Steven Conn, History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)

Maureen Konkle, Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827–1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)

New histories of indigenous and colonized peoples have revitalized some ancient questions. When and where does a properly historical discourse begin and why? The profession has traditionally given two different answers to the “when” and “where” queries. One venerable account holds that history proper begins with the Greeks and takes Herodotus (or Thucydides, depending on the political climate) for its founding patriarch. The second answer holds that historical consciousness only begins with modernity, and that real historical discourse—including the beginnings of professional, disciplined historiography—starts in Europe.