"A welcome addition to the sparse literature on this important Native American society."

—American Antiquity

"Perttula's book is an essential reference for the specialist in Caddo culture and Caddo archaeology (the comprehensive bibliography alone is worth the price of the book). It offers much to a wider audience, however. Anyone who has ever studied the impacts of European/Native American contacts and the decline of native societies will welcome this as an excellent case study that succeeds in bridging the gap between historic documents and archaeological data.... It should eventually find its way into the classroom as a text, not only for the study of the Caddo, but for the study of European impacts on native people in general."

—Heritage

First published in 1992 and now updated with a new preface by the author and a foreword by Thomas R. Hester, "The Caddo Nation" investigates the early contacts between the Caddoan peoples of the present-day Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas region and Europeans, including the Spanish, French, and some Euro-Americans.

Perttula's study explores Caddoan cultural change from the perspectives of both archaeological data and historical, ethnographic, and archival records. The work focuses on changes from A.D. 1520 to ca. A.D. 1800 and challenges many long-standing assumptions about the nature of these changes.