Reviews Colonial Encounters in a Native American Landscape: The Spanish and Dutch in North America By Nan A. Rothschild (Smithsonian Books, 2003; 282 pgs., illus., $40 cloth; www.sipress.si.edu)
Stories on Stone By Jennifer Owings Dewey (University of New Mexico Press, 2003; 32 pgs., illus.; $15 cloth; www.unmpress.com)
Noted children’s author and illustrator Jennifer Dewey introduces young people (ages seven and up) to the fabulous rock art of the American Southwest. Drawing on her personal experiences as a child in New Mexico, Dewey takes the young reader through the artistic techniques of rock art and its meaning to the ancient people of the Southwest. Superbly illustrated with accurate detail, Stories on Stone is a perfect Christmas addition to your favorite child’s library.
52
This is the study of two distinct colonial experiences that happened in 17th-century North America, but 2,000 miles apart—the Dutch in New York and the Spanish in New Mexico. The Spanish were mostly a medieval, agrarian society that came to New Mexico by way of colonial Mexico. The Dutch, on the other hand, were largely urban and at the forefront of the Renaissance and the mercantile world. The native Pueblos and Mohawks were both agricultural people who lived in large villages structured by matrilineal clan-based social systems. The Spanish primarily sought mineral wealth. The Dutch sought wealth from the fur trade. Noted archaeologist Nan A. Rothschild of Barnard College, Columbia University, uses archaeological techniques to weave social theory with detailed material evidence to give us a well-balanced understanding of the experience. At the end of the experience, the Pueblos were thriving in New Mexico, and the Mohawks had long since disappeared from the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Rothschild demonstrates that the reasons are complex and paradoxical. In New Mexico, the Spanish sought to annihilate the Pueblo culture, which may have produced the resistance that led to survival. The Dutch kept the Mohawks at a distance, interacting with them only for trade. The Mohawks finally moved to Canada to survive. Rothschild’s multidisciplinary approach to the issue underscores the similarities and differences that led to these results. Colonial Encounters in a Native American Landscape provides fresh and exciting insights to a little understood chapter of the American experience. Indians of Central and South Florida: 1513–1763 By John H. Hann (University Press of Florida, 2003; 256 pgs., illus., $40 cloth; www.upf.com)
Historian John Hann has produced the first survey of Florida’s natives who lived south of a line roughly through Orlando that includes some of the richest cultural history in the nation. Focusing first on the “Fierce People,” the Calusa of the southern Gulf Coast, Hann draws on the latest archaeological research to try to explain these people as they resisted Spanish colonialism in vain. This volume also tells the story of the Tequesta of Miami Circle fame on the Atlantic coast. Chapters on religious beliefs and political and economic organization make this a wellrounded study with an interest and significance far beyond the region. winter • 2003-04
