The Stepchild

The Stepchild
Author: William Carlson Smith
Publisher: Chicago, U. P
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1953
Genre: Parent and child
ISBN:

Crow-Omaha

Crow-Omaha
Author: Thomas R. Trautmann
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816599319

The “Crow-Omaha problem” has perplexed anthropologists since it was first described by Lewis Henry Morgan in 1871. During his worldwide survey of kinship systems, Morgan learned with astonishment that some Native American societies call some relatives of different generations by the same terms. Why? Intergenerational “skewing” in what came to be named “Crow” and “Omaha” systems has provoked a wealth of anthropological arguments, from Rivers to Radcliffe-Brown, from Lowie to Lévi-Strauss, and many more. Crow-Omaha systems, it turns out, are both uncommon and yet found distributed around the world. For anthropologists, cracking the Crow-Omaha problem is critical to understanding how social systems transform from one type into another, both historically in particular settings and evolutionarily in the broader sweep of human relations. This volume examines the Crow-Omaha problem from a variety of perspectives—historical, linguistic, formalist, structuralist, culturalist, evolutionary, and phylogenetic. It focuses on the regions where Crow-Omaha systems occur: Native North America, Amazonia, West Africa, Northeast and East Africa, aboriginal Australia, northeast India, and the Tibeto-Burman area. The international roster of authors includes leading experts in their fields. The book offers a state-of-the-art assessment of Crow-Omaha kinship and carries forward the work of the landmark volume Transformations of Kinship, published in 1998. Intended for students and scholars alike, it is composed of brief, accessible chapters that respect the complexity of the ideas while presenting them clearly. The work serves as both a new benchmark in the explanation of kinship systems and an introduction to kinship studies for a new generation of students. Series Note: Formerly titled Amerind Studies in Archaeology, this series has recently been expanded and retitled Amerind Studies in Anthropology to incorporate a high quality and number of anthropology titles coming in to the series in addition to those in archaeology.

Prologue to Lewis and Clark

Prologue to Lewis and Clark
Author: W. Raymond Wood
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2005-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806136899

“To follow the journeys made by Mackay and Evans up the Missouri and across the plains in 1795–97 is to begin to appreciate the kind of world Lewis and Clark found when they voyaged up the river in 1804. . . . Of all those waterways, none has captured the American imagination more than the Missouri. . . . It is a river of promise, of dreams, and of dreams denied.” –James P. Ronda, from the Foreword When Mackay and Evans returned to Spanish St. Louis in 1797, they were hailed as “the two most illustrious travelers in the northern parts of this continent.” Ironically, though the findings of Mackay and Evans were responsible for much of the early success of Lewis and Clark in their expedition, the adulation that followed Lewis and Clark’s successful return completely eclipsed Mackay and Evans’s reputations. In Prologue to Lewis and Clark, W. Raymond Wood narrates the history of this long-forgotten but important expedition up the Missouri River. The Mackay and Evans expedition was more than an exploratory mission. It was the last effort by Spain to gain control over the Missouri River basin in the decade before the United States purchased the Louisiana territory. In that respect, it failed. But the expedition was successful as a journey of exploration. The maps and documents they created later provided the Lewis and Clark expedition with invaluable information for its first full year. Consolidating a collection of eighteen contemporary documents relating to the Mackay and Evans expedition as well as his own research and analysis, Wood provides an in-depth examination of the expedition’s background, execution, and final results. Volume 79 in the American Exploration and Travel Series

The Crow Indians

The Crow Indians
Author:
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1983-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780803279094

For nearly ten years between 1907 and 1931, anthropologist Robert H. Lowie lived among the Crow Indians, listening to the old men and women tell of times gone forever. Lowie learned much about what had been, and still was, a society remarkable for its variability and cohesion, and for its resistance to the encroachments of white civilization. Written with clarity and vigor, Lowie's study makes instantly accessible what had taken him years to discover. He sacrificed neither personal sensitivity nor narrative skill to scientific scruples, but brought his scientific work to life. Crow religion, ceremonies, taboos, kinship bonds, tribal organization, division of labor, codes of honor, and rites of courtship and wedlock receive their due. The Crow Indians is a masterpiece of ethnography, foremost for Lowie's portrayal of the different personalities he encountered: Gray-bull and his marital troubles; the great visionary Medicine-crow; Yellow-brow, the gifted storyteller; and many more.