A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
In Contesting Leviathan, anthropologist Les Beldo describes the complex judicial and political climate for whale conservation in the United States, and the limits of the current framework in which whales are treated as “large fish” managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Emphasizing the moral dimension of the conflict between the Makah, the US government, and antiwhaling activists, Beldo brings to light the lived ethics of human-animal interaction, as well as how different groups claim to speak for the whale—the only silent party in this conflict. A timely and sensitive study of a complicated issue, this book calls into question anthropological expectations regarding who benefits from the exercise of state power in environmental conflicts, especially where indigenous groups are involved. Vividly told and rigorously argued, Contesting Leviathan will appeal to anthropologists, scholars of indigenous culture, animal activists, and any reader interested in the place of animals in contemporary life.
Though The Deerslayer (1841) was the last of Cooper’s five Leather-stocking tales to be written, it is the first in the chronology of Natty Bumppo’s life. Set in the 1740s before the start of the French and Indian War, when Cooper’s rugged frontiersman is in his twenties, Cooper’s novel shows us how “Deerslayer” becomes “Hawkeye.” It remains the best point of entry into the series for modern readers.
In his introduction, Ezra Tawil examines Cooper’s motivations in writing The Deerslayer, the static nature of Natty, and Cooper’s vexed racial politics. The John Harvard Library edition reproduces the authoritative text of The Deerslayer in The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper (State University of New York Press).
Since 1959 The John Harvard Library has been instrumental in publishing essential American writings in authoritative editions.
Whether fulfilling subsistence needs or featured in stories of grand adventure, hunting loomed large in the material and the imagined landscape of the nineteenth-century West. Epiphany in the Wilderness explores the social, political, economic, and environmental dynamics of hunting on the frontier in three “acts,” using performance as a trail guide and focusing on the production of a “cultural ecology of the chase” in literature, art, photography, and taxidermy.
Using the metaphor of the theater, Jones argues that the West was a crucial stage that framed the performance of the American character as an independent, resourceful, resilient, and rugged individual. The leading actor was the all-conquering masculine hunter hero, the sharpshooting man of the wilderness who tamed and claimed the West with each provident step. Women were also a significant part of the story, treading the game trails as plucky adventurers and resilient homesteaders and acting out their exploits in autobiographical accounts and stage shows.
Epiphany in the Wilderness informs various academic debates surrounding the frontier period, including the construction of nature as a site of personal challenge, gun culture, gender adaptations and the crafting of the masculine wilderness hero figure, wildlife management and consumption, memorializing and trophy-taking, and the juxtaposition of a closing frontier with an emerging conservation movement.
The University Press of Colorado gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University toward the publication of this book.
In Escaping into Nature, prominent wildlife conservationist and environmental historian John Reiger shares his story of an angler and hunter who found a cause and a calling and combined them for his life’s work.
John Reiger’s outdoor adventures as a young man primed him for the teachings of the great sportsmen-conservationists of the past, particularly George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt, and Aldo Leopold. Inspired by these conservation giants, Reiger left the security of a tenured professorship to serve as executive director of the Connecticut Audubon Society where he, sometimes controversially, put his ideals into practice. Later, he resumed his academic career to illuminate the lives of early wildlife conservationists, visionaries who continue to inspire us to care deeply about the future of the natural world.
Abused psychologically within his family in his early years, Reiger found solace in nature. Though he first entered the outdoors as an escape from his unpleasant circumstances, he soon found the study and pursuit of insects, fishes, and birds to be exciting ends in themselves. He came to believe that it was only by participating in the life and death of other creatures that one could learn to truly value the natural world, be a part of it, and be inspired to work for its conservation.
John Reiger’s autobiography is also the story of his own developing fascination with America’s past, especially as it relates to human interaction with the natural world; his desire to share that passion with others; and his experiences on the road to becoming a nationally recognized scholar. The twists and turns of that journey, and his accounts of the people—and of the wild creatures—who helped him along the way, will appeal to history enthusiasts and nature lovers alike.
moose and deer poacher in Maine, was the hero of scores of funny stories of
how he outwitted game wardens. Preserving these oral histories, Edward Ives
documents Magoon's life and explores his significance as a folk hero within
the context of the conservation movement, the cult of the sportsman, and Maine's
increasingly restrictive game laws.
"A rich and subtle book, an
important work by a major scholar. . . . It is a major contribution to folklore
studies, and to history and American studies as well."
-- Journal of American Folklore
In the late 1950s, Chauncey C. Nash started collecting Inuit carvings just as the art of printmaking was being introduced in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), an Inuit community on Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Nash donated some 300 prints and sculptures to Harvard’s Peabody Museum—one of the oldest collections of early modern Inuit art. The Peabody collection includes not only early Inuit sculpture but also many of the earliest prints on paper made by the women and men who helped propel Inuit art onto the world stage.
Author Maija M. Lutz draws from ethnology, archaeology, art history, and cultural studies to tell the story of a little-known collection that represents one of the most vibrant and experimental periods in the development of contemporary Inuit art. Lavishly illustrated, Hunters, Carvers, and Collectors presents numerous never-before-published gems, including carvings by the artists John Kavik, Johnniebo Ashevak, and Peter Qumalu POV Assappa. This latest contribution to the award-winning Peabody Museum Collections Series fills an important gap in the literature of Native American art.
