Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Social scientists collected many, many American Indian autobiographies during the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, autobiographies of Apaches, Navajos, Hopis, Zunis, Papagos, Kiowas, Sioux, a Kwakiutl, autobiographies of shamans, shepherds, hunters, farmers, men, and women. Many of these are now moldering in the dark reaches of forgotten file cabinets, but a remarkable number were published, and for this we must be grateful. These narratives are to us a legacy, affording us some sense of what it means to see the world and the self according to ancient habits of mind.