An Introduction to Native North America provides a basic introduction to the native peoples of North America, including both the United States and Canada. It covers the history of research, basic prehistory, the European invasion and the impact of Europeans on Native cultures. Additionally, much of the book is written from the perspective of the ethnographic present, and the various cultures are described as they were at the specific times noted in the text.

An Introduction to Native North America provides a basic introduction to the Native Peoples of North America, covering what are now the United States, northern Mexico, and Canada. It covers the history of research, basic prehistory, the European invasion and the impact of Europeans on Native cultures. A final chapter covers contemporary Native Americans, including issues of religion, health, and politics. In this updated and revised new edition, Mark Q. Sutton has expanded and improved the existing text as well as adding a new case study, updated the text with new research, and included new perspectives, particularly those of Native peoples. Featuring case studies of several tribes, as well as over 60 maps and images, An Introduction to Native North America is an indispensable tool to those studying the history of North America and Native Peoples of North America. .

Power is understood to be manifested in a multiplicity of ways: through cosmology, economic control, and formal hierarchy. In the Native societies examined, power is continually created and redefined through individual life stages and through the history of the society. The important issue is autonomy - whether, or to what extent, individuals are autonomous in living their lives. Each author demonstrates that women in a particular cultural area of aboriginal North America had (and have) more power than many previous observers have claimed.

In this thoughtful book, Robert J. Muckle provides a brief, thematic overview of the key issues facing Indigenous peoples in North America from prehistory to the present.

This introduction to the art of tribal peoples of North America, Africa, and the South Pacific does not briefly cover the hundreds of artistic traditions in these three vast areas but rather studies in depth thirty-six art styles within all three areas using the methods of art history, including stylistic analysis and iconographic interpretation. Emphasis is on the art in cultural context and as a system of visual communication within each tribal area. Where appropriate for a more complete understanding of the art, data from archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, religion, and other humanistic disciplines are included.Among the peoples and cultures whose art is studied are the Haida, Kwakiutl, and Tlingit; the Hohokam and Mongollon, the Anasazi and Hopi; the Dogon and Bamana of Mali; the Asante of Ghana; the Benin, Yoruba, and Ibo of Nigeria; the Fan, the Bamum, and the Kuba of Central Africa; Australian aboriginal and Island New Guinea art; Island Melanesia art; central and eastern Polynesia; Hawaii and the Maori in Marginal Polynesia.The format of the text and selected illustrations is based on seventeen years of teaching African, North American Indian, and South Pacific art to undergraduate and graduate students at Herbert H. Lehman College (CUNY), New York University, and Columbia University. The book is intended for art history and anthropology students and the interested lay reader or collector. The detailed notes at the end of the book are for further study, research, and understanding of the tribal art style under discussion.

When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today? Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, settling throughout North America. They describe hunting practices among different tribes, how some made the gradual transition to more settled, agricultural ways of life, the role of kinship and cooperation in Native societies, their varied burial rites and spiritual practices, and many other features of Native American life. Throughout the book, Perdue and Green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. Most importantly, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty--first with European powers and then with the United States--in order to retain their lands, govern themselves, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful. Going beyond the stereotypes that so often distort our views of Native Americans, this Very Short Introduction offers a historically accurate, deeply engaging, and often inspiring account of the wide array of Native peoples in America. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

The curator of anthropology at The American Museum of Natural History profiles 18 archaeological sites in the US and Canada that contain evidence of mostly early Americans. He does an excellent job of summarizing the data and explaining the techniques clearly to keep the focus on the conclusions scientists have reached about the people and their ways of life. The sites span from 9300 BC to the Little Big Horn. For each he includes a list of further reading and directions for visitors. Photographs, drawings, and maps accompany the text. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR