This volume grew out of a symposium held at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 1969 at New Orleans, Louisiana. The "Apachean Symposium" was designed to provide an opportunity for scholars engaged in research on southern Athapaskan cultures to report upon their findings, and wherever possible, to link them to known fact and existing theory. The diverse work presented here will add significantly to the knowledge about Apachean cultures, and each of contributions also pertains directly to wider spheres of anthropological concern.
This volume grew out of a symposium held at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 1969 at New Orleans, Louisiana. The "Apachean Symposium" was designed to provide an opportunity for scholars engaged in research on southern Athapaskan cultures to report upon their findings, and wherever possible, to link them to known fact and existing theory. The diverse work presented here will add significantly to the knowledge about Apachean cultures, and each of contributions also pertains directly to wider spheres of anthropological concern.
A reconstruction of Apachean history and culture that sheds much light on the origins, dispersions, and relationships of Apache groups. Mention “Apaches,” and many Anglo-Americans picture the “marauding savages” of western movies or impoverished reservations beset by a host of social problems. But, like most stereotypes, these images distort the complex history and rich cultural heritage of the Apachean peoples, who include the Navajo, as well as the Western, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa Apaches. In this pioneering study, Richard Perry synthesizes the findings of anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory to reconstruct the Apachean past and offer a fuller understanding of the forces that have shaped modern Apache culture. While scholars generally agree that the Apacheans are part of a larger group of Athapaskan-speaking peoples who originated in the western Subarctic, there are few archaeological remains to prove when, where, and why those northern cold dwellers migrated to the hot deserts of the American Southwest. Using an innovative method of ethnographic reconstruction, however, Perry hypothesizes that these nomadic hunters were highly adaptable and used to exploiting the resources of a wide range of mountainous habitats. When changes in their surroundings forced the ancient Apacheans to expand their food quest, it was natural for them to migrate down the “mountain corridor” formed by the Rocky Mountain chain. Perry is the first researcher to attempt such an extensive reconstruction, and his study is the first to deal with the full range of Athapaskan-speaking peoples. His method will be instructive to students of other cultures who face a similar lack of historical and archaeological data.
“Perry undertakes the enormous task of analyzing the historical workings of the reservation system, using the San Carlos Apache as a case study.” —The American Historical Review “Indian reservations” were the United States’ ultimate solution to the “problem” of what to do with native peoples who already occupied the western lands that Anglo settlers wanted. In this broadly inclusive study, Richard J. Perry considers the historical development of the reservation system and its contemporary relationship to the American state, with comparisons to similar phenomena in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. The San Carlos Apache Reservation of Arizona provides the lens through which Perry views reservation issues. One of the oldest and largest reservations, its location in a minerals- and metals-rich area has often brought it into conflict with powerful private and governmental interests. Indeed, Perry argues that the reservation system is best understood in terms of competition for resources among interest groups through time within the hegemony of the state. He asserts that full control over their resources—and hence, over their lives—would address many of the Apache’s contemporary economic problems.
A comprehensive guide to the historic and contemporary indigenous cultures of the American Southwest, intended for college courses and the general reader.
As a definitive study of the poorly understood Apaches de paz, this book explains how war-weary, mutually suspicious Apaches and Spaniards negotiated an ambivalent compromise after 1786 that produced over four decades of uneasy peace across the region. In response to drought and military pressure, thousands of Apaches settled near Spanish presidios in a system of reservation-like establecimientos, or settlements, stretching from Laredo to Tucson. Far more significant than previously assumed, the establecimientos constituted the earliest and most extensive set of military-run reservations in the Americas and served as an important precedent for Indian reservations in the United States. As a case study of indigenous adaptation to imperial power on colonial frontiers and borderlands, this book reveals the importance of Apache-Hispanic diplomacy in reducing cross-cultural violence and the limits of indigenous acculturation and assimilation into empires and states.
An ethnographic contribution describing the beliefs and ideas associated with witchcraft as shared "knowledge" that the Apaches have about their universe. Uncovers the types of interpersonal relationships with which witchcraft accusations are regularly associated and posits explanations for these associations.
