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Review



"They Made Us Many Promises:" The American Indian Experience 1524 to the Present, edited by Philip Weeks. Second edition. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2002. 330 pages. $20.95, paper.

Philip Weeks has greatly revised this excellent reader. He retains ten of the essays from the first edition (which was done for Forum Press), includes six new pieces, adds interesting primary source quotations for each of the three parts of the book, updates the "suggested readings" sections, and changes the title. The quotes and the addition of the citations of recent scholarship are welcome improvements. Other changes, however, are not quite extensive enough and do not make the second edition a significant improvement on the first. 1
     Well-established scholars contribute the new essays. David La Vere provides an article about Spanish policy in the Southwest. Weeks includes his own piece about the Civil War. Laurence Hauptman contributes a chapter on Indian policy since the beginning of the Nixon administration. Clifford Trafzer provides an essay on contact between Indians of California and non-Indians. Päivi Hoikkala presents an overview of the experiences of Native American women. James Riding In writes about burial rights. These essays are in most cases well done, but in some instances they do not compare favorably with the chapters they have replaced. Weeks excludes from the second edition pieces by eminent scholars Donald Worcester, Bernard Sheehan, Arrell Morgan Gibson, and Roger Nichols. Apparently Weeks has attempted to update the new edition with essays on sovereignty, women, and grave robbing. While Hoikkala's piece on gender is very readable and informative and Riding In presents many good questions for discussion, Trafzer does not adequately deal with the complexities of the term "sovereignty" in his chapter. The ten often excellent chapters retained from the first edition include one by James Ronda, who uses legal cases to demonstrate the complexities of French and English colonial policies towards Native Americans. One by Dwight Smith presents a general essay on the diplomacy of the Anglo-French colonial war-time period. Theda Perdue contributes a good overview of the removal policy and how it was carried out. Thomas Dunlay contrasts military styles in his discussion of the plains wars. Donald Berthrong illuminates many aspects of reservation life. William Hagan characterizes the images that reformers held of Native Americans. David Wallace Adams contributes an essay that recounts educational policy for Native American children and also evaluates how they responded to the rules and curriculum, and Graham Taylor evaluates the Indian new deal. University of Kansas Professor Donald Fixico recounts the many laws used to carry out the termination and relocation policies. Blue Clark focuses on urban Native Americans. 2
     While the reader is a wonderful work, Weeks fails to correct what this reviewer sees as two flaws of the first edition. First, he changes the title of the second edition, but the new title does not give the reader any better idea of what the book is about. Both titles use the phrase "American Indian Experience" but both editions are clearly policy studies. There is nothing wrong with producing a reader that deals with Indian-white relations or American Indian policy, but it is wrong, this reviewer believes, to use such a misleading title. Few of the essays mention the various ways that Native Americans experienced these policies. Second, the essays contain no source citations. Some of the authors adequately introduce material in the text, but others use quotations and fail to indicate where these words are from. It is normally a struggle to convince students to adequately cite their sources and teachers may find it even more difficult if the students see such noted scholars eschewing the need to provide citations. For this and for other reasons stated in this review, this teacher would probably not assign this reader in a class. However, it is an interesting book for a general readership and can provide any teacher much good information about Native Americans. Instructors in a course on Native American history who are less concerned about the lack of citations can find the book useful in providing students with background on Indian policy and for stimulating good discussion. 3

Cottey College Angela Firkus


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