Ethnohistory recent issues

Climatic Signatures in Yucatecan Wills and Death Records

Bricker, V. R., Hill, R. E. — 2009-04-06

Dense collections of eighteenth-century wills and death registers from Tekanto and Ixil, two towns in northern Yucatan, represent hitherto unexplored sources for documenting the relationship between natural disasters and mortality patterns among the Yucatecan Maya during colonial times. They provide detailed, sometimes daily, records of the impact of famines caused by multiyear droughts, hurricanes, and plagues of locusts on the agrarian population of the peninsula, which supplement the brief, impressionistic accounts of historians.

"They Had a Chance to Talk to One Another...": The Role of Incidence in Native American Code Talking

Meadows, W. C. — 2009-04-06

While formally recruited groups of Native American code talkers used in World War II, such as the Navajo, Comanche, and later the Meskwaki and Hopi, are well known, this article focuses on the incidental use of Native Americans in U.S. Armed Forces communications in both world wars. This essay documents several instances in which the presence of Native American soldiers within the same or nearby units who spoke a common native language was discovered by accident, either by their commanding officers or by the members themselves, and their subsequent use in sending military communications in their respective tribal languages. These data add to the breadth of our knowledge of Native American code talking and the essay explores the context for the development of such opportunities, which, although they involved fewer men and perhaps less frequency of use, involved more tribes than formally developed code-talking programs.

The Genesis of African and Indian Cooperation in Colonial North America: An Interview with Helen Hornbeck Tanner

Miller, I. — 2009-04-06

Dr. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, a senior research fellow at the Newberry Library, studied American Indian and colonial American history for over six decades. In this interview she discusses little-known themes including African and Indian coexistence and cooperation, beginning in 1619 in the Chesapeake Bay region, and spanning Louisiana, Minnesota, New York, Northern Mexico, Ohio, Spanish Florida, and Texas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including an Underground Railroad from Michigan into Canada. Also discussed are a system of inter-Indian diplomacy that stretched across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and the long history of attempts by the U.S. government to assimilate American Indians.

The Quinto Suyo: New African Diaspora History from Peru

Garofalo, L. J. — 2009-04-06

Chevato: The Story of the Apache Warrior Who Captured Herman Lehman; Victorio: Apache Warrior and Chief

Smith, V. — 2009-04-06

The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Politics of Postcolonial U.S.-Indigenous Relations

Shepherd, J. P. — 2009-04-06

Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood

Gills, B. J. — 2009-04-06

Architect of Justice: Felix S. Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism

Nesper, L. — 2009-04-06

Buffalo Inc.: American Indians and Economic Development

Rosenthal, N. G. — 2009-04-06

Our Life among the Iroquois Indians

Carter, W. — 2009-04-06

Restoring the Chain of Friendship: British Policy and the Indians of the Great Lakes, 1783-1815

Warren, S. — 2009-04-06

Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians

Silverman, D. J. — 2009-04-06

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

Barry, M. — 2009-04-06

Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century

Tate, M. L. — 2009-04-06

Salvation through Slavery: Chiricahua Apaches and Priests on the Spanish Colonial Frontier

Rivaya-Martinez, J. — 2009-04-06

Kiowa Humanity and the Invasion of the State

Ellis, C. — 2009-04-06

Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia

Singleton, T. A. — 2009-04-06

The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke's Forgotten Indians

Stremlau, R. — 2009-04-06

Bad Fruits of the Civilized Tree: Alcohol and the Sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation

Denson, A. — 2009-04-06

Separate Peoples, One Land: The Minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee Frontier

