American Indian History - (Uncovering the Past: Documentary Readers in American History) by Camilla Townsend (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

• Over 60 primary documents allow the voices of natives to illuminate the American past
• Includes samples of native languages just above the full translations of particular texts
• Provides comprehensive introductions and headnotes, as well as images, an extensive bibliography, and suggestions for further research
• Includes such texts as a decoded Maya inscription, letters written during the French and Indian War on the distribution of small pox blankets, and a diatribe by General George Armstrong Custer shortly before he was killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn
  

From the Back Cover

"Unlike any other text, Townsend's accessible collection offers a much-needed gathering of documents in Native history from the pre-Columbian era to the present. It will be an invaluable resource for the undergraduate classroom."
Gwenn Miller, College of the Holy Cross

"Camilla Townsend's book is an ideal supplement for any course in Native American history. The documents here will introduce students to crucial aspects of the indigenous experience. More important, the texts testify to the richness of Native American cultures."
Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California

"Filled with a wide range of primary sources, Camilla Townsend's American Indian History: A Documentary Reader offers a comprehensive, yet manageable, resource for instructors wanting to inject more American Indian history into their American history survey courses."
Troy Bickham, Texas A&M University

This latest volume in Wiley-Blackwell's Uncovering the Past series supports the premise that indigenous intellects were the equal of European intellects at the moment of conquest, that the people suffered a long period of decline for varied reasons, and that in the recent past they have made great strides in asserting themselves once again. With nearly a third of the volume dedicated to the ancient world through the eighteenth century, Townsend allows the documents to illuminate the richness of American Indian historical traditions and the strength of the efforts they made when the crisis came. The volume then moves on to extensive coverage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, completing an integral study of the American Indian experience.

About the Author

Camilla Townsend is Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is the author of Tales of Two Cities: Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America (2000), Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2004) and Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico (2006).