Desert Hawk Books

The Assiniboine

Edwin Thompson Denig

Edited by
J.N.B. Hewitt

Intro by
David R. Miller

 

304  pages
25 B&W Illustrations
6" x 9"
Paperback

Quantity:  $14.95 & S/H

*Not for sale in Canada

 

Edwin Thompson Denig entered the fur trade on the Upper Missouri River in 1833. As husband to the daughter of an Assiniboine headman and as a bookkeeper stationed at Fort Union, Denig became knowledgeable about the tribal groups of the Upper Missouri and was consulted by several noted investigators of Indian culture. When Denig was asked to respond to a circular by Schoolcraft, he didn't simply rely on his own knowledge, but instead interviewed "in company with the Indians for an entire year" until he had obtained satisfactory answers.
     Denig's manuscript was unpublished until 1930, when J.N.B. Hewitt edited it for publication in the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology's Forty-sixth Annual Report. Long unavailable, this new edition provides a complete ethnology of the Assiniboine Indians, including information on their history, tribal organization and government, religion, manners and customs, warfare, dances, and language.

"This work may be regarded as the most complete and authentic description of Assiniboine Indian culture in the mid-nineteenth century known to ethnology."-John C. Ewers, author of The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains and editor of Denig's Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri

Edwin Thompson Denig (1812-1858) was a fur trader on the Upper Missouri for twenty-five years. J.N.B. Hewitt was an Iroquois ethnologist on staff at the Bureau of American Ethnology. 
David R. Miller is Associate Professor of Indian Studies at Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, Regina, and the author of "The Assiniboine" in The Handbook of North American Indians.