The Writing of American Indian History: A Status Report

Abstract

NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AGO, in a conference on early American Indian and white relations sponsored by the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia, William N. Fenton looked forward to the day when an Institute for American Indian History and Culture might arise from the smoke of prairie fires with perhaps an L. H. Morgan chair in American ethnology and a Sequoia Press for American Indian languages. He even suggested forming a new conspiracy to promote a Pontiac lectureship in American Indian history. The era hoped for by Fenton has not yet arrived but we have, nevertheless, come a long way toward the goal. The writing of American Indian history is thriving. Organizations for those involved in the writing of Indian history have been formed. Indian studies programs have been established at a number of universities. True, much of the impetus for the recent support of Indian studies comes not for historical but for racial reasons. Nevertheless, the movement is, I think, a healthy one, and one that will not die with the waning of racial animosities or concern. Because of the wide diversity and varied histories of the numerous tribes, bands, or other identifiable groups of American Indians (to use the catchall phraseology of the Indian Claims Commission Act), the bulk of the ethnographic and historical literature on the American Indian is devoted to individual tribes rather than to the Indian or to Indian-white relations generally. I will cite a few examples of such works-those primarily historical in content-written by both his-