Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes

by Carl Waldman

Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Third Edition is a fully updated reference discussing more than 200 American Indian tribes of North America, as well as prehistoric peoples and civilizations. Arranged alphabetically by tribe or group, this comprehensive work offers 60 new entries on tribes not covered in depth in the previous editions. The informative, accessible text summarizes the historical record - locations, migrations, contacts with non-Indians, wars, and more - and includes present-day tribal affairs and issues. The book also covers traditional Indian lifeways, including diet, housing, transportation, tools, clothing, art, and rituals, as well as language families. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Third Edition includes at least one representative tribe from each language family or language isolate for each of the culture areas.

Genres: History, Native American, Nonfiction, Reference, American History, Native Americans

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Carl Waldman is a freelance writer who divides his time between the streets of New York City and the hills of upstate New York. He is the author of a number of reference books on Native Americans, including Atlas of the North AmericanIndian, Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, and Biographical Dictionary of American Indian History to 1900. He co-authored other books on history and popular culture, including Encyclopedia of Exploration, Encyclopedia of European Peoples, The Art of Magic, Elvis Immortal, and Forever Sinatra. He also has cowritten several screenplays, including an episode of Miami Vice for NBC and The Legend of Two Path, a drama about the Native American side of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, shown at Festival Park on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. His hobbies include music and he has played in a number of bands and has worked with young people in music workshops. Streetscape is his first mystery.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great reference and fascinating in its own right. I got this mainly to use as a reference when writing stories, but it's also a great book to browse through. I'm somewhat familiar with some of the Native American cultures in my area, but regarding those of most of the New World I'm fairly ignorant.
To me there's nothing more interesting than people, so psychology, history, sociology, and anthropology are all endlessly intriguing. As well as a lot of information, this book has a lot of illustrations in color of everything from household implements to religious symbols to weapons to clothing. Well worth reading and keeping as a reference.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative book that covers most of the major and minor tribes north of Central America with a stronger focus on the tribes of Canada and the US. Could have used a more standardized format to describe each tribe than the informal narrative style used.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative, the only book I've found so far that covers all the "tribes" in such detail

[Cecile · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.7 Good jumping off point, as this is the most information the public library has, still there were nations of people whom I could not locate in this volume and that disturbs me. Also, I did not readily find contact information for each people group, as I would like to hear what they think of this volume and others that group them all together.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very interesting. There were over 150 tribes described in this book. They were divided up into 12 different geographical culture areas. (Northeast, Southeast etc.) Within each culture area there were a lot of similarities between tribes, but from one culture area to another there were a lot of differences.

The book was published with the tribes in alphabetical order, but I wanted to read them in geographical order which meant a lot of flipping back to the page at the beginning of the book which listed them in that order and putting a check-mark beside the section I just read.

Each section started off by describing where the tribe originally lived, what their homes were like, what kind of food they ate, and other things unique to that tribe's way of life. It then listed when the first contact with Europeans was for that tribe and any wars that occurred and ended by telling where they live now. There were drawn illustrations throughout.

It was a nice introduction to many different tribes and whet my appetite to read more extensively about some of them.

[Shayla Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking to do a jig-saw activity with your students on Native Americans, this book is a huge help. It accurately summarizes the cultural and geographical content of each each while being very simple to read. The illustrations are quite enamoring as well. Students can enjoy being experts on certain tribes. You can enjoy watching them learn and then teach others.