The History Book Club discussion
NATIVE AMERICANS
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NATIVE AMERICANS - INTRODUCTION
A Chronology of Native Americans: The Ultimate History of North America's Indigenous Peoples
by Greg O'Brien (no photo)Synopsis:
A Chronology of Native Americans provides the history of the lives of the Apache, Sioux, Mohawk, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Navajo, Iroquois, Algonquin, Pueblo, Anasazi, and other Native Americans from prehistory to the present day. From ancient settlements to contemporary reservations, this is the story of North America’s indigenous peoples. Each page includes a running timeline placing key events into historical context. This book features more than 300 archive photographs and illustrations.
The Religions of the American Indians
by Ă…ke Hultkrantz (no photo)Synopsis:
This book presents a comprehensive survey of the complex indigenous religions of the Americas, both North and South, as they were in the past and as they still exist in some societies.
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Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life From Paleo-Indians to the Present
by Frederick E. Hoxie (no photo)Synopsis:
Even as interest in the powerful, often tragic history of Native America grows, many books continue to perpetuate long-standing misconceptions of the past as well as the romantic steretypes often popularized today. Readers can now rely on Encyclopedia of North American Indians for an authentic and often surprising portrait of the complexities of the Native American experience. Written by more than 260 contemporary authorities, the volume features many Native American contributors - including eminent writers, tribal elders, scholars, and activists - with voices as distinct as their subjects, offering a deeper and more informed appreciation of American Indian life, past and present. Illustrated with many rare photographs, the Encyclopedia features articles on subjects such as mound builders, reservations, cigar-store Indians, child rearing, powwows, boarding schools, museums and collectors, dreams, the occupation of Alcatraz, and the impact of American Indian civilizations on Europe and the world. Contemporary topics include gambling, sports mascots, alcoholism, urban Indians, and the status of women. Biographies illuminate not only famous chiefs and warriors but an enormously diverse group of historical figures, such as Pauline Johnson, a Mohawk who becme the first American Indian woman to publish poetry; Charles Curtis, a Kaw Indian who served as vice president under Herbert Hoover; and "Chief" Bender, an Ojibwa who played and coached professional baseball and is lauded in the Baseball hall of Fame. Covering Arctic to southeastern peoples, separate articles on more than one hundred major tribes - from Abenaki to Zuni - discuss community origins, rituals and beliefs, social organizations, and present-day life.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America
by James Wilson (no photo)Synopsis:
Now available in paperback, The Earth Shall Weep is a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed history of the Native American peoples. Combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition, and years of his original research, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures. The Earth Shall Weep charts the collision course between Euro-Americans and the indigenous people of the continent, from the early interactions at English settlements on the Atlantic coast, through successive centuries of encroachment and outright warfare, to the new political force of the Native American activists of today. It is a clash that would ultimately result in the reduction of the Native American population from an estimated seven to ten million to 250,000 over a span of four hundred years, and change the face of the continent forever. A tour de force of narrative history, The Earth Shall Weep is a powerful, moving telling of the story of Native Americans that has become the new standard for future work in the field.
Winds of Freedom: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II
by Margaret T. Bixler (no photo)Synopsis
Winds of Freedom explores and broadens understanding of the Navajo Nation and its culture by telling the real-life stories of a remarkable group of Navajo men who developed and implemented the only code the enemy was never able to decipher during World War II. They were the Wind Talkers.
One of the most important cases involving the rights of the American Indian Movement.Loud Hawk: The United States Versus the American Indian Movement
by Kenneth S. Stern (no photo)Synopsis:
The United States versus the American Indian Movement is the story of a criminal case that began with the arrest of six members of the American Indian Movement in Portland, Oregon, in 1975. The case did not end until 1988, after thirteen years of pretrial litigaion. It stands as the longest pretrial case in U.S. history.
This is a dramatic story of people and of government abuse of the legal system, of judicial courage and bone-chilling bigotry. It is an insider’s view of the legal process and of the conditions in Indian country that led up to and followed Wounded Knee.
