I was wondering if anyone had read any good, comprehensive histories of the American 'Indian' tribes. I am particularly interested in whether there were written as well as oral histories which predate the 17th Century (European
colonisation).

Regards,

Tin

I don't think that there would be a good comprehensive volume on all the native american tribes as there were so many and so diverse.

Try choosing the area of the continent that you are interested in and then find out which tribes lived in the area during the time you are interested in. Tribes moved over time and with the invasion of whites this became more pronounced.

One book you might look for is Black Hawk an autobiography Black Hawk an autobiography which was republished by the University of Illinois Press in 1964. Black Hawk was an Osage chief in the central Mississipi valley and has a pleasant country cemetary burial site in central Iowa not far from Keokuks burial site.

For first hand accounts of the Plains Indians try the Journals of Lewis and Clark. Written by outsiders but very good at description of the people and the country they lived in.

Lewis and Clarke were brave explorers, but their accounts were written from the 'white man's perspective', and were sometimes innacurate. A classic example of this was their naming of the Nee-mee-po, or Nimipo, Indian tribes, whom they erroneously called Nez Perce, meaning 'pierced nose'. The Nee-mee-poo tribes never practiced this form of facial 'art', but unfortunately the name 'Nez Perce' has stuck to this day!

A history of Native American encounters with Europeans (in the US)can be found in Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee".

You may be able to find a copy somewhere (I'd try the library) of Virginia Irving Amstrong's "I Have Spoken" - this is in First Nation people's own words.

Stephansson's "My Life with the Eskimo" may not be entirely what you are after, but is very interesting and expounds to some extent on his (at the time) highly unorthodox views of European /Inuit pre Columbian contact.

Most pre-European-contact history is told in the form of myth and story - there are hundreds of collections of this type of thing; it would be very tribe specific.

Looking through my husband's collection of local history, I see a lot of books which touch on Native/White interaction, but it is mostly from the white point of view. The Government of Canada has been funding, for many years, the collection of Native elders' memories, and their recollections of what their own parents and grandparents told them. Most of this has not been published for the general public, but should be available in some form. If you contacted the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, they might be able to point you in the right direction.

I think it will be difficult to find any truly pre-contact native american writings. Most history was oral tradition, some of which has been preserved SINCE european contact, but having a number of Sioux friends, I'd say that anything else you might get would be an a tribe-by-tribe basis, and only "comprehensive" in that regard. There's no such thing as "comprehensive native american history" considering that we're talking about a huge land mass with many and varied individual cultures, all of which kept most of their records via oral histories rather than written. It'd be like asking if there's a comprehensive african history around somewhere... To my knowledge, there isn't.

And actually, the african example is even a little misleading since so much anthropological study has been directed at Africa, while native American tribes have not yet really interested the bulk of the anthropological community. Tribes hold their histories sacred, and demand (and deserve) the respect of those with which they share any information, and really, honestly, there aren't a lot of serious scientists out there willing to give them the respect they deserve. Not only that, but most westerners are (and have been, historically) more interested in trade / collecting than cultural study.

I've read 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' and 'Trail of Tears' (by Gloria Jahoda). I wondered whether anyone would recommend the Jon E. Lewis book 'Mammoth Book of Native Americans' or the Bruce Gant 'Concise Encyclopedia of the American Indian'. I had hoped that one of the universities had done a comprehensive study, especially of the Indian heroes, myths and legends from pre-colonial times. I wanted to write a comparison focussing on heroic legendary and semi-legendary figures. Comparing Robin Hood, Fionn Macuhail, Twm Sion Cati, Rob Roy McGregor and several others. There seem to be similarities in the different stories.
I know some of the 'tribes' have museums and libraries of stories, I had hoped someone would know of a good source.

Regards,

Tin

Unfortunately, it's so hard to do a "complete" study of all Native Americans/First Peoples simply because there are so many different populations. Each area of the continent has numerous tribes, and each tribe has their own cosmology, mythology and even (perhaps) hagiography. ;-)
My mother is an avid student of Southwestern tribes and their mythology and history. I'll see if I can't turn up some suggestions.

Yours,
Lee