With Professional Indian, Michael Leroy Oberg offers an enjoyable monograph about a detestable man. Eleazer Williams—a Mohawk descended from “unredeemed captive” Eunice Williams but claiming to be the lost Dauphin—makes for a compelling case study of a man who peddled lies for a living. Oberg’s thorough research and engaging style are a model for using biography to tell a grander story, one that sheds light on American Indians’ myriad experiences in the early United States.
Professional Indian opens with Williams on a train in 1851. Williams there meets his eventual biographer, Reverend John Holloway Hanson, and entrances him with an air of mystery and nobility, as well as with talk of links with the French royal line and his life story more generally. Williams received schooling in Massachusetts and served the United States in some capacity during the War of 1812. He later performed missionary work among the Oneidas...