While I guiltily admit not knowing as much about North American natives as the Aztecs and Mayans, this general cultural trend towards sanctifying the native people around the world always begs the question:If left completely alone would native people better off today? In other words would they have progressed and advanced to the state of the modern United States for example?
I have a feeling they would not. If the native people (pick any one you want) were so great in spirit and culture, why didn't they defeat the Europeans?
Sure it's sad native cultures were shoved aside, but the sad truth is - native cultures were just not superior in any way.
The stone throwing may now begin...
I'm not sure what "better off" means. Being connected with the Indian Health Service (the clinical arm of services to native Americans by USDHHR), take my word for it that there is nothing good about the reservation life of the people. Herded from their own lands into reservations is not my idea of progress and advancement.I think it is hard to know how American Indian culture would have evolved in the modern United States since there was never a chance for that to happen. Assimilation into the general over-all population of the country is usually the nature of things in a country made up of immigrants (think Irish, Italian, Scandinavian). These groups kept, for the most part,the aspects of their culture that identified them and reminded them of their roots but were still "Americanized". But they were not singled out as a group to be isolated and forced to accept things that were foreign to them. The government did not make Orthodox Jews break their dietary laws or attempt to convert the Irish from their Catholic heritage. The assimilation of the native American would probably have had the same effect as it did on other ethnic groups, progressing to the state of the modern US because they were a part of it.
While I would certainly agree that native peoples have been mistreated (and it is interesting to note not just in the U.S. but virtually every country in the world ( I just returned from Taiwan of all places and they had the same issues - not to mention Australia), I still wonder if there would not have been reservations (we WERE the only ones to do that) what native cultures would look like today. Would they still practice nice little customs such as human sacrifice?Sure that's an extreme example but it did happen commonly once upon a time.
Since the Puritans quit burning people at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials, that might indicate that certain practices would be abandoned. But what would have survived of native cultures?.......I have not a clue since now we are talking about revisionist history for which I have no talent. :0)
Sounds like a topic for an alternative history project. I have been interested in the history of the Indian Wars in the west (grew up in Montana). It is difficult to imagine how native peoples might of progressed. We too often forget that not all native peoples were equal. I grew up in a part of the country that included Sioux, Nez Pearce, Flathead and Blackfoot tribes. Just among these four groups there was a vast diversity. It is likely that left alone they would have at the very least progressed at various rates. One could even make an argument that at least one of these groups might have ended up being extinct as a result of wars among the tribes. An interesting debate for sure.
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Just posted about new book, The Heathen School, in a separate folder (see link below) -- but the story is strongly related to history of Native Americans, as well./topic/show/...
by John Demos (no photo)
In response to earlier threads I am sure the "natives" would have preferred to be left "alone" as at least then they would be in existence instead of being nearly exterminated .As to the level of development they would attain would depend on whether they would have the advantages of the USA ie taking over a continent emptying it out of its numerous inhabitants and using mass slavery to help develop the economy.
The reason a lot of native cultures could not compete or were subjugated was because they did not have the technology and the violent culture to fight back,that does not imply superiority as on that reasoning if the Nazis had won world war 2 it would that mean they more superior.
As for the human sacrifice remark, let us ignore that as slavery was rather more cruel to a lot more people.
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Thanks Pip.
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by Roger L Nichols (no photo)Synopsis:
During the century following George Washington’s presidency, the United States fought at least forty wars with various Indian tribes, averaging one conflict every two and a half years. Warrior Nations is Roger L. Nichols’s response to the question, “Why did so much fighting take place?� Examining eight of the wars between the 1780s and 1877, Nichols explains what started each conflict and what the eight had in common as well as how they differed. He writes about the fights between the United States and the Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware tribes in the Ohio Valley, the Creek in Alabama, the Arikara in South Dakota, the Sauk and Fox in Illinois and Wisconsin, the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota, the Cheyenne and Arapaho in Colorado, the Apache in New Mexico and Arizona, and the Nez Perce in Oregon and Idaho.