This volume examines an almost purely lithic record known in the Puget Sound region as the Olcott Complex. Only loosely described off and on since the early 1960s by a series of researchers, none of whom used the same analytical approach, the Olcott record has never been systematically analyzed until now. As a result, this book fills in enormous gaps in our knowledge regarding the age, mode of subsistence, and adaptive strategy of the Olcott Complex. Chatters and colleagues describe the intensive excavation of three Olcott sites that were threatened by highway construction. The book concludes by pulling those findings together to place the Olcott Complex into its proper place in regional prehistory. An exemplary model of how to conduct archaeological research, the volume demonstrates how important research issues can be addressed in a cultural resource management context.
Extensive appendices available online.
In the late sixteenth century, Spanish explorers described encounters with North American people they called "Jumanos." Although widespread contact with Jumanos is evident in accounts of exploration and colonization in New Mexico, Texas, and adjacent regions, their scattered distribution and scant documentation have led to long-standing disagreements: was "Jumano" simply a generic name loosely applied to a number of tribes, or were they an authentic, vanished people?
In the first full-length study of the Jumanos, anthropologist Nancy Hickerson proposes that they were indeed a distinctive tribe, their wide travel pattern linked over well-established itineraries. Drawing on extensive primary sources, Hickerson also explores their crucial role as traders in a network extending from the Rio Grande to the Caddoan tribes' confederacies of East Texas and Oklahoma.
Hickerson further concludes that the Jumanos eventually became agents for the Spanish colonies, drafted as mercenary fighters and intelligence-gatherers. Her findings reinterpret the cultural history of the South Plains region, bridging numerous gaps in the area's comprehensive history and in the chronicle of these elusive people.
Duck hunting has changed greatly since the days of unlimited duck kills, as the limit of fifty ducks a day established in 1902 has fallen to the present three. A legitimate hunter now, Dale Hamm learned the art of market hunting—taking waterfowl out of season and selling them to restaurants—from his father during the l920s. During the l930s and l940s, he kept his family alive by market hunting. At the peak of his career, Hamm poached every private hunting club along the Illinois River from Havana to Beardstown.
After market hunting died out, Hamm became a legendary and almost respected—albeit controversial—character on the Illinois backwaters. He was eventually invited to hunt on the same clubs from which he had once been chased at the point of a shotgun. He hunted with judges, sheriffs, and the head of undercover operations for the Illinois Department of Conservation, all of whom knew of his reputation. He passed on to these hunting partners a lifetime of outdoor knowledge gained from slogging through mud, falling through ice, hunting ducks at three o’clock in the morning, dodging game wardens, and running the world’s only floating tavern.
"I always said if anyone ever cut open one of us Hamms, all they’d find was duck or fish," Hamm once said of his family. Now in his eighties, Hamm still carries a pellet from a shotgun in his chin to remind him of a shotgun blast that ricocheted off the water and into his face. Bakke notes that it is appropriate that a man who spent his life with a shotgun in his hands should carry a bit of buckshot wherever he goes.
Everyone who ever met Dale Hamm has a story about him. His own story is that of a one-of-a-kind character who, in his later years, used his considerable outdoor savvy to conserve the natural resources he once savaged. "His time and kind are gone," Bakke notes, "and there will never be another like him."
This book will be of interest to anyone who has ever been hunting—or who enjoys reading about colorful people and times that exist no more.
“Help, one and all, to aid woman, the weaker vessel. If she is willing to toil, give her wages equal with that of man. And as she bears her own curse, (nay, indeed, she helps to bear a man’s burden also,) secure to her her rights, or permit her to wear pants, and breathe the pure air of heaven.”—from The Narrative of Lucy Ann Lobdell
Lucy Ann Lobdell (1829–1912) was an ordinary woman whose extraordinary life was shaped by personal strife and the hardship of life in early nineteenth-century upstate New York. Struggling with an abusive husband, a young child, ailing parents, and financial strain, Lucy did what was necessary to support her family. In a rural world defined by farming and lumbering, she dressed, labored, and lived in a traditional masculine role. Her prowess as a rifle shot and fiddle player were known locally, but because of her unconventional, androgynous lifestyle, she became a target of public gossip and ridicule. Educated and eloquent, Lucy penned and published, Lucy Ann Lobdell, the Female Hunter of Delaware and Sullivan Counties, N.Y., in 1855. The narrative provides a unique look at the persecution of a woman whose only “offense” was disregard for contemporary societal norms. After her husband was killed during the Civil War, she received a widow’s pension. Ostracized and eventually hospitalized in 1880, she underwent torturous treatment until she confessed to a doctor that she was “a man in all that the name implies,” a self-serving report the doctor used to promote his career.
Whether Lucy was a lesbian, cross dresser, or transgender, we don’t know from the historical record, but as Lisa Macchia Ohliger demonstrates in The Narrative of Lucy Ann Lobdell: A Woman’s Case for Equality, Lucy embodied the nascent women’s rights movement. At the same time, and not far from where Lucy lived and went to school, Amelia Bloomer was advocating the right for women to wear pants and was publishing the feminist newspaper, The Lily, while Susan B. Anthony was pushing for land rights and equal pay for women. All of these issues are found in Lucy’s account. Lucy’s life is an illustration of the historical significance and destructive power of gender in society, and her narrative bears painful witness to the clash between taboo and survival.
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