The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

Introduction 15
3. Where possible we used forms cited as index standards in O'Leaiy's
Ethnographic Bibliography of South America because his bibliography
(together with CD-ROM databases such as Latin American
Studies, Handbook of Latin American Studies, and so forth) offers a
major gateway into the literature and helps readers connect widi
writings that describe the group in question under other names.
4. Wherever possible, our authors discarded objectionable nicknames,
even those common in the literature. In the case of nicknames
widely diffused in literature, such as "Campa" or "Jivaro," we
sought to mention equivalences with more acceptable terms. Some
articles include current reformed ethnonyms if they are becoming
well established. We avoided proposals for renaming that may
prove ephemeral.
One of the most troublesome problems concerns exogenous "lumping"
terms. We treat them in the following ways: We admit the word
indio and its imperfect gloss 'Indian' as the name of a colonial social role.
In general, we avoid it as a generic modern term for Native South
Americans because its predominant function is to impute racial inferiority.
However, Xavier Albo, in Chapter 2.5, has taken sides with those who
hope to transvalue the word indio, translated 'Indian,' somewhat as
"black" was transvalued in the American English of recent times.
We admitted exogenous broad terms that are generally intended nonprejudicially.
These include indigena and 'indigenous', natural (a colonial
usage) and its gloss 'native', "Native American," "autochthonous," "aboriginal,"
and "Amerindian."
In treating other terms that arose within Latin American folk models
of inequality, such as bianco 'white', mestizo 'mixed blood', negro (moreno,
preto) 'black', we deal with them as cultural classifiers typical of the
periods in question. Chapter 21 explicitly problematizes the degree to
which they denominated self-recognized groups.
Regarding terms that bracket types of societies, this volume, unlike
the Handbook of South American Indians, is not keyed to any theory
about levels of sociocultural complexity and does not seek to establish
disciplinary benchmarks for the meaning of words such as "band,"
"state," or "chiefdom." We have requested authors to provide definitions
within their respective frameworks where necessary. However, one term
requires comment because its many usages in the extant literature produce
confusion. This, of course, is the word "tribe." In both old and
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