Virtually all of these wars, Nichols shows, grew out of small-scale local conflicts, suggesting that interracial violence preceded any formal declaration of war. American pioneers hated and feared Indians and wanted their land. Indian villages were armed camps, and their young men sought recognition for bravery and prowess in hunting and fighting. Neither the U.S. government nor tribal leaders could prevent raids, thievery, and violence when the two groups met.
In addition to U.S. territorial expansion and the belligerence of racist pioneers, Nichols cites a variety of factors that led to individual wars: cultural differences, border disputes, conflicts between and within tribes, the actions of white traders and local politicians, the government’s failure to prevent or punish anti-Indian violence, and Native determination to retain their lands, traditional culture, and tribal independence.
The conflicts examined here, Nichols argues, need to be considered as wars of U.S. aggression, a central feature of that nation’s expansion across the continent that brought newcomers into areas occupied by highly militarized Native communities ready and able to defend themselves and attack their enemies.
Pip wrote: "In response to earlier threads I am sure the "natives" would have preferred to be left "alone" as at least then they would be in existence instead of being nearly exterminated .As to the level of..."
Wow, I never knew that Native Americans were subjected to mass slavery! (I do know they made any white women they captured into slaves of course).
And I didn't know that human sacrifice (death) is preferable to slavery.
I bet La Malinche (a slave who was the mistress of Cortes) might disagree.
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Release date: September 16, 2014
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
by
Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizSynopsis:
Today, in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized indigenous communities and nations comprising nearly three million people. These individuals are the descendants of the once fifteen million people who inhabited this land and are the subject of the latest book by noted historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States,Dunbar-Ortizchallenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the indigenous peoples was genocidal and imperialist--designed to crush the original inhabitants. Spanning more than three hundred years, this classic bottom-up history significantly reframes how we view our past. Told from the viewpoint of the indigenous, it reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.
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by
Colin G. CallowaySynopsis:
Pen and Ink Witchcraft provides a comprehensive survey of Indian treaty relations in America and traces the stories and the individuals behind key treaties that represent distinct phases in the shifting history of treaty making and the transfer of Indian homelands into American real estate.
by Bob DruryRed Cloud was the only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army in a war, forcing the government to sue for peace on his terms.
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Thank you Bentley. I wasn't sure if I had done it correctly or not. I'll remember to add (no photo) for sure next time. Thanks.
I had the privilege to hear Mr. Littlemoon talk many years ago. It was a very enlightening conversation.They Called Me Uncivilized: The Memoir of an Everyday Lakota Man from Wounded Knee
by Walter Littlemoon (no photo)Synopsis:
Walter Littlemoon's memoir, "They Called Me Uncivilized," is a call to awareness from within the heart of Wounded Knee. In telling his story, Littlemoon describes the impact federal Indian policies have had on his life and on the history of his family. He gives a rare view into the cruelty inflicted on generations of Native American children through the implementation of U.S. government boarding schools, which resulted in a muted truth, called Soul Wound by some. In addition, and for the first time, his narrative provides a resident's view of the 1973 militant Occupation of Wounded Knee and the lasting impact that takeover has had on his community. His path toward a sense of peace and contentment is one he hopes others will follow. Remembering and telling the truth about traumatic events are prerequisites for healing. Many books have been written by scholars describing one aspect or another of Native American life, their history, their spirituality, the 1973 occupation, and a few have tried to describe the boarding schools. None have connected the dots. Until the language of the everyday man is used, scholarly words will shut out the people they describe and the pathology created by federal Indian policy will continue.
Should we have a folder on The Trail of Tears?
