Putting Ethnohistory to Work: Jack Forbes and the Remaking of American Historical Consciousness

Abstract

AbstractJack Forbes enjoyed a prolific and influential career as an ethnohistorian and educator. His groundbreaking analysis of the Southwest borderlands and interdisciplinary studies of mixed-race histories endures, and his championing of Native-centered pedagogies is now seamlessly woven into curricula throughout North America. This article examines Forbes’s efforts to remake the American historical consciousness—what Forbes called the “conqueror consciousness”—by using ethnohistorical methodologies in his scholarship and teaching. The article outlines Forbes’s career, paying particular attention to his scholarship and curriculum reform efforts during the 1960s. Those years proved crucial in Forbes’s development as a scholar and teacher and in advancing the nascent field of ethnohistory.