Franz Boas in Translation is the ultimate study of the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas and his work on the American Northwest. This groundbreaking study analyses what Boas did with local Native American legends passed down by the region’s tribal groups. Three translations, originally published in 1888 and 1895, are presented here and constitute Boas’s early attempts to define the cultural history of Pacific Northwest tribes. Using definitive plots, details, and incidents from a large c...

Who were the first people who came to the land bridge joining northeastern Asia to Alaska and the northwest of North America? Where did they come from? How did they organize technology, especially in the context of settlement behavior?During the Pleistocene era, the people now known as Beringians dispersed across the varied landscapes of late-glacial northeast Asia and northwest North America.The twenty chapters gathered in this volume explore, in addition to the questions ...

David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early expressions of the Canadian experience. The work is not only the account of a remarkable life in the fur trade but an extended meditation on the land and Native peoples of western North America. The tale spans the years 1784 to 1807 and extends from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, from Athabasca to Missouri. A distinguished literary work, the Travels alternates between the expository prose of the scientist and the vivid language of the st...

The canoe is a symbol unique to Canada. One of the greatest gifts of First Peoples to all those who came after, the canoe is Canada's most powerful icon. Within this Canexus II publication are a collection of essays by paddling enthusiasts and experts. Contributing authors include: Eugene Arima, Shanna Balazs, David Finch, Ralph Frese, Toni Harting, Bob Henderson, Bruce W. Hodgins, Bert Horwood, Gwyneth Hoyle, John Jennings, Timothy Kent, Peter Labor, Adrian Lee, Kenneth R. Lister, Becky M...

After a career working and living with American Indians and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike. In the proc...

Often called one of the Seven Wonders of Canada, the canoe has played a particularly important role in British Columbia. This seemingly simple watercraft allowed coastal First Nations to hunt on the open ocean and early explorers to travel the province’s many waterways. Always at the crossroads of canoe culture, BC today is home to innovative artists and designers who have rediscovered ancient canoe-building techniques, as well as community leaders who see the canoe’s potential to bring pe...

Because the elderly chief wanted his visitor to understand the Ojibwe world and because Hallowell was deeply interested in his subject matter and was such a good listener Berens freely related his dreams and other stories about encounters with powerful beings. The fact that he also shared traditional myths in summer when Ojibwe people thought it dangerous to discuss such things shows the depth of his relationship with Hallowell. Berens' reminiscences and story and myth texts are unparall...

Charles Hill-Tout was born in England in 1858 and came to British Columbia in 1891. He was a pioneer settler at Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley, where he raised his family in a log cabin. He devoted many years of field work to his studies of the Salish and published in the scholarly periodicals of the day. He was honoured as president of the Anthropological Section of the Royal Society of Canada and as a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. In The Salish Peop...

More than 400 rock paintings adorn the Canadian Shield from Quebec, across Ontario and as far west as Saskatchewan. The pictographs are the legacy of the Algonkian-speaking Cree and Ojibway, whose roots may extend to the beginnings of human occupancy in the region almost 10,000 years ago.Archaeologist Grace Rajnovich spent fourteen years of field research uncovering a multitude of clues as to the meanings of the paintings. She has written a text which is unique in ...

The indigenous peoples of North America and Greenland have long inhabited and thrived in a variety of terrains and climates. The three different culture areas of the Arctic, American Subarctic, and American Northwest perhaps best exemplify this—from the sometimes stark environment of the tundra to the moderate conditions of the coastal regions in northern California, the indigenous communities in each found ways to subsist on the resources available to them even when facing social, politic...

A richly diverse anthology of Native American literatures draws on the work of more than two hundred tribes across the United States and Canada and provides information on the historical and cultural contexts of the stories, songs, prayers, and orations.

This pioneering work focuses on excavations and discoveries at Little Rapids, a 19th-century Eastern Dakota planting village near present-day Minneapolis.