This recommendation was moved from another post by Angela.Just released! Native American culture, written by Chickasaw elder, Robert Perry.
by Robert Perry (no photo)
Mesa of Sorrows: A History of the Awat'ovi Massacre
by James F. Brooks (no photo)Synopsis:
The Hopi community of Awat’ovi existed peacefully on Arizona’s Antelope Mesa for generations until one bleak morning in the fall of 1700—raiders from nearby Hopi villages descended on Awat’ovi, slaughtering their neighboring men, women, and children. While little of the pueblo itself remains, five centuries of history lie beneath the low rises of sandstone masonry, and theories about the events of that night are as persistent as the desert winds. The easternmost town on Antelope Mesa, Awat’ovi was renowned for its martial strength, and had been the gateway to the entire Hopi landscape for centuries. Why did kinsmen target it for destruction?
Drawing on oral traditions, archival accounts, and extensive archaeological research, James Brooks unravels the story and its significance. Mesa of Sorrows follows the pattern of an archaeological expedition, uncovering layer after layer of evidence and theories. Brooks questions their reliability and shows how interpretations were shaped by academic, religious and tribal politics. Piecing together three centuries of investigation, he offers insight into why some were spared—women, mostly, and taken captive—and others sacrificed. He weighs theories that the attack was in retribution for Awat’ovi having welcomed Franciscan missionaries or for the residents� practice of sorcery, and argues that a perfect storm of internal and external crises revitalized an ancient cycle of ritual bloodshed and purification.
A haunting account of shocking massacre, Mesa of Sorrows is a probing exploration of how societies confront painful histories, and why communal violence still plagues us today.
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The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American
by Paul Andrew Hutton (no photo)Synopsis:
In the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, a stunningly vivid historical account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the 25-year Apache struggle for their homeland
They called him Mickey Free. His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides--the Apaches and the white invaders—blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid.
In this sprawling, monumental work, Paul Hutton unfolds over two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. This is Mickey Free's story, but also the story of his contemporaries: the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands--a bleak and unforgiving world where a people would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction.
This was a textbook used in one of my Native American classes in college but does not read like a textbook. It is a great resource.First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History
by
Colin G. CallowaySynopsis:
First Peoples� distinctive approach continues to make it the bestselling and most highly acclaimed text for the American Indian history survey. Respected scholar Colin G. Calloway provides a solid foundation grounded in timely scholarship and a narrative that brings a largely untold history to students. The signature “docutext� format of First Peoples strikes the ideal balance, combining in every chapter a compelling narrative and rich written and visual documents from Native and non-Native voices alike. An expansion by two full chapters presents a more diverse and nuanced picture of the history of Native peoples in America.
Native American Tribes
Website:
Synopsis:
This website give an alphabetical list of the known Native American tribes.
Life among the Apaches
by John Carey Cremony (no photo)Synopsis:
John C. Cremony's first encounter with the Indians of the Southwest occurred in the early 1850s, when he accompanied John R. Bartlett’s boundary commission surveying the United States-Mexican border. Some ten years later, as an officer of the California Volunteers, he renewed his acquaintance, particularly with the Apaches, whom he came to know as few white Americans before him had. Cremony's account of his experiences, published in 1868, quickly became, and remains today, a basic source on Apache beliefs, tribal life, and fighting tactics. Although its original purpose was to induce more effective military suppression of the Apaches, it has all the fast-paced action and excitement of a novel and the authenticity of an ethnographic and historical document.
Having done quite a lot of research about Algonquian culture in North Carolina and Virginia in the late 16th Century and during the time of Jamestown, I recommend this excellent book:
by Helen C. Roundtree. No picture. Here is the book's table of contents:The Land and its Resources
Subsistence
Towns and their Inhabitants
Manliness
Sex Roles and Family Life
Social Distinctions
Law, Politics, and War
Medicine and Relgion
I have looked that book over in the past but have not yet read it. Thanks again for posting it. Great job on the citation as well. Just add (no photo) if the author doesn't have one. You can put it at the bottom of your post and just mention the title (The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture) as normal. Makes for ease of reading. ;-)
by Helen C. Roundtree (no photo)
Here's the full synopsis:The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture
by Helen C. Roundtree (no photo)Synopsis:
Among the aspects of Powhatan life that Helen Rountree describes in vivid detail are hunting and agriculture, territorial claims, warfare and treatment of prisoners, physical appearance and dress, construction of houses and towns, education of youths, initiation rites, family and social structure and customs, the nature of rulers, medicine, religion, and even village games, music, and dance.
