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Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800. By H. Glenn Penny. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. xvii, 372. Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)
Deeply researched and highly original, H. Glenn Penny's Kindred by Choice wades into a long-running discussion of the German fascination with Native Americans, offering fresh insights into German historiography while raising awareness among American readers who may not know about this deep affinity. Penny combines a chronological account of the various real and imagined encounters between Native American tribes and German immigrants, writers, and activists with a treatment of the persistent themes that informed the relationship across the last two centuries. What emerges is an account of a love affair for all things Indian that began with the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, carried through the novels of Friedrich Gerstäcker (several of which have Arkansas settings) and Karl May, and culminated with spectacular Wild West shows and popular hobbyist clubs in Germany. Even today, Penny writes, Germany is home to over two hundred organizations, with as many as 100,000 members, dedicated...