The American Indian and Ethnohistory

FAIN: FS-50095-06

University of Oklahoma, Norman (Norman, OK 73019-3003)
Gary Clayton Anderson (Project Director: March 2006 to September 2008)

A five-week seminar for fifteen college and university faculty to explore American Indian ethnohistory, a study of the relationship between Indians and Europeans.

This seminar will explore American Indian Ethnohistory, a study of the relationship between Indians and Europeans, using as a foundation in understanding of the evolving nature of tribalism. Initial discussion will focus on cultural anthropology and its early role in developing the discipline, and then turn quickly to the growing contributions made by historians in the field. Some of the earliest ethnohistory looked broadly at the impact of European invasion on Indian tribes, showing in particular the demographic collapse that came with that invasion. This led to what is often called "victim" history. But by the 1980s, many ethnohistorians were probing deeply into the way Indians adapted to the European advance, especially how they changed their political, social, economic, and religious institutions to meet the needs of a changing world. It is this new history, of Indians as actors, which we will explore in the seminar in considerable detail.