Saunt, C. — 2009-04-06

Pre-removal Choctaw History: Exploring New Paths

Cheek, G. C. — 2009-04-06

Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, 1521-1821

Suarez, A. C. — 2009-04-06

The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics

Evans, S. T. — 2009-04-06

Politics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759-1821

Offutt, L. S. — 2009-04-06

Feeding Chilapa: The Birth, Life, and Death of a Mexican Region

McDonald, J. H. — 2009-04-06

Gender, Indian, Nation: The Contradictions of Making Ecuador, 1830-1925

Kellogg, S. — 2009-04-06

The Quito Manuscript: An Inca History Preserved by Fernando Montesinos

Whigham, T. — 2009-04-06

Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco

Mann, K. D. — 2009-04-06

People of the Volcano: Andean Counterpoint in the Colca Valley of Peru

Langer, E. D. — 2009-04-06

Unexpected Cowboy, Unexpected Indian: The Case of Will Rogers

Ware, A. M. — 2009-02-13

This brief examination of the early-twentieth-century United States expands academic interpretations of ethnic performance in the popular realm. The case of Will Rogers—Cherokee entertainer, writer, and political pundit—is particularly useful in understanding the representational conflicts, then and now, between cowboys and American Indians in the popular realm. Rogers himself was unexpected; he was both a cowboy and an Indian, a conflation that baffled and titillated his urban fan base. Throughout his early career, from approximately 1903 to 1919, Rogers and his audience grappled with these seemingly conflicting roles of cowboy and Indian, characters steeped in a seeming ethnic conflict yet embodied simultaneously by Rogers. The celebrity's strong ties to Cherokee ranching culture influenced the way he presented himself, yet such performances confounded his fans. In the end, Rogers's self-representation as a cowboy limited the public's recognition of him as an Indian.

Clear-Cutting and Colonialism: The Ethnopolitical Dynamics of Indigenous Environmental Activism in Northwestern Ontario

Willow, A. J. — 2009-02-13

Since December 2002 members of Grassy Narrows First Nation have maintained a blockade to slow the pace of clear-cut logging in their traditional territory. This article situates contemporary anti-clear-cutting activism at Grassy Narrows in its ethnohistorical and ethnopolitical context. It considers the blockade not as a manifestation of inherent indigenous environmentality but as a complex phenomenon predicated on Anishinaabe people's desires for self-determination, recognition of rights, and the power to decide what takes place on land they perceive as theirs. More broadly, it suggests that acknowledging indigenous environmental activism as a fundamentally political project challenges stereotypical images of ecological nobility and, concurrently, calls into question mainstream conceptions of a just modern society that has long since done away with colonialism.

Reinventing Tribal Mechanisms of Governance: The Emergence of Maori Runanga and Komiti in New Zealand before 1900

O'Malley, V. — 2009-02-13

Nineteenth-century Maori society responded to colonization in creative, flexible, and dynamic ways. This is seen clearly in the way in which mechanisms of tribal self-government were reinvented, mixing indigenous with exotic influences to establish new and much stronger bodies better suited to cope with the challenges confronting Maori in the new environment. Increasing Maori anxiety to prevent uncontrolled land alienation and the complete subservience to European society that many Maori feared saw runanga based on older tribal assemblies radically over-hauled to ensure ongoing communal control, while komiti, at first based on European models but increasingly indigenized over time, also became important institutions of governance. Occasional Crown attempts to co-opt such institutions for its own ends were largely unsuccessful. Runanga and komiti were instead, although ultimately unable to stem the tide of land alienation, of vital importance in ensuring the survival of the Maori as a distinct people.

Marriage Alliances among Colonial Mixtec Elites: The Villagomez Caciques of Acatlan-Petlalcingo

Chance, J. K. — 2009-02-13

Marriage alliances among governing families were an important instrument of political integration in Postclassic Mesoamerica, especially in Mixteca. Alliances among Mixtec nobles persisted during the colonial period, although after the sixteenth century, the caciques lost much of their political power to the gobernadores and indigenous town councils. This article investigates the significance of alliances among Mixtec caciques through the marriages of eight generations of the Villagómez family of Acatlan and Petlalcingo, from 1669 until the mid-nineteenth century. It argues that only the first of these marriages was politically strategic. Marriages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sought, instead, to consolidate the class position of the participants and to gain access to capital to further their economic interests.

Central Mexican Indigenous Coats of Arms and the Conquest of Mesoamerica

de la Paz, M. C. — 2009-02-13

In this essay, I will discuss certain coats of arms that the Spanish Crown granted to some of the major central Mexican towns and their rulers for taking part in the conquests of Mexico; these towns and peoples have always been considered as conquered rather than conquerors. I will consider the nature of this participation as well as the historical context in which the requests for the coats of arms were made. My analysis will show an indigenous society that coexisted with its Spanish counterpart, and in order to strengthen its identity in new and confusing times, the indigenous society accepted Spanish cultural elements, creating what we now know as the colonial society of New Spain. The indigenous coats of arms are an excellent example of how native iconographic elements were gradually incorporated into the otherwise strongly European medium, producing a new format.

