Forgotten Voices: Death Records of the Yakama, 1888-1964

Drawing on their quarter-century of research in the US National Archives and on the reservations of the Pacific Northwest, Trafzer (American Indian affairs and history, U. of California-Riverside) and McCoy (history, Washington State U.) compile statistical data from the death certificates of American Indian people from many different tribes that the government had forced onto the Yakama Indian Reservation, in Washington State. They also incorporate information from interviews they conducted during the 1970s and 1980s and secondary and primary written sources to cover the years 1888-1964. The arrangement is by cause of death. They find the data to reveal how the Office of Indian Affairs ignored the large number of deaths on the reservation and pushed its agenda to assimilate Indians without regard to their ultimate survival as a people. That, they conclude, is a policy of genocide. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Clifford E. Trafzer is the Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs and professor of History at the University of California, Riverside.

Robert R. McCoy is assistant professor in the History Department at Washington State University.