NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN ACROSS TIME

Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. By Camilla Townsend. New York: Hill & Wang, 2004. xi + 223 pp. Photographs, illustrations, notes, and index. $25.00 (cloth); $14.00 (paper).

A Necessary Balance: Gender and Power among Indians of the Columbia Plateau. By Lillian A. Ackerman. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. xiv + 282 pp. Maps, photographs, tables, bibliography, and index. $42.95 (cloth).

Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838–1907. By Carolyn Ross Johnston. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003. xiv + 227 pp. Photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $53.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Choctaw Women in a Chaotic World. By Michelene Pesantubbee. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. xi + 208 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95 (cloth); $21.95 (paper).

Katherine M. B. Osburn
Tennessee Technological University

A decade ago historian Nancy Shoemaker opened her collection of articles on native women's history, Negotiators of Change, with an anecdote about a colleague's response to her project. "Why do we need a book in Indian women's history," he remarked, "There already is one." Since this ill-conceived remark, the study of Indian women's lives has produced an exceptional body of scholarship. These four new works continue this tradition, reflecting several themes that have developed within the genre: the issue of women's status and power before and after contact with Europeans, the specific cultural and historical forces shaping construction of gender roles, and issues of the representation of Indian women. Moreover, perhaps the most noteworthy change in the field of Indian women's history over the last decade is the broadening of the category of gender analysis to include an assessment of male gender roles; each of these works incorporates this approach. Taken together, these four monographs are reason to celebrate continued excellence in the scholarship of the field.