Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants
eBook - PDF

Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants

The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers

  1. 355 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants

The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers

About this book

California's earliest European colonists—Russian merchants and Spanish missionaries—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 past—including little-known oral histories, native texts, ethnohistory, and archaeological excavations—to present a vivid new view of how native cultures fared under these two colonial systems. Kent Lightfoot'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 ventures—one primarily mercantile and one primarily religious—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 California's past and its role in shaping the state today.

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Yes, you can access Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants by Kent Lightfoot in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. List of Illustrations
  3. Preface
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. 1. DIMENSIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS
  6. 2. VISIONS OF PRECOLONIAL NATIVE CALIFORNIA
  7. 3. FRANCISCAN MISSIONS IN ALTA CALIFORNIA
  8. 4. NATIVE AGENCY IN THE FRANCISCAN MISSIONS
  9. 5. RUSSIAN MERCHANTS IN CALIFORNIA
  10. 6. NATIVE AGENCY IN THE ROSS COLONY
  11. 7. MISSIONARY AND MERCANTILE COLONIES IN CALIFORNIA: THE IMPLICATIONS
  12. 8. THE AFTERMATH
  13. 9. CONCLUSION
  14. Notes
  15. References
  16. Index