Jack D. Forbes's monumental Africans and Native Americans has become a canonical text in the study of relations between the two groups. Forbes explores key issues relating to the evolution of racial terminology and European colonialists' perceptions of color, analyzing the development of color classification systems and the specific evolution of key terms such as black, mulatto, and mestizo—terms that no longer carry their original meanings. Forbes also presents strong evidence that Native American and African contacts began in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.|Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1 Africans and Americans: Inter-Continental Contacts Across the Atlantic, to 1500 6
2 The Intensification of Contacts: Trans-Atlantic Slavery and Interaction, after 1500 26
3 Negro, Black and Moor: The Evolution of These Terms as Applied to Native Americans and Others 65
4 Loros, Pardos and Mestizos: Classifying Brown Peoples 93
5 The Mulato Concept: Origin and Initial Use 131
6 Part-Africans and Part-Americans as Mulatos 151
7 The Classification of Native Americans as Mulattoes in Anglo-North America 190
8 Mustees, Half-Breeds and Zambos 221
9 Native Americans as Pardos and People of Color 239
10 African-American Contacts and the Modern Re-Peopling of the Americas 265
Notes 272
Bibliography 315
Index 335| "A great piece of scholarship, a refreshing analysis of race in the Americas, and a significant advance in the understanding of Africans and Americans in the ethnic make-up of this country."—Molefi K. Asante, author of Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans

|Jack D. Forbes (d. 2011) was a professor emeritus and the director of Native American studies at the University of California-Davis. He was the author of Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism.