Morton Hall 233 | 910.962.3315 | lavered@uncw.edu
Dr. La Vere is a former Marine infantryman who received his Ph.D from Texas A&M University in 1993. His research specialty is Southern Plains and Southeastern Indians. He has published four books, including The Caddo Chiefdoms: Caddo Economics and Politics, 800 AD - 1835 (1998, University of Nebraska Press) and Life Among the Texas Indians: The WPA Narratives (1998, Texas A&M University Press). His third book, Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory (2000, University of Oklahoma Press), examines the interactions between the Southeastern Indians who were removed to Indian Territory over the Trail of Tears with the Southern Plains Indians already living there. It won the 2001 Oklahoma Book Award for Best Nonfiction. His fourth book is The Texas Indians, an overview of the Indian of Texas from 12,000 years ago to the present, and was just published in 2004 by the Texas A&M University Press. La Vere received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1993 where he studied with Gary Clayton Anderson.
La Vere has also published several articles, including "Facing Off; Indian-Spanish Rivalry in the Greater Southwest, 1528-1821" in "They Made Us Many Promises": The American Indian Experience, 1524 to the Present (Harlan-Davidson, Inc., 2002) and "Between Kinship and Capitalism: French and Spanish Rivalry in the Colonial Louisiana-Texas Indian Trade, The Journal of Southern History LXIV, No. 2, May 1998.
At UNCW, La Vere teaches several American Indian history classes, including American Indian History (HST 349) and Southeastern Indians (HST 350). American Indians also receive a lot of exposure in his History of the American West (HST 348). La Vere also teaches these classes as both undergraduate and graduate seminars. He is in the process of creating two additional Indian history classes: Plains Indian History and American Indians in the 20th Century. Both of these should be ready by Fall 2000.
Professor La Vere welcomes graduate and undergraduate students who wish to study American Indian history. Over the years, he has built a rather large collection of Indian-related microfilm at the UNCW library. North Carolina, the Southeast, and the Southern Plains have a rich Indian history, while North Carolina itself has almost 100,000 American Indians living in the state, so research and thesis topics abound. He has also been fortunate to have had very good students study with him, some who have written articles in his seminars and then gone on to have them published in the American Indian Quarterly and other journals. Several of his students have been accepted into the Ph.D programs at University of Oklahoma, University of Tennessee, and Western Michigan University.
La Vere is a member of the Western History Association, the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Texas State Historical Association, and the Louisiana History Association.
Click to see photo of UNCW Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo presenting First Lady Laura Bush with a copy of my recent book, The Texas Indians, in August 2004.
Click here to see a photo of Dr. La Vere with Josh Bernstein, host of the History Channel's show, Digging for the Truth. Dr. La Vere served as an on-camera commentator on the show about North Carolina's Lost Colony of Roanoke. Picture from May 2005.
For more information, click on Dr. La Vere's personal web page:
