Boundaries Between

Boundaries Between skillfully relates the history of the Southern Paiutes from their first contacts with Europeans through the end of the twentieth century. In an engaging style, Martha C. Knack combines contemporary oral histories, meticulous archival research, original ethnographic fieldwork, and an astute critical perspective on Indian-white relations. Before the arrival of European Americans, Southern Paiutes foraged the arid hills and valleys of the area known today as southern Utah, northern Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California. By all the “rules” of history and anthropology, such a small-scale, foraging culture should have disappeared long ago, but the Southern Paiutes survive, and their story unsettles assumptions about the role that social complexity, power, and culture play in the dynamics of human history.

“[Knack’s] focus on interethnic issues puts Boundaries Between on the summit of current ethnohistory: it does not get any better.”—Utah Historical Quarterly, “This excellent work describes how the flexible Southern Paiutes have maintained boundaries between themselves and various groups of outsiders for more than two centuries, while at the same time crossing these boundaries to take advantage of the possibilities afforded by the newcomers.”—American Historical Review, “Outstanding work. Twenty-eight years ‘in the field’ and in some of the U.S.’s most prestigious research libraries have yielded definitive ethnohistorical information.”—Choice, "Knack's book makes a valuable and readable contribution to the history of that region and to the literature on ethnic boundary maintenance."—Robert Bee, The Journal of American History, "Knack's elegant study is the definitive work on Southern Paiutes and a major contribution to the theory of ethnohistory and cultural exchange."—Marcia Clouser, Journal of the West

Martha C. Knack is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the coauthor of As Long as the River Shall Run: An Ethnohistory of Pyramid Lake Reservation and coeditor of Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives.