Ultimate Americans

Point Hope Alaska: 1826-1909

Lowenstein Tom

The third volume in a series on Point Hope, Alaska, "Ultimate Americans" examines the first encounters between the native Tikigaq people and Anglo-Americans during the nineteenth century. Tom Lowenstein investigates the interactions between Native Alaskans, commercial whalemen, and missionaries in Point Hope, charting the destabilizing elements of alcohol and disease among Native populations, as well as cultural collisions and the eventual mutual assimilation of the groups. An in-depth historical chronicle, "Ultimate Americans" will be invaluable reading for historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists alike.

About the Author

Tom Lowenstein is the author of "Ancestors and Species: New and Selected Ethnographic Poetry, Ancient Land, Sacred Whale", and "The Things That Were Said of Them".

Reviews

"An account of the founding of Port Hope, an Inupiat settlement in northwestern Alaska, ['Ultimate Americans'] is the most authoritative account of this community and one of the richer ethnohistorical accounts of the relationships between settlers and Inupiat... The study focuses on the life-histories of two individuals: Atanauraq, a mercurial Inupiat leader, and John B. Driggs, a 'bohemian' missionary... In between these two biographies, Lowenstein provides the reader with excellent chapters giving details of economic relations, the earlier history of contact, and the health and spiritual life of the local population" – Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

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