In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, & the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery Book

Contents

List of Figures....................ix
Acknowledgments....................xi
Note on the Problematics of Word Choice and Usage....................xv
Prologue The Autobiography of a Book....................1
1. The Politics of American Prehistory Isolation versus Contact....................19
2. Contact and Conflict What the Vinland Sagas Tell Us....................44
3. Anglo-America's Viking Heritage A Nineteenth-Century Romance....................103
4. The New England Poets of Viking America and the Emergence of the Plastic Viking....................151
5. The Challenge to Columbus and the Romance Undone....................213
6. "We could not discerne any token or signe, that ever any Christian had been before" The Phantom of First Contact....................256
7. Contact and Conflict Again What Native Stories Tell Us....................280
Epilogue History Lessons....................327
Notes....................335
Works Consulted....................379
Index....................407