show that despite how they vilified Nahuas and their hands over the following decades, Nahuas kept linking their hands to life force, to the kindling of skills, and to their cultural predecessors. Nahua views of the hands proved more resilient than the newcomers ever imagined."

A: "I put together this study because I wanted to know how Nahuas thought about their hands, especially after the Spaniards targeted Mexica hands and arms during the Feast of Toxcatl. The Spaniards' own records, it turns out,

⭐️Article Spotlight ⭐️

Featured in the July 2025 Issue of Ethnohistory

Nahua Hands, the Feast of Toxcatl, and the Transmission of Legacy by Servando Z. Hinojosa

Author Q&A
Q: Why did you write this article?

While the ethnography is condensed, even skeletal in my article-I hope there's enough to give readers a basic understanding of Amazonian indigenous ways and their significance for interpreting the past.”

The ethnographic scholarship makes it clear why that mattered-by taking the women, colonial agents not only split up the principais families and undercut their prestige, but they destroyed interethnic alliances and tore apart the social fabric of the entire region.

A: “While indigenous voices are relatively rare in colonial documents, when they are there, we should listen. Time and again Amazonian leaders had explained why they rebelled: priests and other Portuguese authorities had separated them from their women.

⭐️Article Spotlight ⭐️

Featured in the July 2025 Issue of Ethnohistory

“To Be at Peace”: Indigenous Women, Interethnic Marriages, and Cunhamenas in Northwestern Amazonia, 1730–1755 by Barbara A. Sommer

Author Q&A
Q: Why did you write this article?

I believe that it is vitally important for historians to understand the roles that Indigenous legal practices have played in the past."

Author Q&A
Q: Why did you write this article?
A: "I wrote this article to highlight some of the ways in which Powhatan law has contributed to the history of Indigenous-European conflict over territorial possessions.

⭐️Article Spotlight ⭐️

Featured in the July 2025 Issue of Ethnohistory

“To Rule by Customes”: Powhatan Assertions of Territorial Possessions against the Virginia Company, 1607–1624 by Joe Borsato

Instead, communities maintained their sovereignty, through deer hunting, despite colonial settlement and encroachment. Just because the Europeans claimed ownership of the land in their legal system does not mean that Indigenous people had actually lost that land.

Author Q&A
Q: Why did you write your article?
A: "Gone a Hunting" is important because it complicates narratives of colonial expansion and Indigenous dispossession. From a 17th-century Algonquian perspective, English settlement and encroachment was not nearly as successful as many have believed.

⭐️Article Spotlight ⭐️

Featured in the July 2025 Issue of Ethnohistory

“Gone a Hunting”: Deer Hunting and Indigenous Sovereignty in New England, 1600-1750 by Nathan Braccio

Nahua Hands, the Feast of Toxcatl, and the Transmission of Legacy url: read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory...

“To Be at Peace”: Indigenous Women, Interethnic Marriages, and Cunhamenas in Northwestern Amazonia, 1730–1755 url: read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory...

“To Rule by Customes”: Powhatan Assertions of Territorial Possessions against the Virginia Company, 1607–1624 by Joe Borsato url: read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory...

Check out: “Gone a Hunting”: Deer Hunting and Indigenous Sovereignty in New England, 1600–1750 url: read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory...

Nahua Hands, the Feast of Toxcatl, and the Transmission of Legacy by Servando Hinojosa

2022 Presidential Address: Rock, Paper, Scissors—Ethnohistory and an Indigenous Archive by Barbara Mundy

Read now on read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory...

“To Rule by Customes”: Powhatan Assertions of Territorial Possessions against the Virginia Company, 1607–1624 by Joe Borsato

“To Be at Peace”: Indigenous Women, Interethnic Marriages, and Cunhamenas in Northwestern Amazonia, 1730–1755 by Barbara Sommer

📣New Ethnohistory Issue 📣

July 2025
Volume 72, Number 3

In this new issue we showcase:

“Gone a Hunting”: Deer Hunting and Indigenous Sovereignty in New England, 1600–1750 by Nathan Braccio