Dr Robin Beck

My interest in this monograph related to the author's promise to provide a link between the Pre-Columbian cultures of North America with the historical tribal polities that contested space with the European "settler" empires. However, I was given pause with how few people seemed to have actually picked up this book, and the relative lack of attention it has received in the 10 or so years since it's been published.

The main plus then is that Beck does offer some insight into the transition from the so-called "Mississippian" culture, to the modern tribes, particularly as it relates to the Catawbas of what is now North Carolina. Based on archaeological work, and a lot of digging in assorted Spanish archives, Beck argues that the ancestors of the Catawbas were firmly in the "Mississippian" tradition of hierarchical chiefs, mound-building, and a maize-based economy. Also, Beck suspects that the assorted parties of Spanish conquistadors that penetrated what became the American "Old Southwest" were not the vectors of lethal pandemic that they have been made out to be.

Less good is the bulk of the book, where Beck argues that the real damage was done by the rise of the Southern slave culture, only using "Indians" as factors of production, and abetted by other tribal polities that had early access to firearms. This lead to an endemic state of conflict, that culminated in the Tuscarora War of the early 1700s, which resulted in the collapse of Indian slaving, and an embrace of African slavery by the incipient planter culture. Beck also argues that this is when the major pandemic impact of disease on the First Nations really arrived in full force. This portion of the book I found less impressive, as Alan Gallay, in his "The Indian Slave Trade," told this story a lot better.

Finally, Beck ends his work with a brief tribute to the Catawba, who have persevered through thick and thin and are still resident on their ancestral lands.

My main takeaway is that this is the sort of book you read because your professor assigned it to you, and the general reader is better off reading Gallay.… (mais)