Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History

It takes patience and dedication to recover and communicate the experiences and perspectives of those for whom the historical record is lacking or severely limited by the interpretation of others—it takes reading beyond words. The first edition of this highly praised collection presented some of the best new efforts to examine critically the possible interpretations of Native North American history and Native-European encounters over 500 years. In doing so it served as a model for revisiting Native history.

To this extensively revised new edition, three new "encounter studies" have been added, presenting original and thought-provoking work not previously published: the Frobisher expeditions and their relations with the Inuit in the 1570s; Thanadelthur, the remarkable Dene woman who brought her people to a peace with the Cree and to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company in the early 1700s; and the previously unexamined dynamics of Cree-Oblate missionary relations on Hudson Bay in the late 1800s to mid-1900s, as seen from both sides.

Jennifer S.H. Brown is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Winnipeg, Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Peoples in an Urban and Regional Context, and Director of the Centre for Rupert's Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg. She is the author of Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (University of Oklahoma Press, 1996).

Elizabeth Vibert is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Victoria. She is the author of Traders' Tales: Narratives of Cultural Encounters in the Columbia Plateau, 1807-1846 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).