Early North America Research Articles

Occupational Structures of Chinese Immigrants in Early Malaya and North America

Occupational Structures of Chinese Immigrants in Early Malaya and North America

Married to Antarctica

By trade, geologists display a rather cavalier attitude toward the continents. In their minds or on computer screens they frequently rearrange the world, shuffling about Africa and Asia faster than an interior decorator might move sofas. But even those long accustomed to the game of continental twister are doing a double take at a novel theory about Earth's ancient history Two researchers propose that North America and Antarctica once lay side by side, locked together in a marathon union spanning perhaps more than a billion years. think it's pretty surprising to most people. When I first told it to a colleague of mine, he told me I was out of my mind, says Ian WD. Dalziel, a geologist at the University of Texas in Austin and one formulator of the new theory Dalziel and Eldridge M. Moores, from the University of California, Davis, devised independent versions of the hypothesis after Moores visited Antarctica in 1989 on a field trip led by Dalziel. Plate tectonic experts have long suspected that most of Earth's continents combined to form a giant landmass, existing from about 800 to 600 million years ago, the end of the Precambrian time. The details from that far back remain fuzzy Yet geologists know that when the unnamed supercontinent splintered apart, some landmass separated from North America's western edge, which at the time ran through the present locations of Montana, Idaho and Nevada. The popular theory among researchers holds that the missing block of continent now forms Siberia. Moores and Dalziel believe East Antarctica makes a better candidate for North America's long-lost mate, despite the incredible distance now separating the two. They proposed this connection after noticing that certain rocks from the frozen continent bear a close resemblance to those found in parts of the United States. According to Moores, the Dronning Maud Land section of East Antarctica contains a band of 1.1-billion-year-old metamorphic rocks very similar to the so-called Grenville belt that runs from Texas through the Adirondack Mountains of New York and into Quebec. He suggests that Dronning Maud Land originally sat next to present-day Texas, forming a continuation of the Grenville province into Antarctica. If the ancient core of Antarctica was indeed wedded to early North America, the marriage may have lasted for an unusually long time, even by geologic standards. Similar rocks found in Arizona and Antarctica indicate the two continental cores got hitched at least 1.6 billion years ago. Locked together, they wandered the Earth as a unit for hundreds of millions of years and then joined up with other regions to form the late Precambrian supercontinent. North America would have finally divorced from Antarctica about 600 million years ago, when an ocean opened between the two continents. In Dalziel's view of the ancient world, Antarctica and North America both connected to Australia, which then bordered what is now northwest Canada (see map). After those western connections developed, the eastern side of North America bonded with ancient parts of South America. Dalziel describes North America as a keystone at the center of the late Precambrian supercontinent, which apparently straddled Earth's equator. Moores and Dalziel are not the first to suggest a connection between the polar continent and North America. More than a decade ago, Canadian geologists proposed a similar idea but never developed the concept, which lay fallow for many years until Moores and Dalziel developed it independently in separate papers, which will appear respectively in the May and June issues of GEOLOGY. The two researchers discussed their work last month at a meeting of the Geologic Society of America in San Francisco.

Biofacies Evidence for Late Cambrian Low-Paleolatitude Oceans, Western United States and Central Asia

Biofacies that formed on carbonate platform-margin slopes adjacent to an early Paleozoic, low-paleolatitude paleoocean are contained in the Upper Cambrian Swarbrick Formation, Tyby Shale, and Upper Cambrian-lowest Ordovician Hales Limestone of the Hot Creek Range, Nevada, and the Upper Cambrian-lowest Ordovician part of the Shabakty Suite of the Malyi Karatau, southern Kazakhstan. These in-situ limestones formed in platform-margin slope and basin-plain environments. Shoal-water faunal assemblages occur in carbonate-turbidite and debris-flow deposits interbedded with in-situ deeper water assemblages of the submarine-fan facies. Abundant sponge spicules, geographically widespread benthic trilobites, and rare ostracodes occur in some of the in-situ beds. In contrast, the shoal-water platform environments were well oxygenated and contain mainly endemic trilobite assemblages. These biofacies characteristics support an interpretation that Late Cambrian oceans were poorly oxygenated, but not anoxic, below the surface mixing layer and that benthic trilobite faunas were widely distributed in response to the more-or-less continuous deep water, low-oxygen habitats. Elements of the Late Cambrian low-oxygen biofacies are widespread in the Tien Shan structural belt of China and the Soviet Union, in central and eastern China, and along the western margin of early Paleozoic North America. This facies distribution pattern defines the transition from low-paleolatitude, shoal-water carbonate platformsmore » to open oceans which have since been destroyed by pre-Late Ordovician and pre-middle Paleozoic Paleotectonic activity.« less

