invading culture that told them their religion was wrong and Christianity was
right. This process exemplifies what anthropologists call cultural
imperialism. Even the proud Plains Indians, whose syncretic culture combined
horses and guns from the Spanish with Native art, religion, and hunting styles,
showed the effects of cultural imperialism: the Sioux word for white man,
wasichu, means “one who has everything good.”^40
The textbook Life and Liberty is distinguished by its graphic presentation of
change in Native societies. It confronts students with this provocative pair of
illustrations and asks, “Which shows Indian life before Europeans arrived and
which shows Indian life after? What evidence tells you the date?” Thus Life
and Liberty helps students understand that Europeans did not “civilize” or
“settle” “roaming” Indians, but had the opposite impact.
To be anthropologically literate about culture contact, students should be
familiar with the terms syncretism and cultural imperialism, or at least the
concepts they denote. None of the textbooks I studied mentions either term, and
most of them tell little about the process of cultural change, again except for the
Plains Indian horse culture, which, as a consequence, comes across as unique.
Even the best of the new textbooks are short on analysis. They don’t treat the
crucial importance of incorporation into the global economy, which helps to