American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Scientific inquiry predicates the need for periodic self-appraisal and reexamination. Perhaps it is axiomatic that the methods, research materials and findings of the collective scholarship on the American Indian, more than a century in process, would undergo regular reevaluation. It is healthy, of course, for scholars to challenge older theories and methods, to question earlier facts and findings as well as the very 'artifacts' of research upon which we hang our theories and conclusions. Sometimes newer methodology or a new perspective inspires innovative approaches to bridge disciplinary foci and thus bring fresh insights to a field of study. This is certainly true for the study of Native Americans. Recent decades, for example, have witnessed the maturation of ethnohistory, which has helped to synthesize the disparate approaches of anthropologists, geographers and historians-the three fields represented in this symposium. Whatever newer perspectives are advanced in these three papers, they belong hopefully to the mainstream of concern for rigorous criticism not just of our findings but also of our source materials-those miscellaneous 'artifacts' that include herein mission registers or padrones, letters (those by John Sutter) and maps as they have recorded changing land tenure.