Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was America's leading ethnologist in his day, & his scholarship played a role of exceptional importance during the critical period of the 1860s-1880s when anthropology was beginning to crystalize as a specialized field of research. Contents of this vol.: Lewis Henry Morgan & His Library; Morgan's Life & Works; The Library & Its Contents; Analysis of the Collection; Explanation of the Inventory, Catalogue, & Register; Bibliography of Morgan's Publications; The Inventory; The Catalogue; & Register of the Morgan Papers. Illus.

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was America’s leading ethnologist in his day, & his scholarship played a role of exceptional importance during the critical period of the 1860s-1880s when anthropology was beginning to crystalize as a specialized field of research. Contents of this vol.: Lewis Henry Morgan & His Library; Morgan’s Life & Works; The Library & Its Contents; Analysis of the Collection; Explanation of the Inventory, Catalogue, & Register; Bibliography of Morgan’s Publications; The Inventory; The Catalogue; & Register of the Morgan Papers. Illus.

Lewis Henry Morgan's mid-nineteenth-century assemblage of Iroquois-made artifacts featured more than 500 objects and at the time was the largest such collection for a single Indian group. In this richly illustrated volume, Elisabeth Tooker has brought together much previously unpublished material not only to show how Morgan managed such an impressive feat of scholarship but also to reveal something of his too often neglected research methods.

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was America's leading ethnologist in his day, & his scholarship played a role of exceptional importance during the critical period of the 1860s-1880s when anthropology was beginning to crystalize as a specialized field of research. Contents of this vol.: Lewis Henry Morgan & His Library; Morgan's Life & Works; The Library & Its Contents; Analysis of the Collection; Explanation of the Inventory, Catalogue, & Register; Bibliography of Morgan's Publications; The Inventory; The Catalogue; & Register of the Morgan Papers. Illus.

This book is a history of European interpretations of the gift from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Reciprocal gift exchange, pervasive in traditional European society, disappeared from the discourse of nineteenth-century social theory only to return as a major theme in twentieth-century anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy and literary studies. Modern anthropologists encountered gift exchange in Oceania and the Pacific Northwest and returned the idea to European social thought; Marcel Mauss synthesized their insights with his own readings from remote times and places in his famous 1925 essay on the gift, the starting-point for subsequent discussion. The Return of the Gift demonstrates how European intellectual history can gain fresh significance from global contexts.

The Boston Tea Party, the Order of Red Men, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, Grateful Dead concerts: just a few examples of white Americans' tendency to appropriate Indian dress and act out Indian roles "A valuable contribution to Native American studies."—Kirkus Reviews This provocative book explores how white Americans have used their ideas about Native Americans to shape national identity in different eras—and how Indian people have reacted to these imitations of their native dress, language, and ritual. At the Boston Tea Party, colonial rebels played Indian in order to claim an aboriginal American identity. In the nineteenth century, Indian fraternal orders allowed men to rethink the idea of revolution, consolidate national power, and write nationalist literary epics. By the twentieth century, playing Indian helped nervous city dwellers deal with modernist concerns about nature, authenticity, Cold War anxiety, and various forms of relativism. Deloria points out, however, that throughout American history the creative uses of Indianness have been interwoven with conquest and dispossession of the Indians. Indian play has thus been fraught with ambivalence—for white Americans who idealized and villainized the Indian, and for Indians who were both humiliated and empowered by these cultural exercises. Deloria suggests that imagining Indians has helped generations of white Americans define, mask, and evade paradoxes stemming from simultaneous construction and destruction of these native peoples. In the process, Americans have created powerful identities that have never been fully secure.

Born on the Seneca Indian Reservation in New York State, Arthur Caswell Parker (1881-1955) was a prominent intellectual leader both within and outside tribal circles. Of mixed Iroquois, Seneca, and Anglican descent, Parker was also a controversial figure-recognized as an advocate for Native Americans but criticized for his assimilationist stance. In this exhaustively researched biography-the first book-length examination of Parker’s life and career-Joy Porter explores complex issues of Indian identity that are as relevant today as in Parker’s time. From childhood on, Parker learned from his well-connected family how to straddle both Indian and white worlds. His great-uncle, Ely S. Parker, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Ulysses S. Grant--the first Native American to hold the position. Influenced by family role models and a strong formal education, Parker, who became director of the Rochester Museum, was best known for his work as a "museologist" (a word he coined). Porter shows that although Parker achieved success within the dominant Euro-American culture, he was never entirely at ease with his role as assimilated Indian and voiced frustration at having "to play Indian to be Indian." In expressing this frustration, Parker articulated a challenging predicament for twentieth-century Indians: the need to negotiate imposed stereotypes, to find ways to transcend those stereotypes, and to assert an identity rooted in the present rather than in the past.

If the word "hero" still belonged in the historian's lexicon, it would certainly be applied to John Wesley Powell. Intrepid explorer, careful scientist, talented writer, and dedicated conservationist, Powell led the expedition that put the Colorado River on American maps and revealed the Grand Canyon to the world. Now comes the first biography of this towering figure in almost fifty years--a book that captures his life in all its heroism, idealism, and ambivalent, ambiguous humanity. In A River Running West, Donald Worster, one of our leading Western historians, tells the story of Powell's great adventures and describes his historical significance with compelling clarity and skill. Worster paints a vivid portrait of how this man emerged from the early nineteenth-century world of immigrants, fervent religion, and rough-and-tumble rural culture, and barely survived the Civil War battle at Shiloh. The heart of Worster's biography is Powell's epic journey down the Colorado in 1869, a tale of harrowing experiences, lethal accidents, and breathtaking discoveries. After years in the region collecting rocks and fossils and learning to speak the local Native American languages, Powell returned to Washington as an eloquent advocate for the West, one of America's first and most influential conservationists. But in the end, he fell victim to a clique of Western politicians who pushed for unfettered economic development, relegating the aging explorer to a quiet life of anthropological contemplation. John Wesley Powell embodied the energy, optimism, and westward impulse of the young United States. A River Running West is a gorgeously written, magisterial account of this great American explorer and environmental pioneer, a true story of undaunted courage in the American West.