A Companion to American Indian History - (Wiley Blackwell Companions to American History) by Philip J Deloria & Neal Salisbury (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Companion to American Indian History captures the thematic breadth of Native American history over the last forty years. Twenty-five original essays by leading scholars in the field, both American Indian and non-American Indian, bring an exciting modern perspective to Native American histories that were at one time related exclusively by Euro-American settlers.

• Contains 25 original essays by leading experts in Native American history.
• Covers the breadth of American Indian history, including contacts with settlers, religion, family, economy, law, education, gender issues, and culture.
• Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
• Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.

From the Back Cover

A Companion to American Indian History captures the thematic breadth of Native American history. Twenty-five original essays written by leading scholars, both American Indian and non-American Indian, bring a comprehensive perspective to a history that in the past has been related exclusively by Euro-Americans.

The essays cover a wide range of Indian experiences and practices, including contacts with non-Indians, religion, family, economy, law, education, gender, and culture. They reflect new approaches to Native America drawn from environmental, comparative, and gender history in their exploration of compelling questions regarding performance, identity, cultural brokerage, race and blood, captivity, adoption, and slavery. Each chapter also encourages further reading by including a carefully selected bibliography.

Intended for students, scholars, and general readers of American Indian history, this timely book is the ideal guide to current and future research.

Review Quotes

"Philip Deloria and Neal Salisbury have brought together some of the best scholars writing about American Indian peoples and given them topics that both reflect and expand the new scholarship on Indian history and culture. The volume is a virtual compass for readers and scholars interested in American Indians." Richard White, Stanford University

"If you need to know where the practice of American Indian history has been; better yet, if you need and want to catch up with where it's going, you will need A Companion to American Indian History. Each essay, in its own right, gives an important stylistic and substantive shove to the new writing of American Indian history while it offers the latest, best word in dutiful exegetical historiography. The Companion is the bridge-building, critical, enlightened, reflexive work the editors hoped for, and more, since its bridge-dynamiting challenges to Indian history are graceful and graciously delivered." Rayna Green, National Museum of American History.

"Historians are exceedingly well served by this companion on Native peoples of the USA, north-western Mexico, Canada and Western Greenland." Antiquity

"This volume testifies to the strength and comprehensiveness of the "Blackwell Companions to American History" series... The selection of writers and topics is excellent, and the quality of the historiographical essays matches or supersedes the spate of recently published books that have attempted similar tasks... The essays go beyond a mere listing of sources to intelligently integrate shifts in interpretation over time and to indicate weaknesses in the existing canon of knowledge. Academic researchers, general readers, and members of Native American communities can all profit from these sophisticated essays... this reference work deserves a place in all libraries, and it should be widely used to spaark further debate." Choice

"I heartily endorse this anthology as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate classes, and as a refresher for anyone seriously interested in Native American studies." John H. Moore, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

About the Author

Philip J. Deloria is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. A member of a prominent Dakota family, he received his PhD from Yale University in 1994. In addition to numerous articles and essays, he is the author of Playing Indian (1998).

Neal Salisbury is Professor of History at Smith College. He is the author of Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England (1982), and co-author of The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (fourth edition, 2000).