an understandings of the relationship between human beings and the natural world; linguistics -- to trace the origins and development of Indian languages and the genealogy of Indian language families; anthropology -- to identify shared cultural elements and cultural distinctions between Indian peoples; and even "conventional" techniques of history -- e.g., close interpretation of such historical documents as Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, George Catlin's Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians (both text and illustrations) or James Mooney's anthropological treatise The Ghost Dance Religion, in order to sort out the facts of how American Indians lived and saw themselves as distinct from how European travellers saw them. One last preliminary question: What is a culture? What do we mean when we talk about a given people's culture? James Axtell has provided a definition of culture that, in many ways, illustrates the problems of grappling with this slippery concept: A culture is an idealized pattern of meanings, values, and norms differentially shared by the members of a society, which can be inferred from the non-instinctive behavior of the group and from the symbolic products of their actions, including material a artifacts, language, and social institutions. The following reworking of Axtell's definition may make it more accessible and useful: A culture is the body of ideas, ways of looking at the world, values, and standards for conduct and behavior that a given people or nation hold in common. It includes the range of meanings that people assign to their own perceptions and behavior, as well as to the natural world around them. We can define the elements of that culture, and understand how they fit together as a culture, by examining that people's customs, language, religion, material artifacts, and social and political institutions. That Indian peoples lacked some of the elements of European c...
