Native American Studies

The paper addresses the history of the debates on human social organization and sustainability as inspired by indigenous histories and traditions, by Native American scholars. A key figure in instigating these debates and laying the framework for their topics since the 1960s was the late professor Vine Deloria, Jr., legal and religious scholar, social critic and activist who penned the groundbreaking work of Native American post-colonial critique in 1969 titled Custer died for your sins. An Indian Manifesto. Deloria's positions from his early work are then compared to his later views especially on the subject of land as formative to, and correlational with, human societies, and the notion of corporatist human social organization. In the conclusion, the implications of Deloria's positions for current progressive theorizing are discussed. Povzetek Prispevek naslavlja zgodovino debat ameriških staroselskih akademikov o človeški socialni organizaciji in zdržnem bivanju, kot so ga pobudile staroselske zgodovine in tradicije. Ključna osebnost in pobudnik the debat, ki jih je tudi uokviril, je bil pokojni Vine Deloria, Jr., profesor prava in religiologije, družbeni kritik in aktivist, avtor prelomnega dela ameriške staroselske pokolonialne kritike z naslovom Custer je umrl za vaše grehe: indijanski manifest. Njegova stališča iz tega zgodnjega dela so nato opremljena s tistimi iz kasnejših del, in se omejujejo na zemljo kot formativno in korelativno s človeškimi skupnostmi, in na 1 I am indebted to Daniel R. Wildcat for a thorough reading of the draft of this paper, and his valuable comments.

After beginning his historical work in Switzerland in the 1950s and then continuing it in the United States at the Menninger Foundation, Henri Ellenberger (1905–1993) became the leading historian of " dynamic psychiatry ". This expression commonly denotes mental medicine that draws from psychotherapeutic practices and psychological theories to improve our understanding of mental diseases and to cure them. Although still used today, usually in juxtaposition to 19th century alienism or to biological psychiatry, the origin and meaning of this expression are unclear. An unpublished lecture (1956) by Ellenberger on this subject, accompanied by an explanatory introduction, is reproduced here to shed light on Ellenberger's interpretation of that term. This article additionally aims to draw certain parallels and distinctions between Ellenberger, Michel Foucault and George Devereux's teaching in the 1950s. Considering that the history of psychiatry is now a well-established speciality in the academic world, Ellenberger's lecture is also an original document which enables us to trace the professionalization of psychiatric historiography as an academic discipline back to its beginnings after World War II.

NATIVE MESSENGERS OF GOD IN CANADA?:
A TEST CASE FOR BAHA’I UNIVERSALISM (1996)

*** Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in Canada?: A Test Case for Baha’i Universalism.” Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 97–133.

*** Award for Excellence in Baha’i Studies. Association for Baha’i Studies, 1994.

EPILOGUE

Thereupon Tekanawitaˀ [Deganawida, the Peacemaker] stood up in the center of the gathering place, and then he said, “First I will answer what it means to say, ‘Now it is arriving, the Good Message.’ This indeed, is what it means: When it stops, the slaughter of your own people who live here on earth, then everywhere peace will come about, by day and also by night, and it will come about that as one travels around, everyone will be related. …

Now again, secondly, I say, ‘Now it is arriving, the power,’ and this means that the different nations, all the nations, will become just a single one, and the Great Law will come into being, so that now all will be related to each other, and there will come to be just a single family, and in the future, in days to come, this family will continue on.

Now in turn, the other, my third saying, ‘Now it is arriving, the Peace,’ this means that everyone will become related, men and also women, and also the young people and the children, and when all are relatives, every nation, then there will be peace as they roam about by day and also by night. …

Then there will be truthfulness, and they will uphold hope and charity, so that it is peace that will unite all the people, indeed, it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means that there will be unity.” …

When they are functioning, the Good Message and also the Power and the Peace, moreover, these will be the principal things everybody will live by; these will be the great values among the people.”

– Chief John Arthur Gibson, Concerning the League: The Iroquois League as Dictated in Onondaga, newly elicited, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury in Collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry Webster on the Basis of A.A. Goldenweiser’s Manuscript. Memoir 9 (Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 1992): 36–41. 

ABSTRACT

Academic and popular interest has lent prestige to native spirituality and has brought it into prominence. The United Nations proclamation of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous People gave native peoples international recognition. A corresponding interest in native culture has “valorised” (brought respect to) native spirituality.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada took a position of advocacy on behalf of First Nations Canadians in its formal submission to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the fall of 1993. The strong native presence in Canadian Bahá’í community life raises the question of the place of native spirituality within a Bahá’í worldview.