Space, Time, and Story Tracks: Contemporary Practices of Topographic Memory in the Palikur Territory of Arukwa, Amapa, Brazil

Green, L. J. F., Green, D. R. — 2009-02-13

Using data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Palikur lands known as Arukwa along the Rio Urucauá in the Área Indígena do Uaçá, in Amapá, Brazil, we seek to expand current understandings of Arawakan oral forms of mapping that involve the listing of place-names. This article argues that the practice demonstrates a form of cartographic imagination that is based on a different theorization of the relationship between space and time. Contrasting the formal technology of cartography with the Palikur performative representations of "spatiotemporality," this article argues that the former approach is inadequate to the task of understanding the practice of listing place-names insofar as it separates body, temporality, and sky from place. Moreover, the spatiotemporal approach described indexes not one but multiple temporalities, including the autobiographical, ecological, astronomical, genealogical, and historical. Drawing on the notion of "topokinetic memory" described by neuroscientist Alain Berthoz (2000) and on ethnographic material collected during a journey on the Rio Urucauá, this analysis distinguishes between story maps as the practice of representational memory of space (such as the listing of landmarks on routes) and "story tracks" as performances of orientation that accompany the telling of stories about journeys, or along them. Proposing that both modes of memory are important in everyday life, we argue that the story track constitutes a practice of topographic memory that relies on the perspective of earth, sky, and underworld afforded by the moving, perceiving, conscious, and responsive person. Understood in this way, the listing of place-names is a form of cartographic imagination that incorporates history, geography, astronomy, ethics, and the self.

Rereading Conquest: Recent Works on the Conquests of Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia

Offutt, L. S. — 2009-02-13

Before Albany: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region, 1600-1664; The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley

Jacobs, J. — 2009-02-13

White Enough to Be American? Race Mixing, Indigenous People, and the Boundaries of State and Nation

Miles, T. — 2009-02-13

North American Indians in the Great War

Neiberg, M. S. — 2009-02-13

Native Women's History in Eastern North America before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing

Barr, J. — 2009-02-13

The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert

Horton, C. — 2009-02-13

Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West

La Vere, D. — 2009-02-13

Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast

Kan, S. — 2009-02-13

Native Hubs: Culture, Community, and Belonging in Silicon Valley and Beyond; Going Indian

Fields, A. — 2009-02-13

Making Indian Law: The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory

Garrison, T. A. — 2009-02-13

Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715

Bossy, D. I. — 2009-02-13

Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century

Haggard, D. — 2009-02-13

The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970

Lambert, V. — 2009-02-13

The Seminole Freedmen: A History

Micco, M. — 2009-02-13

Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World; The Postclassic to Spanish-Era Transition in Mesoamerica: Archaeological Perspectives

Rugeley, T. — 2009-02-13

Blacks, Indians, and Spaniards in the Eastern Andes: Reclaiming the Forgotten in Colonial Mizque, 1550-1782

Andrien, K. J. — 2009-02-13

Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Seventeenth-Century Lima

Lipsett-Rivera, S. — 2009-02-13

Constructing the Maya

Eiss, P. K. — 2008-10-08

Being Like a State: A Historical Anthropology of Translocal Representation (in Both Senses of the Term)

Watanabe, J. M. — 2008-10-08

This commentary addresses issues of representation in its delegative and political as well as sign-making senses intrinsic to bottom-up histories of state power and the meanings such power precipitates. Brokers as representatives in a political sense ideally reveal the dynamics, but also limits, of state power because, as Eric Wolf noted long ago, brokers by definition never work simply to resolve the contending interests they mediate but must also perpetuate them if they want to retain their own strategic positions. At the same time, in ethnically stratified societies such as Mexico and Guatemala, brokers also often come to represent in a semiotic sense the very oppositions they seek to negotiate through their literal embodiment of the affinities and antipathies that their relations with those above and those below help to institutionalize. Teasing out these political dynamics and ethnic images requires careful attention to institutional structures and the construction of national, ethnic, and ultimately inter-individual identities, as well as to events in real (that is, document-based) historical time. Methodologically, the writing of such cultural histories of power thus entails not necessarily privileging ethnographic "structure" or historical "event," but rather developing (often ethnographically derived) conceptual models to guide inquiry into historical documents.

