David Yetman

Natural Landmarks of Arizona is an odd one out, in a good way. As promised on the tin, it takes us roadtripping--mountaintripping?-- across the great state of Arizona, and it does so while giving us interesting tidbits about the territory. From geological info to historical ones, Yetman covers all aspects of each cliff and hill.

[Keep reading @ Bookshelves & Teacups]… (meer)

In his latest work, David A. Yetman, a research social scientist at the Southwestern Center, University of Arizona, offers a fine ethnohistory of a once thriving, now extinct indigenous people. Yetman describes in extensive, but never boring, detail the history of the Ópatas, who inhabited the rugged river valleys of present-day Sonora since pre-Columbian times. Unlike other Sonoran tribes, however, the Ópata seem to have disappeared during the last century. Yetman attempts to explain (p. 246): ‘How is it possible that the Opatans, so numerous five hundred years ago, disappeared as a people, while other Sonoran indigenous groups persevered?’ Yetman offers a combination of six reasons for this disappearance: Opatans were separated by language and geography; their best valley land was eventually appropriated by Spaniards; disease; the perfidious influence of mining centers; their willingness to fight Apaches alongside the Spaniards; and the long absence of men from communities while away labouring in the mines or in the military.

Yetman’s methodology in this work is praiseworthy, as he deftly examines primary and secondary sources for anthropological details, sometimes minor, from which he then extrapolates whole strands of cultural historical detail. In the same vein, he compares the Ópatas to neighboring cultures like the Pimas, Yaquis, and Mayos. This is all done without making any illogical or implausible suppositions. Particularly insightful (and deserving further treatment) is his aside that Spanish descriptions of Opatan ‘laziness’ and intransigence mimicked white descriptions of slaves in the antebellum US (pp. 142, 223-224). Yetman’s book is an excellent example of an interdisciplinary ethnohistorical account of a native people of the Spanish borderlands, serving ably as a descendant of Spicer’s Cycles of Conquest (p. x) and an example for future scholars.… (meer)