and contemporary Indian policy.

In the late seventeenth century, the Lower Mississippi Valley was home to many small Indigenous polities. The Houmas, who were one of these small Native nations, shaped the development of the region during the colonial era, and their ingenuity and innovation have enabled them to retain lands and [End Page 322] communities in the Gulf South through the present day. A Kingdom of Water helps explain how Houmas achieved this monumental feat.

D'Oney's early chapters trace the development of Houma and French partnerships during the eighteenth century. The author's work builds on Daniel Usner's arguments about the importance of small Native nations for the Louisiana colony, and d'Oney emphasizes the power that Houmas exercised during this era. The second chapter critically appraises the consequences of the relationships between the Houmas and the French settlers. The Houmas' entanglement with them brought violence and epidemics to the nation, even as their alliances could be politically and economically advantageous. Throughout these first chapters, d'Oney also opens a conversation about the challenges of telling Houma history with sparse documentary records and through accounts written by colonists who did not understand Houma politics or society. This thread carries through the whole of the monograph, and the author's focus on how outsiders' erroneous and misleading reports have caused problems for generations of Houmas is one of the strongest interventions of the book and a critical part of d'Oney's ultimate argument about how misinformation has stymied the nation's fight for federal recognition.

If Houmas were able to achieve influence and economic advantage through their partnerships with the French during the first half of the eighteenth century, after 1750 the onslaught of settlers into their homelands led to a steady decline in Houma power. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the wave of land losses around the turn of the nineteenth century as Louisiana and the U.S. federal government refused to recognize the Houmas as a sovereign Indian nation with territorial rights to their homelands. D'Oney highlights the way Houmas continued to integrate outsiders into their community as a means of survival during this era, but sometimes his language and analysis falter as he describes the collision of Indigenous modes of kinship with settler racial ideologies. The fifth chapter expands on the consequences of this erasure of the Houmas' ethnic and racial identities as Indians, and their political rights as a nation, in the mid-twentieth century. The final chapter, which focuses on the nation's fight for recognition, provides a powerful demonstration of how a combination of local business interests, federal policies, and misrepresented Houma history was mobilized to prevent Houmas from securing federal acknowledgment.

D'Oney's analysis of the harm that Jim Crow–era racial ideologies caused Houmas resonates with Malinda Maynor Lowery's work on North Carolina and Brian Klopotek's work on Louisiana, and this book contributes to the growing body of scholarship on unremoved southern Native nations. Readers may wish that rather than highlighting conflicts between the United Houma Nation and other unrecognized Louisiana tribal nations, d'Oney had expanded his critique of recognition to examine how the federal process hurts all of these nations, but this critique is perhaps beyond the scope of the work. Regardless, d'Oney has provided a fresh and urgently needed narrative of Houma survivance...

审核人：

• 水的王国：侯马国家的适应与生存作者： J。Daniel d'Oney
• 伊丽莎白·埃利斯（Elizabeth Ellis）

水的王国：侯马国家的适应与生存是一个超过三个世纪的侯马适应与复原力的可访问且引人入胜的描述。这项工作还明确参与了胡马民族联盟为争取联邦认可而进行的持续斗争，并得益于作者与胡马社区成员的对话。路易斯·史密斯（J. Daniel d'Oney）将当代政治背景与广泛的历史研究相结合的方式必将引起路易斯安那历史学家和当代印度政策的关注。

在十七世纪末，下密西西比河谷曾是许多小型原住民的家园。侯马人是这些小的原住民国家之一，在殖民时代塑造了该地区的发展，而他们的独创性和创新能力使他们得以在今天的南部海湾保留土地和[End Page 322]社区。水王国有助于解释侯马如何取得这一巨大成就。

D'Oney的早期章节追溯了18世纪Houma和法国伙伴关系的发展。作者的工作是建立在丹尼尔·乌斯纳（Daniel Usner）关于小型土著民族对路易斯安那殖民地的重要性的论点的基础上的，而d'Oney则强调了霍马斯在这个时代所行使的权力。第二章批评性地评估了侯马人与法国定居者之间关系的后果。侯马人与他们的纠缠给该国带来了暴力和流行病，尽管他们的同盟在政治和经济上可能具有优势。在前几章中，d'Oney还通过稀疏的文献记录和不了解侯马政治或社会的殖民者撰写的演讲，开始了关于讲述侯马历史的挑战的对话。

如果侯马人能够通过与法国的伙伴关系在18世纪上半叶获得影响和经济优势，那么1750年后定居者对他们家园的猛烈袭击导致侯马力量的稳步下降。第3章和第4章探讨了19世纪初左右的土地流失浪潮，路易斯安那州和美国联邦政府拒绝承认侯马人是拥有其家园领土权利的主权印度国家。D'Oney强调了Houmas在这个时代继续作为生存手段将外来者融入社区的方式，但是有时他的语言和分析步履蹒跚，因为他描述了土著人的亲属关系与定居者的种族意识形态的冲突。第五章扩大了对胡马人的这种消灭的后果。在20世纪中叶，他们具有印第安人的种族和种族身份，以及作为一个民族的政治权利。最后一章着重于国家争取承认的斗争，这是有力的证明，说明了如何动员地方商业利益，联邦政策和虚假陈述的胡马历史相结合，以防止胡马人获得联邦政府的承认。

达尼对吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）时代的种族意识形态造成的胡马族造成的危害的分析与马林达·梅诺·洛纳（Malinda Maynor Lowery）在北卡罗来纳州的著作以及布莱恩·克洛波特泰克（Brian Klopotek）在路易斯安那州的著作产生共鸣，而这本书为在未搬迁的南部土著民族上的学术日益发展做出了贡献。读者可能希望d'Oney不再强调霍马民族联盟与其他未被认可的路易斯安那部落国家之间的冲突，而是扩大了对承认的批评，以研究联邦程序如何伤害所有这些国家，但这种批评也许超出了美国的范围。工作。无论如何，d'Oney提供了关于Houma生存的全新且迫切需要的叙述...