El Pueblo Mestizo: Modernity, Tradition, and Statecraft in Yucatan, 1870-1907

Eiss, P. K. — 2008-10-08

This article concerns the concept and rhetoric of "el pueblo" in Yucatán during the regime of Mexican president Porfirio Díaz, from the 1870s forward. In Yucatán, this era was one of radical change, bringing the transformation and expansion of the region's henequen hacienda economy, the rise of the institution of debt servitude, affecting both indigenous Yucatec Mayan and working-class mestizo populations, and the rise of encompassing political rhetorics of order, progress, and nation building among Porfirian government officials and pueblo-level landowning gentry.

El pueblo both mediated these transformations and was reshaped by them. Local gentry worked as cultural and political brokers, joining forces with state officials in remaking Yucatán as a "modern" and "civilized" state through infrastructural improvements and education aimed at transforming largely indigenous, rural pueblos into staging areas of a modern Mexico. At the same time, the gentry, many of them also of mestizo background, avidly boosted mestizo pueblo "traditions" as forms of statecraft, appropriating pueblo cultural styles as a repertoire through which state and nation might be constructed and the social hierarchies of henequen society might be legitimated. More than just a place, el pueblo became a strategy through which modernity and tradition were collaboratively produced by state officials and local elites. Such performative renderings of el pueblo became paradigmatic signifiers of both mestizo culture and regional Yucatecan identity, occupying pride of place in the cultural repertoire of rule embraced by Yucatán's regional elites from the Porfiriato forward.

Bartolome Garcia Correa and the Politics of Maya Identity in Postrevolutionary Yucatan, 1911-1933

Fallaw, B. — 2008-10-08

This political biography explores the ambiguous ethnicity of Bartolomé García Correa (1893-1978), the first person of Maya descent to govern Yucatán since the Spanish Conquest. Son of an upwardly mobile, Maya-speaking, afromestizo middle-class family, García Correa's normal education and ties to the Church set him on a path to socioeconomic success in the autumn of the Porfiriato. During the Mexican Revolution, he reinvented himself as a revolutionary politico and embraced indigenism. Using the latter, he could celebrate the Maya in the abstract while urging acculturation. Indeed, he represented himself as an authority on the Maya and as a model outcome of indigenista assimilation. Part revolutionary cacique (or boss), part ethnic broker, he used his mastery of Yucatec Maya and populist style to parry demands from below and to accommodate the new political and old economic elites. Still, he resisted self-identifying as Maya, which would have compromised his hard-won mestizo status. His rise culminated in the governorship in 1930. White enemies' attacks on García Correa's Maya background helped undo his administration, although his influence over postrevolutionary politics endured for decades.

"Hard Working, Orderly Little Women": Mayan Vendors and Marketplace Struggles in Early-Twentieth-Century Guatemala

Carey, D. — 2008-10-08

During the first half of the twentieth century, Guatemala was dominated by two of Latin America's most repressive regimes: first that of Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920) and then that of General Jorge Ubico (1931-44). Though the marketplace was one venue through which these dictators sought to impose their modernization programs of progress and order, criminal records abound with Mayan women disobeying market regulations and more generally disrupting the peace. Beyond putting the women's livelihoods at stake, these conflicts were also struggles over ethnic, gender, and state power. As such, marketplaces were critical both to elite efforts to mold the economy, society, and politics to their ideals and to Mayan efforts to carve out spaces of autonomy. At the same time, some Mayan women used the very institutions and laws that criminalized vendors' behavior to press for their own rights. Even though the state's structures were based on patriarchal and racist notions of authority, they offered Mayan women considerable space to contest male, ladino, and elite power.

Mexico's National Indigenist Institute and the Negotiation of Applied Anthropology in Highland Chiapas, 1951-1954

Lewis, S. E. — 2008-10-08

Based on documents housed in Mexico City and Chiapas, this essay describes how Mexico's National Indigenist Institute (INI) managed to establish its pilot Coordinating Center in highland Chiapas in 1951. Facing opposition from the state government, the state alcohol monopoly, and many Tzeltal and Tzotzil indigenous communities, the INI employed bilingual indigenous "cultural promoters" to negotiate its programs in education, road construction, and public health. As it turns out, the INI's most innovative negotiating tool was a bilingual hand-puppet troupe, the Teatro Petul, which promoted the INI's unpopular public health campaigns. By 1954, the INI and its cultural promoters had built dozens of bilingual schools and a road network in the highlands and were challenging the abuses of local non-Indians, especially those associated with the alcohol monopoly.