Homefront “pioneers” have extended Bahá’í universalism to a recognition of the richness and authenticity of native cultural values. Such recognition has been supported by local Bahá’í policy, as attested in teaching pamphlets addressed to native peoples, in which the concept of First World messengers of God has been validated. Although theoretically acknowledged, explicit recognition of native messengers of God has yet to be formalised in Bahá’í doctrine.

This study discusses the possibilities of incorporating the principle of “Messengers of God to Indigenous Peoples” within formal Bahá’í doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Bahá’í belief in the North American context. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá establishes the principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible.

The problem of historical attestation remains. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Bahá’í principle of “Progressive Revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a provisional status with Bahá’í prophetology, and still affirm Bahá’u’lláh’s unific role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions.

https://www.academia.edu/36294314/_Native_Messengers_of_God_in_Canada_1996_

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

George P. Nicholas, Amy Roberts, David M. Schaepe, Joe Watkins, Lyn Leader-Elliot and Susan Rowley Department of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University; Department of Archaeology, Flinders University; Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre; Native American Studies Program, University of Oklahoma; Department of Archaeology, Flinders University; Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia nicholas@sfu.ca; amy.roberts@flinders.edu.au; dave.schaepe@stolonation.bc.ca; jwatkins@ou.edu; lyn.leader-elliott@flinders.edu.au; srowley@interchange.ubc.ca

This text is a work of historical pseudo-autobiography of a Mohican man baptized Joshua, who lived ca 1720-1775. It is written in the form of a Lebenslauf, the Moravian form of spiritual autobiography, as an experimental attempt to humanize Indian experiences of colonialism. It is based on research in the Moravian mission records, which contain extensive reports about Joshua, though nothing in his own hand. This Lebenslauf is intended to provide a suggestive rather than definitive account of one Indian man's experience of Christianity in the eighteenth century.

While " inclusion " has been seen as a central mode of redressing ongoing injustices against communities of color in the US, Indigenous political experiences feature more complex legacies of contesting US citizenship. Turning to an important episode of contestation, this essay examines the relation between inclusion and the politics of eliminating Indigenous nations that was part of a shared policy shift toward " Termination " in the Anglo-settler world of the 1950s and 1960s. Through a reading of Indigenous activist-intellectual Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), it demonstrates how the construction of what I call the " civic inclusion narrative " in post–World War II American political discourse disavowed practices of empire-formation. Widely considered a foundational text of the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement, the work repositioned Indigenous peoples not as passive recipients of civil rights and incorporation into the nation-state but as colonized peoples actively demanding decolonization. Deloria's work provides an exemplary counterpoint to the enduring thread of civic inclusion in American political thought and an alternative tradition of decolonization—an imperative that continues to resonate in today's North American and global Indigenous struggles over land, jurisdiction, and sovereignty.

This study demonstrates that that the lion’s share of everyday policing and patrol in Onion Lake and Ahtahkakoop is  administered by Peacekeepers and that their withdrawal would result in a significant impact on the effectiveness of the RCMP who
heavily rely on their assistance and guidance. The vast majority of respondents do not wish to see the Peacekeepers become a police service under the “self-administered” option of the FNPP. Without exception, however, Peacekeepers, administrators, and
RCMP officers believe the Peacekeepers need funding for  standardized training, better equipment, and uniforms as well as more formalized information sharing with the RCMP.
Under the current parameters of the FNPP, however, no such remedy is available. Without a change in the FNPP, the Peacekeepers will continue to act as underpaid, overworked and minimally trained first responders and role models upon whom the RCMP is, by their own admission, heavily dependent but unable to support. Given this state of affairs, it is recommended that the FNPP be revisited to allow for the possibility of plural forms of policing outside the First Nations Self- Administered (FNSA) and RCMP Community Tripartite Agreements (RCMP CTA) .
Peacekeepers are inexpensive and very effective. It would take very little to expand and improve their service provision and thereby free up the RCMP to also engage in more proactive and culturally appropriate mentorship and community involvement.

This paper explores the role of public architecture in anchoring Cherokee communities to particular points within the southern Appalachian landscape in the wake of European contact in North America. Documentary evidence about Cherokee public structures known as townhouses demonstrates that they were settings for a variety of events related to public life in Cherokee towns, and that there were a variety of symbolic meanings associated with them. Archaeological evidence of Cherokee townhouses—especially the sequence of six townhouses at the Coweeta Creek site in southwestern North Carolina—demonstrates an emphasis on continuity in the placement and alignment of public architecture through time. Building and rebuilding these public structures in place, and the placement of burials within these architectural spaces, created enduring attachments between Cherokee towns and the places in which they lived, in the midst of the geopolitical instability created by European contact in eastern North America.

