Summary Of Edward Spicer's Cycles Of Conquest

Cycles of Conquest, by Edward H. Spicer, is notably a classic, “essential” book for readers learning about the history of cultural change in the southwest. Published in 1962, Spicer’s work offers a scope of the histories of southwestern Native Americans—based on available knowledge. Edward Spicer introduces the first part of his book by stating several times that the historical lens is distorted because it is the history of the Spanish and their contacts with Native Americans, rather than the history of the Natives, from the Natives. He writes, “it is in full recognition of the fact that the information about the Indians themselves is secondhand and terribly biased that the exposition of the ‘history’ of the contacts of the Indians of northwestern
Another editorial review from the El Paso Herald-Post claims the book “will be the best introduction to Indian acculturation in the southwest for a long time to come.” The El Paso Herald-Post was founded in 1881 and ceased publication in 1997. Though one of the highlighted editorial reviews is from a post that has been out of business for almost twenty years, Cycles of Conquest continues to be used as a source book for anthropologists and historians. Edward H Spicer’s Cycles of Conquest contains dated language that is modernly considered slander. But college-aged students should not be protected from offensive and insensitive language; the malicious vocabulary should be noted and discussed. To sensor historical works that contain insensitive language is a masking agent: it hides social progress that is exponentially improving. Cycles of Conquest should not be retired as a source book for information about southwestern cultural change because of its offensive language, it should be retired because of its outdated