Paradoxically, the INI's initial success in Chiapas also contained the seeds for its eventual failure. In its bids to overcome opposition to its programs, the INI relied heavily on its indigenous brokers. Many of these men later used their relatively privileged positions to control access to government resources and secure political positions within their communities. The INI's negotiations with the state government and the alcohol monopoly taught indigenistas that it was easier to induce change on Indians than it was to challenge the overarching political and economic systems that exploited them. Mexican indigenistas crafted a development model that focused inward, on the indigenous themselves, and avoided clashes with powerful interests. This strategy allowed the INI to perpetuate itself and survive politically for five decades in Chiapas and the rest of Mexico, but it greatly limited the extent to which Mexican indigenismo could effect real change.

A Visual Political Economy of Maya Representations in Guatemala, 1931-1944

Little, W. E. — 2008-10-08

This essay discusses how Mayas, and visual images of them as discursively constructed subjects/objects, are located in dictator Jorge Ubico's economic development and modernization policies in the 1930s and 1940s. Ubico's contradictory policies of promoting Maya essentialness in contrast to the cultural and economic assimilation of Mayas informs both Guatemalan and scholarly attitudes about Mayas today. The essay recontextualizes this position by discussing a specific cultural event—the annual fairs that Ubico organized to highlight Guatemala's economic and technological potential—in relation to the photographic representation of Mayas. In the fair, backward, inefficient "Indian" Guatemala was contrasted with a modern, efficient nation. Maya "pueblos," showcasing crafts and indigenous life, were reconstructed alongside midway rides and technology exhibits. Using a political economic analysis, particular attention is given to the visual representation of Mayas during this time, in order to discuss their role in tourism within the government's modernization agenda and how this ultimately contributed to Maya and national identity constructions.

Gender and Ethnohistory in the Americas: Recent Works

Kellogg, S. — 2008-10-08

Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Williams, K. — 2008-10-08

American Indians and State Law: Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship, 1790-1880

Whaley, G. H. — 2008-10-08

White Man's Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation

Genetin-Pilawa, C. J. — 2008-10-08

Cash, Color, and Colonialism: The Politics of Tribal Acknowledgment

Obermeyer, B. — 2008-10-08

Three Centuries of Woodland Indian Art: A Collection of Essays

McMullen, A. — 2008-10-08

Dark Storm Moving West

Sleeper-Smith, S. — 2008-10-08

Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country

Rushforth, B. — 2008-10-08

Also Called Sacajawea: Chief Woman's Stolen Identity

Mann, J. W. W. — 2008-10-08

The Jamestown Project

Shuck-Hall, S. M. — 2008-10-08

Choctaw Nation: A Story of American Indian Resurgence

Osburn, K. — 2008-10-08

African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation

Hahn, S. C. — 2008-10-08

Archaeology of the Lower Muskogee Creek Indians, 1715-1836

Worth, J. E. — 2008-10-08

Maya Calendar Origins: Monuments, Mythistory, and the Materialization of Time

Stross, B. — 2008-10-08

Feather Crown: The Eighteen Feasts of the Mexica Year

Herren, A. — 2008-10-08

Ladinos with Ladinos, Indians with Indians: Land, Labor, and Regional Ethnic Conflict in the Making of Guatemala; Seeing and Being Seen: The Q'eqchi' Maya of Livingston, Guatemala, and Beyond

Carey, D. — 2008-10-08

The Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of Brazil's Eastern Indians, 1750-1830; Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic

Sommer, B. A. — 2008-10-08

Late Nahuatl Testaments from the Toluca Valley: Indigenous-Language Ethnohistory in the Mexican Independence Period

Melton-Villanueva, M., Pizzigoni, C. — 2008-07-07

Newly collected testaments from two settlements in the jurisdiction of Metepec in the Toluca Valley reveal that, although scholars believed the great tradition of mundane records in Nahuatl to have lapsed by 1800, it continued on a large scale during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the independence period so far hardly touched by examinations of indigenous social history. The larger corpus is from San Bartolomé Tlatelolco, which also happens to be represented by documents from about a century earlier in Pizzigoni's Testaments of Toluca, giving a perspective on the new materials. Surprisingly, a large majority of the testators were women. Nevertheless, we find continuity in gender roles and in structures and practices generally, as well as in specific traditions of San Bartolomé. At the same time, new aspects of naming patterns, testament and funeral conventions, land measurement, ritual kinship, and the role of lay sodalities emerge from the testaments.