Explorations and Discoveries

B ) ORN in Dublin on April 24, i909, I had my elementary schooling in Clara in the Irish midlands, an unusual village because it had an exceptionally large and active Protestant element dominated by a Quaker hierarchy. My secondary education was at a famous Belfast public day school, the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, from which I went to The Queen's University. There I was taught by James Eadie Todd, who demanded a great deal from his students and gave them much in return. I was also influenced by E. Estyn Evans, a polymath geographer, who left me forever dissatisfied with the narrower kinds of history. When I graduated in I93 I, I went to King's College and the Institute of Historical Research in London to study under A. P. Newton, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, who set me to work on British colonial history and, in parallel, on that of Ireland in the early modern period. It was he who got me my first post at University College Southampton, I934-I939, where my special responsibility was British colonial history, although my dissertation had been on early Tudor rule in Ireland. From there I moved to Belfast where, at Queen's, I helped Todd develop Irish history, but soon I found myself, somehow, in I 944 as professor and head of department at a campus of the University of Wales at Swansea, where I remained until I957, when I moved to the Andrew Geddes and John Rankin chair of modern history at the University of Liverpool. There my developing concern with early European expansion, North America, and Ireland could find fuller expression. Between I927 and I 946 1 had lived in a regime of one professor, one lecturer, and one assistant lecturer (the earlier assistant to the sole professor). From I 946, things began to move and specialist appointments made it possible to cover more and more extra-European history, in Liverpool as elsewhere. My North American preoccupations led me to visit the United States in summers in I948, I957, and I959, as I became recognized as something of an authority in the early history of North America. My authority was admittedly minor, but it was enough to enable me to obtain my first sabbatical in i963, when with Alison, my wife and working companion since I 937, I ranged through the land and libraries of North America. We had another fine year in i969-i970, when I was Visiting Harrison Professor at the College of William and Mary. The years down to I976, when I retired at age sixty-seven, were punctuated by research or lecturing opportunities in Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, and Hungary, and we visited New Zealand universities for the British Council. On retirement I became visiting professor at St. Mary's College of Maryland, for some part

Drowning Unconformities--A Peculiar Response of Carbonate Platforms to Rising Sea Level: ABSTRACT

The slopes of modern carbonate platforms are generally steeper than siliciclastic ones. Furthermore, carbonate slopes steepen as they grow higher, whereas siliciclastic slopes do so only at very early stages of upbuilding. These conclusions are drawn from measurements of over 500 slope profiles in the Atlantic and Pacific. A survey of seismic profiles suggests that the greater declivity of carbonate slopes also holds for the more distant geologic past. A consequence of the oversteepening of carbonate slopes is the drowning unconformity. When carbonate platforms of a certain height are drowned and buried by siliciclastics, the clastics will onlap the carbonates simply because they cannot assume the steep slope angle. The resulting unconformity geometrically will resemble a lowstand unconformity even though it is caused by the demise of the platform, not by a drop in sea level. Well-known unconformities for which the interpretation of drowning unconformities (rather than lowstand unconformities) should be considered include the Early Cretaceous unconformity off west Africa and off eastern North America as well as the mid-Cretaceous unconformity in the Gulf of Mexico. Erosional truncation of the platform is common with drowning unconformities. This erosion need not be related to a lowstand of sea level but rathermore » to the upbuilding stage of the platform. As the platform grows higher, slopes steepen and turbidity currents shift from deposition to erosion, turning the upper slopes of high-rising platforms into bare and erosional features.« less

In Defense of Ethnohistory

Ethnohistory offers a valuable approach to the understanding of native American cultures and Indian?white contact. However, from H. C. Porter's review essay 'Reflections on the Ethnohistory of Early Colonial North America' (Journal of American Studies, 16 (August 1982), pp. 243?54), one would take American ethnohistorians to be a pretentious, closed circle who specialize in moral indignation and whose interpretations are dictated by dogmas handed down from the leading exponents of the discipline. It is implied that they adopt a double standard in their treatment of ethnocentricism and acculturation and expect the rest of us to fall into line behind their peculiar view of Indian society. Moreover, they seem determined to reinterpret the history of Indian-white relations in the light of modern developments, notably white American guilt over past treatment of the 'first Americans', fuelled by the Red Power movement and the war in Vietnam. Some criticisms certainly are in order. Lengthy acknowledgments, in which the main purpose seems to be to list those authorities in the field with whom the author is on 'nickname' terms, are annoying, but are by no means the monopoly of ethnohistorians. More serious, of course, is the frequent failure, when dealing with the interaction of cultures, to accord European and Indian societies the same degree of consideration. Sometimes European culture, beliefs and motivations receive the type of blanket condemnation which causes an outcry when applied to Indians. The works reviewed lend themselves to the kind of wry comment offered by Mr Porter. James Axtell's autobiographical passages and his attempts to define the discipline of ethnohistory leave him open to charges of pretentious self-satisfaction. * Francis Jennings' admitted anti-Puritan bias, his provocative style and historical moralizing come in for attack, as do Bernard Sheehan's indignation and rhetoric.2

The demographic history of colonial New England.