This report describes the results of plant surveys with Native American elders along designated District 7 highways. The surveys were intended to elicit information concerning culturally significant plant gathering sites and other sites with contemporary cultural significance to Native Americans who are indigenous to the Caltrans D7 Los Angeles County project area. The project roads consist of approximately 400 miles of county roadway. Along the corridors on both sides of the highways, the roads were surveyed for culturally significant plants and other Native American traditional cultural properties visible above ground, extending approximately fifty feet from the highway right-of-way. The survey team identified a total of 106 species of culturally significant plants growing along the project roadways. The culturally significant plants have been recorded and mapped as “Gathering Places” (GP) with information describing the highway and gathering site.

This study focuses on issues of culture contact and the materialization of identity through an archaeological case study of a late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee community located in eastern Tennessee. The English Contact period (ca. A.D. 1670-1740) was an extremely turbulent time for southeastern Indian groups marked by disease, warfare, and population movements. I examine how this chaotic period played
out in the daily lives of Cherokee households. I use primary and secondary sources to develop an historical context for the English Contact period in the southeastern United
States. I introduce a reliable way to identify English Contact period Cherokee occupations using pottery and glass trade bead data. I also consult artifact data in order
to identify patterns associated with change and stability in the activities of daily life
within Cherokee households.

I find that daily life in Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the English Contact period. Based on variability in household pottery assemblages, I argue that this particular
Cherokee community included households that migrated from geographically disparate Cherokee settlements. This type of social coalescence is documented among other Indian
groups as a strategy employed to ameliorate population loss resulting from European contact. I also find that the architecture and spatial organization of Cherokee communities changed dramatically during the English Contact period. Specifically, the
later communities lacked the highly structured spatial organization and long-lived residential areas that typified earlier Mississippian period communities. Ultimately, I argue that these changes too were strategic adaptations to the flexible and transient lifestyle required during the period.

"Encounters at the Heart of the World" is a portrayal of Mandan survivance, in the face of Christian missionaries, proto-capitalist traders, Old World plagues, colonial usurpers, new technologies, and American military force. In Fenn's hands, the interwoven episodes of trade, war, and pestilence force the Mandan more than once to their last resources and yet fail to eradicate them as a People. Again and again, the Mandan suffer; but even as they reel with the various onslaughts, interventions, and devastations, they learn and improvise and carry forward their unique ways in new circumstances.  Fenn's energy and deep attachment to the Mandan as a living People inform the book from the first page to the last. She tells us in the first paragraph of the Preface that the Mandan "have lived here...for centuries." Not once does she slip into the past tense so often used by writers about Indians. In the Acknowledgements section at the end, she refers to "my little sisters in the Goose Society" and gives thanks "for gifts at once physical, spiritual, and intellectual." The reader of "Encounters at the Heart of the World" encounters the heart of the Mandan, and through their iconic history as a people of the plains learns something of the history of the world.

(Cet exposé n'est qu'une esquisse sans pretention) (This presentation is simply an unpretentious sketch)
---The term "Métis" used in this research is not associated to the Métis Nation or to any "Métis organisms," it was simply used to define somebody from mixed origins or/and culture, and/or adopted or incorporated within a First nation.
---Le terme « Métis » utilisé dans cette recherche n'est pas associé à la nation métisse ou à des « organismes métis », il a simplement été utilisé pour définir une personne d'origines et/ou de culture mixtes, et/ou adoptée ou incorporée au sein d'une Première nation.
The present study is the first part of a series of analysis from archives of the historical period between 1786 to 1940 exposing parish registers partially transcribed, shedding light on natives individuals from 1786 to 1800.

For the present presentation, parish archives from 1786 to 1800 were analyzed in order to get a good look at the population then, and the relationships occurring between them and the Sulpicians. The microfilms of parish registers available only started in 1786, since the previous registers from 1721 to 1786 have been destroyed in a fire in 1922. The main complexity remaining in the destructions of the originals is that after this date, a double was conserved, and extracted by Bishop Guillaume Forbes, but unfortunately, only a few registers concerning natives were present.

Through, the parish registers between 1786 to 1940 available on microfilms at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and at the National Archives of Quebec (BAnQ), Eric Pouliot-Thisdale, the author of this new and updated study, gathered important informations which were never described up to now, with enlightening historical and sociological observation.

