the search for history in the native caribbean and south america

[First paragraph] Bom to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. NOBLE D. COOK. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 248 pp. (Cloth US$ 54.95, Paper US$ 15.95) An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians. FRAY RAMÓN PANÉ. Edited by José J. Arrom, translated by Susan C. Griswold. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. 72 pp. (Cloth US$ 39.95, Paper US$ 12.95) Some Recoveries in Guiana Indian Ethnohistory. GERRIT BOS. Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1998. 361 pp. (Paper NLG 85.00) Each of these three volumes reflects a particular approach to the history of the Native Caribbean and South America, but despite their distinct methodologies and approaches they share a rather restricted view of the historiographical possibilities for knowing that past. None makes use of native testimony, nor do they consider ethnographic materials on native historicity. As such they represent a style of historiographical reasoning that has largely been supplanted by a broad range of archaeological, textual, and ethnographic works which seek to properly integrate these kinds of materials to reveal not just a history of others but others' histories.