The term cacica was a Spanish linguistic invention, a female counterpart to caciques, the Arawak word for male indigenous leaders in Spanish America. But the term's meaning was adapted and manipulated by natives, creating a new social stratum where it previously may not have existed. This book explores that transformation, a conscious construction and reshaping of identity from within. Cacicas feature far and wide in the history of Spanish America, as female governors and tribute collectors and as relatives of ruling caciques - or their destitute widows. They played a crucial role in the establishment and success of Spanish rule, but were also instrumental in colonial natives' resistance and self-definition. In this volume, noted scholars uncover the history of colonial cacicas, moving beyond anecdotes of individuals in Spanish America. Their work focuses on the evolution of indigenous leadership, particularly the lineage and succession of these positions in different regions, through the lens of native women's political activism. Such activism might mean the intervention of cacicas in the economic, familial, and religious realms or their participation in official and unofficial matters of governance. The authors explore the role of such personal authority and political influence across a broad geographic, chronological, and thematic range - in patterns of succession, the settling of frontier regions, interethnic relations and the importance of purity of blood, gender and family dynamics, legal and marital strategies for defending communities, and the continuation of indigenous governance. This volume showcases colonial cacicas as historical subjects who constructed their consciousness around their place, whether symbolic or geographic, and articulated their own unique identities. It expands our understanding of the significant influence these women exerted - within but also well beyond the native communities of Spanish America.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

For American Indians, tribal politics are paramount. They determine the standards for tribal enrollment, guide negotiations with outside governments, and help set collective economic and cultural goals. But how, asks Raymond I. Orr, has history shaped the American Indian political experience? By exploring how different tribes' politics and internal conflicts have evolved over time, Reservation Politics offers rare insight into the role of historical experience in the political lives of American Indians. To trace variations in political conflict within tribes today to their different historical experiences, Orr conducted an ethnographic analysis of three federally recognized tribes: the Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico, the Citizen Potawatomi in Oklahoma, and the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota. His extensive interviews and research reveal that at the center of tribal politics are intratribal factions with widely different worldviews. These factions make conflicting claims about the purpose, experience, and identity of their tribe. Reservation Politics points to two types of historical experience relevant to the construction of tribes' political and economic worldviews: historical trauma, such as ethnic cleansing or geographic removal, and the incorporation of Indian communities into the market economy. In Orr's case studies, differences in experience and interpretation gave rise to complex worldviews that in turn have shaped the beliefs and behavior at play in Indian politics. By engaging a topic often avoided in political science and American Indian studies, Reservation Politics allows us to see complex historical processes at work in contemporary American Indian life. Orr's findings are essential to understanding why tribal governments make the choices they do.

The 1830s forced removal of Cherokees from their southeastern homeland became the most famous event in the Indian history of the American South, an episode taken to exemplify a broader experience of injustice suffered by Native peoples. In this book, Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal through an examination of memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions dating from the early twentieth century to the present. White southerners, Denson argues, embraced the Trail of Tears as a story of Indian disappearance. Commemorating Cherokee removal affirmed white possession of southern places, while granting them the moral satisfaction of acknowledging past wrongs. During segregation and the struggle over black civil rights, removal memorials reinforced whites' authority to define the South's past and present. Cherokees, however, proved capable of repossessing the removal memory, using it for their own purposes during a time of crucial transformation in tribal politics and U. S. Indian policy. In considering these representations of removal, Denson brings commemoration of the Indian past into the broader discussion of race and memory in the South.

"Winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award in the multi-cultural catagory"

Jlin-tay-i-tith, better known as Loco, was the only Apache leader to make a lasting peace with both Americans and Mexicans. Yet most historians have ignored his efforts, and some Chiricahua descendants have branded him as fainthearted despite his well-known valor in combat. In this engaging biography, Bud Shapard tells the story of this important but overlooked chief against the backdrop of the harrowing Apache wars and eventual removal of the tribe from its homeland to prison camps in Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma.

Tracing the events of Loco's long tenure as a leader of the Warm Springs Chiricahua band, Shapard tells how Loco steered his followers along a treacherous path of unforeseeable circumstances and tragic developments in the mid-to-late 1800s. While recognizing the near-impossibility of Apache-American coexistence, Loco persevered in his quest for peace against frustrating odds and often treacherous U.S. government policy. Even as Geronimo, Naiche, and others continued their raiding and sought to undermine Loco's efforts, this visionary chief, motivated by his love for children, maintained his commitment to keep Apache families safe from wartime dangers.

Based on extensive research, including interviews with Loco's grandsons and other descendants, Shapard's biography is an important counterview for historians and buffs interested in Apache history and a moving account of a leader ahead of his time.

In this ethnography of Navajo (Dine) popular music culture, Kristina M. Jacobsen examines questions of Indigenous identity and performance by focusing on the surprising and vibrant Navajo country music scene. Through multiple first-person accounts, Jacobsen illuminates country music's connections to the Indigenous politics of language and belonging, examining through the lens of music both the politics of difference and many internal distinctions Dine make among themselves and their fellow Navajo citizens. As the second largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo have often been portrayed as a singular and monolithic entity. Using her experience as a singer, lap steel player, and Navajo language learner, Jacobsen challenges this notion, showing the ways Navajos distinguish themselves from one another through musical taste, linguistic abilities, geographic location, physical appearance, degree of Navajo or Indian blood, and class affiliations. By linking cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and critical Indigenous studies, Jacobsen shows how Navajo poetics and politics offer important insights into the politics of Indigeneity in Native North America, highlighting the complex ways that identities are negotiated in multiple, often contradictory, spheres.

"The first biography of this important American Indian artist"

Artist, teacher, and Red Progressive, Angel De Cora (1869-1919) painted "Fire Light" to capture warm memories of her Nebraska Winnebago childhood. In this biography, Linda M. Waggoner draws on that glowing image to illuminate De Cora's life and artistry, which until now have been largely overlooked by scholars.

One of the first American Indian artists to be accepted within the mainstream art world, De Cora left her childhood home on the Winnebago reservation to find success in the urban Northeast at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite scant documentary sources that elucidate De Cora's private life, Waggoner has rendered a complete picture of the woman known in her time as the first "real Indian artist." She depicts De Cora as a multifaceted individual who as a young girl took pride in her traditions, forged a bond with the land that would sustain her over great distances, and learned the role of cultural broker from her mother's Metis family.

After studying with famed illustrator Howard Pyle at his first Brandywine summer school, De Cora eventually succeeded in establishing the first "Native Indian" art department at Carlisle Indian School. A founding member of the Society of American Indians, she made a significant impact on the American Arts and Crafts movement by promoting indigenous arts throughout her career.

Waggoner brings her broad knowledge of Winnebago culture and history to this gracefully written book, which features more than forty illustrations. "Fire Light" shows us both a consummate artist and a fully realized woman, who learned how to traverse the borders of Red identity in a white man's world.