For the past forty years shamanism has drawn increasing attention among the general public and academics. There is an enormous literature on shamanism, but no one has tried to understand why and how Western intellectual and popular culture became so fascinated with the topic. Behind fictional and non-fictional works on shamanism, Andrei A. Znamenski uncovers an exciting story that mirrors changing Western attitudes toward the primitive. The Beauty of the Primitive explores how shamanism, an obscure word introduced by the eighteenth-century German explorers of Siberia, entered Western humanities and social sciences, and has now become a powerful idiom used by nature and pagan communities to situate their spiritual quests and anti-modernity sentiments. The major characters of The Beauty of the Primitive are past and present Western scholars, writers, explorers, and spiritual seekers with a variety of views on shamanism. Moving from Enlightenment and Romantic writers and Russian exile ethnographers to the anthropology of Franz Boas to Mircea Eliade and Carlos Castaneda, Znamenski details how the shamanism idiom was gradually transplanted from Siberia to the Native American scene and beyond. He also looks into the circumstances that prompted scholars and writers at first to marginalize shamanism as a mental disorder and then to recast it as high spiritual wisdom in the 1960s and the 1970s. Linking the growing interest in shamanism to the rise of anti-modernism in Western culture and intellectual life, Znamenski examines the role that anthropology, psychology, environmentalism, and Native Americana have played in the emergence of neo-shamanism. He discusses the sources that inspire Western neo-shamans and seeks to explain why lately many of these spiritual seekers have increasingly moved away from non-Western tradition to European folklore. A work of intellectual discovery, The Beauty of the Primitive shows how scholars, writers, and spiritual seekers shape their writings and experiences to suit contemporary cultural, ideological, and spiritual needs. With its interdisciplinary approach and engaging style, it promises to be the definitive account of this neglected strand of intellectual history.

Under the Ottawa and Chippewa Treaty of March 28, 1836, a provision was made to pay certain sums to members of the mixed-blood individuals of the two tribes.  A commissioner was appointed to create a census register of these mixed-bloods and determine who was eligible to receive payment under this provision.  His census of 584 individuals is transcribed in this report along with his instructions from, and his report to, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

A transcription of the 1861 annual annuity payment roll for the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan under the treaty of July 31, 1855.  This roll includes bands from Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, Little Traverse, Grand Traverse and Grand River.

This document is the third annual annuity payment roll for the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan under the treaty of July 31, 1855.  The roll includes forty six bands from Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, Little Traverse, Grand Traverse, and Grand River. An index of all the names in this roll is also created.

This document contains a copy of the original 1877 genealogical roll for the Red Cliff band of Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin. This roll was created by Isaac L. Mahan of the La Pointe Indian Agency. An index of names is included at the end of the roll.

This document contains a copy of the original 1870 annuity payment rolls for the Lake Superior Chippewa bands along with a transcription of the roll and an index of the names on the transcribed roll. The following bands are included on this roll:  Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River, Red Cliff, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, L’Anse, Lac Vieux Desert, Lac du Flambeau, Ontonagon and Bois Forte.

In the 1950s, the Museu Paulista (MP) of the University of São Paulo (USP) and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) exchanged ethnographic materials. At the time, the Brazilian museum donated more than 300 objects made by Brazilian indigenous groups and in return received objects from various groups such as Apache, Najavo, Zuni, Hopi, Tlingit among other cultures. This collection was transferred in 1989 to the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE) of the same university, and consists of objects that range from accessories, clothing to an extensive miscellany of objects. In this presentation we will highlight the work accomplished with 10 objects of clothing of this collection. These pieces were chosen before the others due to the precarious state of conservation to which they were presented. Many objects were wrapped without an internal support and this caused distortions in many of them. Besides the aesthetic effect, the distortions in leather objects also caused the breaking of threads that supported beads, thus causing areas with large losses of matter. Since the packaging was not suitable, materials such as leathers and beads of objects such as bags and loafers were covered with persistent dirt. Coupled with the risks associated with poor packaging and the layers of dirt that have covered these objects for years, we also detect dissociation. The sparse information that documented the exchange between museums in the 1950s did not detail the cultural groups of their origins; in addition, much information was mistranslated over the years, which led to misunderstandings in the identification of the material. To solve the problems encountered, tests were made for identification of materials and color resistance, then proceed to the next stages of the treatments, such as aspiration, mechanical and wet cleaning, humidification and reshaping and the production of specific packaging supports for each piece through moulage or draping and flat pattern drafting techniques. In order to remedy the risk of dissociation, bibliographic and museum database searches were carried out for searches of similar pieces to those studied, and their due documentation. Finally, it was decided to analyze several points of the objects through the techniques of Energy dispersive X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (ED-XRF) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), in order to investigate the detected differences in the pieces after the preventive conservation and what the consequences that this information may have.