The central fact of the demographic history of early North America is rapid growth. Both Canada and the white population of the English colonies experienced increases of 2½ percent per year during the eighteenth century. Seventeenth-century rates, beginning from a low base and more influenced by immigration, were even higher. In contrast, the expansion of population in early modern Europe rarely exceeded 1 percent per annum over an extended period. Since Franklin and Malthus, interpretations of early American demography have centered on the high fertility associated with near universal marriage for women at a low average age. The extremely youthful population, high dependency ratio, and one of the largest mean census family sizes ever recorded all follow from the high level of fertility.

Political Organization and Land Tenure among the Northeastern Indians, 1600-1830

Previous articleNext article No AccessPolitical Organization and Land Tenure among the Northeastern Indians, 1600-1830Anthony F. C. WallaceAnthony F. C. Wallace Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 13, Number 4Winter, 1957 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/soutjanth.13.4.3629094 Views: 11Total views on this site Citations: 9Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1945-1972), which is continued by the Journal of Anthropological Research (1973-present). PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Michael Warren Murphy On the Ecomateriality of Racial-colonial Domination in Rhode Island, (Sep 2021): 161–189.https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920210000038009Paul Corcoran John Locke on Native Right, Colonial Possession, and the Concept of Vacuum domicilium, The European Legacy 23, no.33 (Dec 2017): 225–250.https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2017.1416766Daniel R. Mandell, Xavier Blandin Les town meetings de Nouvelle-Angleterre et les populations indigènes : Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1730-1775, Participations N° 15, no.22 (Dec 2016): 123–147.https://doi.org/10.3917/parti.015.0123MATTHEW BABCOCK Territoriality and the Historiography of Early North America, Journal of American Studies 50, no.33 (Mar 2016): 515–536.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875816000529Chip Colwell-ChanthaphonhJami Powell Repatriation and Constructs of Identity, Journal of Anthropological Research 68, no.22 (Dec 2015): 191–222.https://doi.org/10.3998/jar.0521004.0068.202Erin Hogan Fouberg Understanding Space, Understanding Citizenship, Journal of Geography 101, no.22 (Mar 2002): 81–85.https://doi.org/10.1080/00221340208978475James Tully Aboriginal Property and Western Theory: Recovering a Middle Ground, Social Philosophy and Policy 11, no.22 (Jun 2009): 153–180.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500004477Stephen Cornell The transformations of tribe: Organization and self‐concept in Native American ethnicities, Ethnic and Racial Studies 11, no.11 (Jan 1988): 27–47.https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1988.9993587Kit W. Wesler Trade Politics and Native Polities in Iroquoia and Asante, Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no.44 (Jun 2009): 641–660.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500010653

William Robertson’s Influence on Early American Literature

For early North America and particularly its first creative writers (to 1831), William Robertson (1721–1793) seems to have been the chief source for all things pertaining to the Spanish in the New World. King’s chaplain, principal of the University of Edinburgh, and historiographer-royal of Scotland, Robertson achieved world-wide fame with his histories of Scotland, the reign of Charles V, and with A History of America. Of this last, the first eight books, published in 1777, dealt with the discovery of the western hemisphere and the conquests of Mexico and Peru.These eight books furnished North America’s nationalist and early romantic writers, the epic poets of the late eighteenth century, and the romantic poets, novelists, and dramatists, even historians, writing into the early nineteenth with facts to be developed into Hispanic themes. One is led to suspect, moreover, that Robertson not only provided facts but, what may be more important, guided North America’s interpretation of them and the themes in the light of the popular fancies of the heroic Columbus, the “black legend,” and the “noble savage.”

Big Business and the North American Indian

The formative period of colonization in North America was directed by the joint-stock business companies chartered for the purpose of pushing foreign trade abroad. The aim of these companies in early seventeenth-century North America was, of course, profit for their stockholders. North American did not promise big re-turns compared with rival investment fields, and the North American companies avoided the heavy sinking of capital which would be necessary if subjugation of the natives were to be effected. The result was the failure to assimilate economically the native peoples; this eventuated in their extermination, and the result is the racial contrast between North and Latin America. Seventeenth-century corporation finance, not the qualites of the native Indian, determined the exterminative Indian policy of the North American colonies.