Kent G. Lightfoot
Californiaâ€™s earliest European colonistsâ€”Russian merchants and Spanish missionariesâ€”depended heavily on Native Americans for labor to build and maintain their colonies, but they did so in very different ways. This richly detailed book brings together disparate skeins of the pastâ€”including little-known oral histories, native texts, ethnohistory, and archaeological excavationsâ€”to present a vivid new view of how native cultures fared under these two colonial systems. Kent Lightfootâ€™s innovative work, which incorporates the holistic methods of historical anthropology, explores the surprising ramifications of these long-ago encounters for the present-day political status of native people in California.,Lightfoot weaves the results of his own significant archaeological research at Fort Ross, a major Russian mercantile colony, into a cross-cultural comparison, showing how these two colonial venturesâ€”one primarily mercantile and one primarily religiousâ€”contributed to the development of new kinds of native identities, social forms, and tribal relationships. His lively account includes personal anecdotes from the field and a provocative discussion of the role played by early ethnographers, such as Alfred Kroeber, in influencing which tribes would eventually receive federal recognition. ,Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants, takes a fascinating, yet troubling, look at Californiaâ€™s past and its role in shaping the state today.
History,History,Archaeology,Nonfiction,Anthropology
Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers