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Camilla Townsend's stunning book differs from all previous
biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar
seventeenth-century Native Americans were--in the way they saw,
understood, and struggled to control their world--not only to the
invading English but to ourselves.
Neither naive nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father,
the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the
English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed,
Pocahontas's life is a testament to the subtle intelligence that
Native Americans, always aware of their material disadvantages,
brought against the military power of the colonizing English.
Resistance, espionage, collaboration, deception: Pocahontas's life
is shown as a road map to Native American strategies of defiance
exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope for a
semblance of independence worth the name.
In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading
to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with
Moctezuma. That story—and the story of what happened
afterwards—has been told many times, but always following the
narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught,
it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans
were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the
newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own
language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained
obscure, only partially translated, and rarely consulted by
scholars. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the
Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts
written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend
presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native
Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of
European stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an
apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into
existence. The Mexica people had a history of their own long before
the Europeans arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish
culture and colonization. Instead, they realigned their political
allegiances, accommodated new obligations, adopted new
technologies, and endured. This engaging revisionist history of the
Aztecs, told through their own words, explores the experience of a
once-powerful people facing the trauma of conquest and finding ways
to survive, offering an empathetic interpretation for experts and
non-specialists alike.
The Lenape tribe, also known as the Delaware Nation, lived for
centuries on the land that English colonists later called New
Jersey. But once America gained its independence, they were forced
to move further west: to Indiana, then Missouri, and finally to the
territory that became Oklahoma. These reluctant migrants were not
able to carry much from their ancestral homeland, but they managed
to preserve the stories that had been passed down for
generations.  On the Turtle’s Back is the
first collection of Lenape folklore, originally compiled by
anthropologist M. R. Harrington over a century ago but never
published until now. In it, the Delaware share their cherished
tales about the world’s creation, epic heroes, and ordinary human
foibles. It features stories told to Harrington by two Lenape
couples, Julius and Minnie Fouts and Charles and Susan Elkhair, who
sought to officially record their legends before their language and
cultural traditions died out. More recent interviews with Lenape
elders are also included, as their reflections on hearing these
stories as children speak to the status of the tribe and its
culture today. Together, they welcome you into their rich and
wondrous imaginative world. Â
The Lenape tribe, also known as the Delaware Nation, lived for
centuries on the land that English colonists later called New
Jersey. But once America gained its independence, they were forced
to move further west: to Indiana, then Missouri, and finally to the
territory that became Oklahoma. These reluctant migrants were not
able to carry much from their ancestral homeland, but they managed
to preserve the stories that had been passed down for
generations.  On the Turtle’s Back is the
first collection of Lenape folklore, originally compiled by
anthropologist M. R. Harrington over a century ago but never
published until now. In it, the Delaware share their cherished
tales about the world’s creation, epic heroes, and ordinary human
foibles. It features stories told to Harrington by two Lenape
couples, Julius and Minnie Fouts and Charles and Susan Elkhair, who
sought to officially record their legends before their language and
cultural traditions died out. More recent interviews with Lenape
elders are also included, as their reflections on hearing these
stories as children speak to the status of the tribe and its
culture today. Together, they welcome you into their rich and
wondrous imaginative world. Â
In November 1519, Hernando Cortes walked along a causeway leading
to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with
Moctezuma. That story-and the story of what happened afterwards-has
been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by
the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans
who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the
Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to
write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until
recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially
translated, and rarely consulted by scholars. For the first time,
in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its
complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous
people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and
humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing
them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. The
conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an
origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The Mexica people
had a history of their own long before the Europeans arrived and
did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and colonization.
Instead, they realigned their political allegiances, accommodated
new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured. This
engaging revisionist history of the Aztecs, told through their own
words, explores the experience of a once-powerful people facing the
trauma of conquest and finding ways to survive, offering an
empathetic interpretation for experts and non-specialists alike.
Indigenous breadsellers riot over a Spanish monopoly scheme;
Spanish authorities plan to remove native people from the city;
indigenous people struggle to construct a splendid church; the
city's inhabitants fight over elections and witness hangings,
epidemics, and eclipses. All this and more a Native American writer
of Puebla, Mexico, reported in the late seventeenth century in a
set of annals in his own language, Nahuatl, telling his people's
local history from the coming of the Christian faith down to his
own day.
These records were part of a corpus of such annals produced in the
Tlaxcala-Puebla region during this period. These writings by native
peoples for their own posterity provide the most direct access to
the indigenous perspective on the postconquest centuries that we
are ever going to find.
"Here in This Year" for the first time brings two sets of Nahuatl
annals--the other one being from a more provincial locale--to the
English-speaking world, presenting the original Nahuatl with
facing, very readable translations.
The first major visual and cultural exploration of the legacy of La
Malinche, simultaneously reviled as a traitor to her people and
hailed as the mother of Mexico An enslaved Indigenous girl who
became Hernan Cortes's interpreter and cultural translator,
Malinche stood at center stage in one of the most significant
events of modern history. Linguistically gifted, she played a key
role in the transactions, negotiations, and conflicts between the
Spanish and the Indigenous populations of Mexico that shaped the
course of global politics for centuries to come. As mother to
Cortes's firstborn son, she became the symbolic progenitor of a
modern Mexican nation and a heroine to Chicana and Mexicana
artists. Traitor, Survivor, Icon is the first major publication to
present a comprehensive visual exploration of Malinche's enduring
impact on communities living on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
Five hundred years after her death, her image and legacy remain
relevant to conversations around female empowerment, indigeneity,
and national identity throughout the Americas. This book
establishes and examines her symbolic import and the ways in which
artists, scholars, and activists have appropriated her image to
interpret and express their own experiences and agendas, from the
1500s through today. Published in association with the Denver Art
Museum Exhibition Schedule: Denver Art Museum (February 6-May 8,
2022) Albuquerque Museum (June 11-September 4, 2022) San Antonio
Museum of Art (October 14, 2022-January 8, 2023)
This book presents a unique set of written records belonging to the
De la Cruz family, caciques of Tepemaxalco in the Toluca Valley.
Composed in Nahuatl and Spanish and available here both in the
original languages and in English translation, this collection of
documents opens a window onto the life of a family from colonial
Mexico’s indigenous elite and sheds light on the broader
indigenous world within the Spanish colonial system. The main text
is a record created in 1647 by long-serving governor don Pedro de
la Cruz and continued by his heirs through the nineteenth century,
along with two wills and several other notable documents. These
sources document a community history, illuminating broader issues
centering on politics, religion, and economics as well as providing
unusual insight into the concerns and values of indigenous leaders.
These texts detail the projects financed by the De la Cruz family,
how they talked about them, and which belongings they deemed
important enough to pass along after their death. Designed for
classroom use, this clear and concise primary source includes a
wealth of details about indigenous everyday life and preserves and
makes accessible a rich and precious heritage. The engaging
introduction highlights issues of class relations and the public
and performative character of Nahua Christianity. The authors
provide the necessary tools to help students understand the
colonial context in which these documents were produced.
The United States and the countries of Latin America were all
colonized by Europeans, yet in terms of economic development, the
U.S. far outstripped Latin America beginning in the nineteenth
century. Observers have often tried to account for this disparity,
many of them claiming that differences in cultural attitudes toward
work explain the U.S.'s greater prosperity. In this innovative
study, however, Camilla Townsend challenges the traditional view
that North Americans succeeded because of the so-called Protestant
work ethic and argues instead that they prospered relative to South
Americans because of differences in attitudes toward workers that
evolved in the colonial era.
Townsend builds her study around workers' lives in two similar
port cities in the 1820s and 1830s. Through the eyes of the young
Frederick Douglass in Baltimore, Maryland, and an Indian girl named
Ana Yagual in Guayaquil, Ecuador, she shows how differing attitudes
toward race and class in North and South America affected local
ways of doing business. This empirical research clarifies the
significant relationship between economic culture and racial
identity and its long-term effects
For many generations, the Nahuas of Mexico maintained their
tradition of the xiuhpohualli (SHOO-po-wa-lee), or "year counts,"
telling and performing their history around communal firesides so
that the memory of it would not be lost. When the Spaniards came,
young Nahuas took the Roman letters taught them by the friars and
used the new alphabet to record historical performances by elders.
These written texts were carefully preserved and even expanded upon
for over a century. The annals, as they have often been called,
were written not only by Indians but also for Indians, without
regard to European interests. As such they are rare and
inordinately valuable texts. But they have also been difficult for
recent generations to understand. They have often been assumed to
be both largely anonymous and at least partially inscrutable to
modern ears. Now Nahuatl scholar Camilla Townsend, by dint of
careful research, has been able to deduce authorship in the case of
most of the texts, allowing her to restore them to their proper
contexts and make sense of long misunderstood documents. She
follows a remarkable chain of Nahua historians chronologically,
generation by generation, telling of their lives and exploring what
they wrote and why they wrote it. Sometimes they conceived of their
work as a political act, reinstating bonds between communities, or
between past, present, and future generations. Sometimes they
conceived of it as art more than anything else, and delighted in
offering language that was beautiful or startling or humorous. They
were the writers of a literature that they hoped would be passed
down to posterity. Their work did survive. Here for the first time,
samples of their many creations have been brought together into one
book, together with the stories of the writers' lives, to produce a
work accessible to the people of today even as it remains faithful
to the ethos of the past.
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