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The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southwest

The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southwest

Trudy Griffin-Pierce
Series: The Columbia Guides to American Indian History and Culture
Copyright Date: 2010
Published by: Columbia University Press
Pages: 320
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/grif12790
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  • Book Info
    The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southwest
    Book Description:

    A major work on the history and culture of Southwest Indians, The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southwest tells a remarkable story of cultural continuity in the face of migration, displacement, violence, and loss. The Native peoples of the American Southwest are a unique group, for while the arrival of Europeans forced many Native Americans to leave their land behind, those who lived in the Southwest held their ground. Many still reside in their ancestral homes, and their oral histories, social practices, and material artifacts provide revelatory insight into the history of the region and the country as a whole.

    Trudy Griffin-Pierce incorporates her lifelong passion for the people of the Southwest, especially the Navajo, into an absorbing narrative of pre- and postcontact Native experiences. She finds that, even though the policies of the U.S. government were meant to promote assimilation, Native peoples formed their own response to outside pressures, choosing to adapt rather than submit to external change. Griffin-Pierce provides a chronology of instances that have shaped present-day conditions in the region, as well as an extensive glossary of significant people, places, and events. Setting a precedent for ethical scholarship, she describes different methods for researching the Southwest and cites sources for further archaeological and comparative study. Completing the volume is a selection of key primary documents, literary works, films, Internet resources, and contact information for each Native community, enabling a more thorough investigation into specific tribes and nations.

    The Columbia Guides to American Indian History and Culture also include:

    The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Great Plains Loretta Fowler

    The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast Kathleen J. Bragdon

    The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green

    eISBN: 978-0-231-52010-2
    Subjects: Anthropology, History

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. v-viii)
  3. PREFACE
    (pp. ix-xiv)
  4. Maps
    (pp. xv-xx)

  5. PART I: HISTORY AND CULTURE

    • CHAPTER 1 Introduction
      (pp. 3-22)

      The rugged landscape of the Southwest resonates with stories and meanings from the past that are vitally alive for the tribal peoples who live there today. With the oldest continuous record of human habitation on the continent outside of Mesoamerica,¹ the Southwest has an unbroken cultural continuity that connects the Native peoples of this region to their land in concrete and tangible ways. So powerful is the land that specific mountains, rivers, mesas, and canyons—and the stories from the past that they anchor—are able to provide wisdom for negotiating present-day problems.²

      Spatially as well as temporally, the Southwest...

    • CHAPTER 2 Encounters with Europeans and Mexicans: Trade and Warfare (1529–1853)
      (pp. 23-48)

      When the first Spaniards, shipwrecked Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions, made their way into the Southwest in 1529, the Spanish presence was still relatively new to North America. Driven by the search for slaves to work in agriculture and mining, Christopher Columbus and his followers had traveled from one island to another in the West Indies only a few decades before. The European invasion would lead to the radical transformation of the lives of millions of North American Indians through depopulation, enslavement, and culture change as the Spanish, British, and French competed for dominance. In the...

    • CHAPTER 3 American Expansion: Trade, Treaties, and Reservations
      (pp. 49-66)

      Anglo-American influence permeated the Southwest long before the United States claimed the region. Beginning in the 1820s, the Santa Fe Trail linked New Mexico to the central United States, furnishing an outlet for Navajo weaving and other trade goods, and American traders had well-established ties with Native peoples in this region.

      When American settlers poured into New Mexico, they were surprised to find two distinct village cultures living in relatively peaceful coexistence in the upper Rio Grande Valley. First there was an archaic Spanish rural culture, with many borrowed Indian traits. Then there was the Pueblo culture, which had integrated...

    • CHAPTER 4 Surrender, Self-Determination, and Sovereignty
      (pp. 67-88)

      The ordeal of the Chiricahua Apache people was, in many ways, a barometer of anti-Indian racism in the Southwest and in the United States as a whole. When Naiche and his band of about 20 Chiricahua Apaches surrendered in 1886, despite government promises to the contrary, they were not allowed to join their families; instead they were imprisoned in Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma for 27 years. The federal government then designated every Chiricahua man, woman, and child a prisoner of war, whether or not they had participated in warfare against the United States, and also exiled them from their homeland....

    • [Illustrations]
      (pp. None)
  6. Part II: People, Places, and Events
    (pp. 89-146)

    agriculture Nearly all southwestern Native peoples (except for some Apache groups) practiced some degree of agriculture. Evidence exists of cultigens in the Southwest by 1000 b.c., and archaeologists are reasonably sure that in some areas people were practicing agriculture by about 1500 b.c. By roughly 300 b.c., the River Hohokam had developed such an extensive network of irrigation canals to water their fields that they regularly produced enough corn, beans, and squash to support settled villages along the Gila and Salt rivers. The Patayan, another precontact people, established summer camps along the Colorado and Gila rivers where they planted, tended,...

  7. Part III: Chronology
    (pp. 147-176)

    75,000–45,000 b.c.

    Human migration from Asia becomes possible with the first exposure of the Bering land bridge.

    23,000–12,000 b.c.

    The opportunity for an extended period of migration becomes possible with the second exposure of the Bering land bridge.

    9500–6000 b.c.

    Paleo-Indian culture, the culture of early Native people in the Americas characterized by big-game hunting, exists in the Southwest.

    6000 b.c.–200 a.d.

    With the disappearance of large game due to climatic change, the people of the Archaic period are forced to live in small groups that follow a seasonal round in order to exploit available environmental...

  8. Part IV: Resources
    (pp. 177-264)
  9. INDEX
    (pp. 265-284)