Tribally owned American Indian enterprises provide a unique cross-cultural setting for emerging Native American business leaders. This article examines the manner in which American Indian leaders negotiate the boundaries between their indigenous organizations and the nonindigenous communities in which they do business. Through a series of qualitative interviews, we find that American Indian business leaders fall back on a strong sense of “self,” which allows them to maintain effective leadership across boundaries. This is highly consistent with theories of authentic leadership. Furthermore, we find that leaders define self through their collective identity, which is heavily influenced by tribal affiliation and tribal culture. We add to the literature on authentic leadership by showing the role that culture and collective identity have in creating leader authenticity within the indigenous community.

Randall Trapp, et al. v. Commissioner DuBois, et al. was filed in 1995 on behalf of a group of inmates who were part of a Native American Spiritual Awareness Council in a Massachusetts prison. The Council maintained a weekly Circle and other practices associated with American Indian spirituality. At the time of filing, the Circle had already been in existence at the prison for more than five years.

The case proceeded to trial in 1999. In 2002, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ordered the Defendants to settle the controversy by negotiations with the Plaintiffs. In 2003, the first Purification Lodges were held inside three Massachusetts prisons, where named Plaintiffs were incarcerated (several having been transferred from the original prison). By 2003, Native Circles were meeting regularly in many prisons in the state.

http://people.umass.edu/derrico/trapp/

This is a story about images and their meaning. This is a story about stories and a story about beings. It is about pipes and pipelines. It is about oil and not about oil paintings. It is fragmented and disjointed. It is a needed intervention for our fossil-fuel-addicted society.

From August 2009 I took up a position as Wiepking Distinguished Professor at the University of Miami in Oxford, Ohio. I was working in three Departments - Architecture, Educational Leadership and Psychology. In the first semester, I worked with Bill Stiles on a project involving twelve senior Psychology students in a 3 credit Capstone Course: Voices of Native Americans. The intent was to develop a collaborative research project with the Myaamia Tribe of Oklahoma who had once been the original inhabitants of the Oxford area before their forced removal at gunpoint in 1846. The University in Oxford was named after them and stands on land that they once owned. The intended research was hoped to map the ways in which the Myaamia reconcile the differing voices in their mental world - the American vs. the Indian voices, for instance. As it turned out the project unfolded in was very different from those anticipated, although the final course of the project was, in hindsight very predictable.

Since we were not invited by the Myaamia, a great deal of the time was spent gaining their trust prior to the determination of an actual collaborative research enterprise that might be in their own interests. The vehicle for this trust-building was the design and construction of an installation in the Miami University's Tunnel of Oppression. This installation depicted the history of oppression that had been experienced by the Myaamia in the numerous attacks on their peaceful villages, the destruction of their food sources and crops, their forced relocation (twice), the splitting up of the tribe, the abduction of their children, the eradication of their language and their relentless survival into the present.

What follows is the report on that class project, with reflective thoughts from both the instructors and the students, and a detailed description of the Tunnel of Oppression installation.

The article investigates in how far the National Museum of the American Indian succeeded in its attempt to Indigenize museum work: counter-acting representations of static cultures with a focus in living cultures from Indigenous perspectives through community curation.

Dear General Semonite
We write as concerned archaeologists, heritage specialists, and tribal members to convey our support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their efforts to protect sacred sites, ancestral burial grounds, and water near the planned Dakota Access Pipeline project areas.  ....

This essay probes the limitations of current transnational perspectives in American studies by drawing attention to an often disregarded internal transnationalism. Via a reading of Anna Lee Walters’s novel Ghost Singer , based on performance scholar Diana Taylor’s concepts of the archive and the repertoire, the analysis negotiates Western and Native American epistemologies regarding concepts of perception, haunting, and temporality that entail challenging implications for transnational scholarship.

This chapter addresses the complex, historical, socio-political context of Native and Indigenous education within several national and regional contexts. Settler colonialism is particularly highlighted as a source of Native and Indigenous land dispossession, dehumanization, and disenfranchisement. Attention is devoted to the interplay between economic development, equity and human rights discourses in education, with a critical eye toward the Euro-dominance that allows limited
forms of Native and Indigenous cultural and linguistic autonomy. Finally, neoliberal global capitalism’s impact on the educational contexts of Native and Indigenous peoples is explored in various specific social locations with specific examples.

This book by Edwin Gaustad was the first book I read on Roger Williams in 2002.  It inspired me to proceed with research on Williams during the ensuing decade while I was working full time as a litigation lawyer and then, finally, in retirement, when I wrote and published my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience.  Gaustad is, in my view, one of the finest interpreters of Roger Williams, though he did not meticulously document his factual statements with footnotes or endnotes.  I wrote this review of his book in 2002.