ABSTRACT
How can we know how preliterate, ancient, and medieval people formed their identities, responded to authority, related to those they were not, knew who they were? It is hard enough to get a grip on these questions, let alone find good answers to them in our own age. Historians like to deal with literate people. Written records are grist for their analytical mills. Nonliter ate cultures leave things behind for anthropologists to sift through, so there are some conclusions that can be drawn about them, their sources of author ity and identity. Anthropologists have journeyed to and lived among such societies in our own times. We also have the records of explorers and travelers throughout history who encountered people in nonliterate socie ties. Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, for example, during their explorations of 1804-6, encountered and described in their journals more than forty distinct tribal groups of Native North Americans, most of whom had never seen or been seen by Europeans.
