Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnolopgy Bulletin 30 (2 VOLUME SET)

New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 1971. Reprint . Hardcover. Good. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Minor edge and corner wear; lightly scuffed and scratched; corners are gently bumped and rubbed; some light shelf wear; ex-library with the usual library markings; overall a nice used 2 VOLUME SET! Brown cloth with black and silver lettering on the spine. 2193 informative and historical pages nicely enhanced by black and white illustrations and photographs! "During the early exploration and settlement of North America, a multitude of Indian tribes were encountered, having diverse customs and languages. Lack of knowledge of the aborigines and of their languages led to many curious errors on the part of the early explorers and settlers: names were applied to the Indians that had no relation whatever to their aboriginal names; sometimes nicknames were bestowed, owing perhaps to personal characteristics, fancied or real; sometimes tribes came to be known by names given by other tribes, which were often opprobrious; frequently the designation by which a tribal group was know to itself was employed, and as such names are oftentimes unpronounceable by alien tongues and unrepresentable by civilized alphabets, the result was a sorry corruption, varying according as the sounds were impressed on Spanish, English, French, Dutch, German, Russian, or Swedish ears. Sometimes, again, bands of a single tribe were given distinctive tribal names, while clans and gentes were often regarded as independent autonomous groups to which separate tribal designations likewise were applied. Consequently, in the literature relating to the American Indians, which is practically coextensive with the literature of the first three centuries of the New World, thousands of such names are recorded, the significance and application of which are to be understood only after much study. The need of a comprehensive work on the subject has been felt ever since scientific interest in the Indians was first aroused. many lists of tribes have been published, but the scientific student, as well as the general reader, until the present time has been practically without the means of knowing any more about a given confederacy, tribe, clan, or settlement of Indians than was to be gleaned from casual references to it. The work of which this Handbook is an outgrowth had its inception as early as 1873, when Prof. Otis T. Mason, now of the United States National Museum, began the preparation of a list of the tribal names mentioned in the vast literature pertaining to the Indians, and in due time several thousand names were recorded, with references to the works in which they appear......" ---- from the Preface. (2 VOLUME SET).