<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Numbers Can Lie
Review: Although Henige writes cleverly, probably few laymen will choose this book as leisure reading. Likewise, few scholars (except perhaps for Henige's professional enemies and a few unfortunate graduate students) will read it all the way through without skipping pages and even whole chapters.
Henige need not worry. His book needed to be written, and his thesis is sound. "High Counters" have indeed grossly exaggerated the pre-contact population of American Indians on the basis of virtually nothing but the desire to take a currently fashionable position. Wisely, Henige reminds his readers that there are places historians cannot go because no evidence remains and that this lack of evidence can become an opportunity for wild conjecture on the part of those who have ideological axes to grind.
Of necessity whoever took on the "High Counters" had to drudge through the facts and figures to prove them misguided, and the drudging doesn't always make for engaging reading. Nevertheless, Henige ranges widely and engagingly in his series of essays, treating such profitable topics as numerical exaggerations in classical texts and even in works of imagination. Some passages are so witty I laughed out loud.
Rating:
Summary: Trying to get the numbers right.
Review: An outstanding look at the way people with an agenda can manipulate evidence.This is NOT an argument condoning the slaughter of Indians and the habitual treaty breaking and general racism that did take place. And small pox blankets were DEFINITELY given to the Indians by the British after Pontiac's War, and probably at other times too. This book only addresses the numbers that can be documented as embellishments. Splendid arguments accompanied by notes, a generous bibliography, and index.
<< 1 >>
| 
