Ethnohistory current issue

Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars

Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., Liedgren, L. — 2008-02-26

Prior to Christianization, initiated by the Swedish Crown and Church during the seventeenth century, the religion of the native Sami people of northern Scandinavia included animistic beliefs centered on animal ceremonialism. The Sami religion evolved in the framework of hunter-gatherer subsistence, and landscapes were laden with religious significance. The authors of this essay seek to highlight the significance of sacrificial sites as ethnic and religious demarcations in times of conflict between Swedish society and the Sami. We focus especially on sacrificial wooden objects as representations of religious space, discussing three sacrificial sites from different periods and representing a geographical gradient. We conclude that wooden sacrificial sites were still frequent and prominent features of the Sami landscape during the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century in northern Sweden. However, in the following century, the indigenous religion was forced into secrecy. Today, elements of indigenous religious space, as indicated by place names and oral traditions, reflect but fragments of a landscape that was once a coherent whole.

Women "Living across the Line": Intermarriage on the Canadian Prairies and in Southern New Zealand, 1870-1900

Wanhalla, A. — 2008-02-26

During the late nineteenth century reserve lines and boundaries were sharply drawn in Canada and New Zealand, and, as a consequence, the choice to marry "out" had very real material implications for aboriginal women. This article examines the "reserve experience" of indigenous women in Canada and New Zealand, focusing on the native reserve as a significant site of interracial contact. Native reserves were designed to be distinct settlements, but intermarriage undermined the pretense of separate living spaces that reserves were designed to generate. Intermarriage, and the spatial relocation that followed, are significant components of the reserve experience for indigenous women over the period 1870 to 1900. Understanding of the reserve experience requires reorientation to account for spatial movement and migration, viewing the reserve not just as a bounded space, but also as a site where border crossings and resistances took place and where interracial relationships flourished.

The Importance of Initiatory Ordeals: Kinship and Politics in an Inca Narrative

Yaya, I. — 2008-02-26

Among all the Inca sovereigns whose memory had been preserved by the Spanish chroniclers, Yahuar Huacac holds a unique position. He is famed for having shed tears of blood as a child when a foreign lord kidnapped and maltreated him. Surprisingly, his sufferings ended with matrimonial alliances binding the Inca and the main actors of this drama, all important figures of three foreign chiefdoms. Through both a historical and an anthropological approach, this article analyzes the narrative's structure of interwoven ritual events and kinship patterns. It examines how the stages of the heir's journey over many territories forged a distinctive relationship between the Inca elite and the provincial lords, enlightening the meaning of the final unions.

"A Liberal and Paternal Spirit": Indian Agents and Native Fisheries in Canada

Schreiber, D. — 2008-02-26

In the 1890s native fisheries stood in the way of expanding industrial and sport fisheries in Canada. Federal regulations denied a commercial component to native fisheries, restricted harvesting to designated open seasons, and outlawed the technologically specialized and place-based fisheries on which native communities had depended for millennia. Although fisheries officers enforced these rules, Indian agents—the field workers of the Department of Indian Affairs—were the ones who oversaw day-to-day life in native villages, including the fisheries. This article examines the responses of Indian agents across Canada to an Indian Affairs circular sent in 1897, requesting information about native fisheries. The Indian agents' letters of reply suggest that it was the ordinary confrontations and administrative decisions over fishing spaces, gear, closed seasons, and licenses, rather than the official policies of the Department of Indian Affairs, that worked to redefine native fishing in accordance with settler interests. By extending so-called privileges to native fishers, Indian agents worked to conserve the resource for a settler society and assimilate native fishers into state management practices.

The Politics of Intracommunity Land Conflict in the Late Colonial Andes

Serulnikov, S. — 2008-02-26

The article explores the causes, ideological underpinnings, and political repercussions of land battles among the Pocoata, an ethnic group in the southern Andes, during the eighteenth century. These disputes afford us a glimpse into the competing native concepts of land tenure rights; the array of means, legal and extralegal, Andean and Spanish, of solving conflicts between families and ayllus; and the key role of the ethnic chiefs in the struggles over community boundaries and the distribution of plots among community members. The essay argues that, by underscoring the inability of both native and colonial rulers to handle mounting demographic pressures, the intense process of intraethnic strife contributed to the disruption of rural authority.

"Colonial Incas, A-Z"

Lane, K. — 2008-02-26

The First New Chronicle and Good Government

2008-02-26

Taking Charge: Native American Self-Determination and Federal Indian Policy, 1975-1993

2008-02-26

Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776

Nichols, D. A. — 2008-02-26

Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America

Dowd, G. E. — 2008-02-26

Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade

Vibert, E. — 2008-02-26

The Life and Traditions of the Red Man

Girouard, M. — 2008-02-26

The Penobscot Dance of Resistance: Tradition in the History of a People

Hauptman, L. M. — 2008-02-26

Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West

Anderson, G. C. — 2008-02-26

Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes

Lewis, D. R. — 2008-02-26

A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814

Ethridge, R. — 2008-02-26