Book deepens popular understanding of Native Americans

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Exploring Native North America

By David Hurst Thomas

240 pages, $59.95 (hc)

Oxford University Press

The long tradition of well-researched and carefully edited non-fiction trade books published by the Oxford University Press is upheld in one of this year's offerings by David Hurst Thomas.

Readers of Exploring Native North America will not only find the latest authoritative archeological data on some prominent and sacred sites in Indian Country, but they will find it both easy and entertaining to immerse themselves in what is essentially an educational experience.

There are no dry statistics, and no linear and one-sided rehashing of white people's "discoveries" of the remnants of supposedly dead cultures here. The book covers demographics, trade, art, religion, and the newer issues of economics, science and technology.

The 240 glossy pages of Exploring contain 20 halftones, 80 linecuts and 20 maps that efficiently illuminate compelling stories of places such as Serpent Mound in Ohio and less well-known Cape Krustenstern in Alaska.

The book is expensive, though: $59.95 Canadian. More pages might have made it too pricey for its intended non-specialist audience.

This abbreviated yet thorough presentation of legendary Native sites and artifacts by a non-Native should excite anyone who is intrigued with American or Indigenous history. Not only is it is great background reading for the RV traveller bent on discovery, but it could easily be adopted as a supplementary high school history text.

The book approaches the legacy of colonialism versus Native peoples impartially. It criticizes the negative and paternalistic slant of academics and explorers who, up to the present time, have viewed the digging up, cataloguing and removing of Indigenous people's belongings as a right. Thomas recommends that all newcomers to Native land, or intellectual property, whether for archeological or ceremonial purposes or just as tourists, obtain permission and approach with respect.

Thomas' book covers sites along a time and place continuum starting in 9300 B.C. in present-day New Mexico and ending with the Little Bighorn battlefield of 1876.

Exploring is not a book for academics. Because there are relatively few pages to explain 18 significant Native sites in the United States and Canada, Thomas highlights only the most salient points. None of the discourse is sacrificed for footnotes, however. For those who view the book as a seminar and come away with an appetite for the full course, there are recommendations for further reading and further visiting at the ends of chapters.

Still, Exploring leaves some questions open to interpretation.

Thomas, as curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, should know that Christopher Columbus wasn't the first European to encounter the Indigenous peoples of North America. Evidence exists of Viking occupation in Newfoundland much earlier. Although the book's introduction states Native Americans occupied the land before Columbus arrived, by omission it leaves intact the myth of Columbus being the first European explorer to arrive in North America. The introduction speaks of "that first fateful Columbian encounter." Thomas suggests that the premise put forth by unnamed others that Vikings and Egyptians were "proto-Americans" is mere "fanciful interpretation." That leaves the reader to wonder whether the author believes the idea that the Vikings arrived before Columbus is fanciful as well.

Thomas' book enumerates problems that arise when archeologists' and tourists' activities encroach on the right and obligation of Native people to protect their cultural resources and sacred sites and determine their use themselves. He doesn't shy away from controversies surrounding the study of human skeletal remains. He admits to mistakes and even destructive practices of some in the field while defending his profession.

"It is simply impossible today to understand the basics f Native North American archaeology without taking into account the monumental contribution of archaeology conducted as cultural resource management," Thomas says in the introduction.

My only significant criticism of the book lies with Exploring Native North America's editors. The title does not reflect the content in that only two of the 18 sites discussed are Canadian: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta near the Montana border and an Iroquoian site in southern Ontario near Detroit, Michigan. Impossible to say whether American arrogance had anything to do with that, but clearly the book is mostly about the United States.

The author said the places he included had to have "major historical, cultural, or methodological significance," be "readily available to the travelling public," and "encourage visitation, provide interpretation, and ensure adequate protection for both the visitor and the archaeological record remaining at the site." Worthy aims, but are there so few such places in Canada?

Thomas gets high marks for presenting all sides of sensitive topics in a respectful manner. But he leaves it to others to settle the thornier questions.

"As we encourage people to learn more about North America's archaeological heritage," states Thomas, "what should we do about sacred sites? I honestly don't know."