This post originally appeared on the First Peoples blog. From the introduction by Natasha Varner: This week First Peoples heads to the American Society for Ethnohistory meeting in Pasadena along with two of our partner presses – The University of North Carolina Press and The University of Arizona Press – and several of our authors. Those not involved directly with this subgroup of history often ask us what ethnohistory is. We found the clearest, most articulate answer we’ve seen to this question in the introduction to Rose Stremlau’s new book Sustaining the Family: Kinship and the Allotment of an Indigenous Nation. In light of our upcoming travels to the Ethnohistory meeting, we wanted to share Dr. Stremlau’s explanation of the discipline here with you.
Ethnohistory is a disciplinary hybrid, a fusion of historical and anthropological approaches enabling scholars to study American Indian history despite gaps in the documentary record and misrepresentations of indigenous people in written information authored by non-Indians. Instead of giving preference to such written documents, ethnohistorians evaluate them by cross-checking them against additional sources of evidence that provide other interpretations by and of Native people, including oral tradition, ethnography, and archaeology. [i] Because Cherokees have been a literate people for nearly two centuries, an ethnohistorian writing about them benefits from an abundance of material documenting their views and sharing their expressions […]
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