Arapahoe Politics, 1851-1978: Symbols in Crises of Authority

Abstract

This important, seminal work has been impressively researched and extremely well written. Fowler has effectively combined the fruits of intensive fieldwork with an eleven-year study of primary ethnohistorical documents. - Journal of American History Destined to be a major study of a Plains Indian tribe. - Choice Scholars of the Northern Plains and the people will find this work of long-standing value. Historians and anthropologists, especially those who combine the historical with fieldwork, will undoubtedly use Fowler's book as a model for comparing similar works in the future. - Western Historical Quarterly This book clearly deserves to become a model for modern research in American Indian Studies. Without any waving of banners and shouting of slogans it leaps far ahead of earlier acculturation studies by shifting the focus to strategies of ethnic survival. - E. Adamson Hoebel, Plains Anthropologist The Northern Arapahoes of the Wind River Reservation contradict many of the generalizations made about political change among native plains people. Loretta Fowler explores how, in response to the realities of domination by Americans, the Arapahoes have avoided serious factional divisions and have succeeded in legitimizing new authority through the creation and use of effective political symbols. Arapahoe Politics was the winner of the American Society for Ethnohistory's Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Award as best ethnohistorical book of 1982.