American Encounters
Publisher: Routledge
Published: December 16, 1999
Language: eng
Number of pages: 608
ISBN-13: 9780415923750
First sentence: Precontact, prehistory-the common usage of such terms to describe the Americas before 1492 suggests how deeply rooted are notions of native peoples as static, primitive societies, "people without history" in the words of the anthropologist Eric Wolf, that changed little until Europeans arrived and the progress of "American history" began.