From the Guanahatabey to the Archaic of Puerto Rico: The Nonevident Evidence

Ramos, R. R. — 2008-07-07

Some of the early Spanish chronicles make reference to the presence of cave dwellers inhabiting the westernmost section of Cuba as well as the Guacayarima Peninsula in southwestern Haiti. These people, who supposedly lived marginal to Taino society, were named the Guanahatabey or Ciboney culture. The different descriptions of those groups shared elements that were later adopted uncritically in the construction of the social and cultural aspects of the so-called archaic culture tradition of Puerto Rico. Although half a millennium later the tendency to assign every aceramic deposit to the Ciboney or Guanahatabey culture has been overcome, most of the notions implicit in these descriptions remain current in the generalized vision of these societies. In this work, I analyze the implications that these early accounts have had on the development of our perception of the archaic culture of Puerto Rico and contrast them against the archaeological data generated thus far, which tend to indicate a much more complex scenario than that originally proposed.

The Translation of Poverty and the Poverty of Translation in the Orinoco Delta

Rodriguez, J. L. — 2008-07-07

This essay will discuss contending language ideologies in early twentieth-century efforts at translating Warao into Spanish. It will analyze the linguistic and semiotic collision between the Warao and the emerging Venezuelan nation-state. Its main focus will be on the Catholic missionaries' production of dictionaries, grammars, and other forms of linguistic descriptions, and the Warao's own interpretation of the language encounter. At the beginning of the twentieth century, missionaries regarded Warao as incompatible with modernity and with the political developments of that time. It was considered too underdeveloped and illogical to be the language of Venezuelan citizens. Hence the missionaries wanted to give the Warao the tools for interpreting modernity, and paramount among these tools was Spanish. At the same time, the Warao interpreted the encounter with the nation-state as a mistranslation. This lack of communication with the new nation-state found expression in Warao narratives and as a common discursive topic. From a Warao standpoint, the encounter with missionaries and modernity was full of confusion and misunderstandings. This essay will argue that an increasing awareness of subordination among the Warao paralleled the naturalization of semiotic misunderstandings at the moment of encounter with the state. The analysis of the linguistic ideologies that this situation produced will prove useful in illustrating how the Warao internalized their subordinate position.

Making Common Cause: Yanktonais and Catholic Missionaries on the Northern Plains

Galler, R. — 2008-07-07

On 28 January 1886, Crow Creek leaders sent a petition with over one hundred signatures to the Office of Indian Affairs affirming their interest in a Catholic mission school. Within the year, the first buildings were in place for an educational institution that served as a Catholic school for nearly one hundred years and currently exists as a tribal school. The question is how and why did this institution come into existence? This essay argues that late nineteenth-century Lower Yanktonai leaders followed tribal tradition in establishing alliances to promote the best interests of their people. Rather than being mere recipients of a mission placed unilaterally on their land by zealous missionaries, Lower Yanktonais found common cause with Catholic leaders to establish a local mission school to educate their children.

On Interpreting Cofitachequi

Hudson, C., Beck, R. A., DePratter, C. B., Ethridge, R., Worth, J. E. — 2008-07-07

Scholars have developed two broad approaches to researching the history of the native peoples of the American South from the sixteenth century to the present: culture history and social history. The essential task in culture history is to classify native so-called tribes into cultural and/or linguistic categories, to list defining cultural traits, and to show how these "tribes" have persisted, disappeared, or become acculturated. The essential task in social history is to reconstruct the structure of the societies and polities into which native peoples organized themselves within the context of native worlds and to show what happened to them when they came into contact with the modern world-system. Both approaches have been used to depict and explicate Cofitachequi, a native people first encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1540. Our purpose here is to point out flaws in the culture history approach and to emphasize strengths in the social history approach.

Patriarchy and Inequality, Festival and Pilgrimage in Hispanic Nicaragua

Dennis, P. A. — 2008-07-07

The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent

LeMaster, M. — 2008-07-07

"The Utes Must Go!" American Expansion and the Removal of a People

Fields, A. — 2008-07-07

Creeks and Southerners: Biculturalism on the Early American Frontier

Snyder, C. — 2008-07-07