Rountree’s is the first book-length treatment of this fascinating culture, which included one of the most complex political organizations in native North American and which figured prominently in early American history.
Here is a story from Native American history that you probably aren't familiar with. Historian Ned Blackhawk studies the American Indians who lived in the Great Basin, from New Mexico to Montana, in the period from the Spanish conquest to the early 20th century. He especially focuses on the Utes and Shoshone, with some mention of the Navajo, Apache and a few others whose stories intersect. As the title indicates, there is violence aplenty, committed by all sides: Spanish, French, Native Americans, and toward the end of the book, Mormons and the US government. It's fascinating because it shows some of the tribes wielding power that we don't normally think of them having. As long as they were useful to the European powers, they were able to negotiate favorable treaties from a position of relative strength. Of course, that usefulness ended, the treaties were generally broken, and the members of the tribes were largely left to live in poverty. That part, you've probably heard before. 
by
Ned Blackhawk
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by
David GrannSynopsis:
From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,� roamed � virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. The book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly riveting, but also emotionally devastating.
American Indians/American Presidents, by the National Museum of the American IndianThis is an encyclopedic-type of book with lots of pictures and four primary authors, but is a quick read and highly informative. It covers all but one US president up to Obama, and focuses on Native American sovereignty and the resistance to it in our nation's history. Presidential attitudes have changed over time, with some of the most damaging policies arising from the early nineteenth century when we thought we were doing Native Americans a service by terminating tribal relationships. It was then that we built schools on the foundation of the phrase, "Kill the Indian and save the man."
by National Museum of the American Indian (no photo)Synopsis:
When the American colonies defeated Britain during the War for Independence, Native American leaders began to establish diplomatic relations with the new nation.
Here, for the first time, is the little-known history of American Indians and American presidents, what they said and felt about one another, and what their words tell us about the history of the United States. Focused on major turning points in Native American history, these pages show how American Indians interpreted the power and prestige of the presidency, and advanced their own agenda for tribal sovereignty, from the age of George Washington to the present day.
In addition to exploring a pantheon of Indian leaders, from Little Turtle to Robert Yellowtail, this book also provides new—and often unexpected—perspectives on the presidents. Thomas Jefferson, traditionally portrayed as the Indians' friend, emerges as a master of the art of Indian dispossession. Richard Nixon, long-tarnished by the Watergate scandal, was in reality a champion of tribal self-determination—a position that sprang, in part, from his Quaker origins.
Using inaugural addresses, proclamations, Indian Agency records, private correspondence, memoirs, petitions, photographs, and objects from the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, American Indians/American Presidents illuminates the relationship between these diverse leaders, the Native Americans' commitment to tribal self-determination, and the social, geographic, and political evolution of the United States over more than two centuries.
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Jeff you almost had it perfect with the format: (when there is no author's photo - simply add (no photo) at the end.
by National Museum of the American Indian (no photo)
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by
Charles C. MannSynopsis:
A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus’s landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness.
But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:
� In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
� Certain cities–such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital–were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
� The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
� Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as “man’s first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering.�
� Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it–a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
� Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively “landscaped� by human beings.
Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.
Just unveiled today: Native Americans have a higher percentage of service than any other ethnic group in America:
Here is an article on the topic of percentage per capita of Native American service to country: .
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Release date: September 20, 2022
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
by
Pekka HämäläinenSynopsis:
American history and self-understanding have long depended on the notion of a “colonial America,� an era that—according to prevailing accounts—laid the foundation for the modern United States. In Indigenous Continent, the acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen shatters this Eurocentric narrative by retelling the four centuries between first contacts and the peak of Native power from Indigenous points of view. Shifting our perspective away from Plymouth, Jamestown, the American Revolution, and other well-worn episodes on the conventional timeline, Hämäläinen uncovers a sovereign world of distinctive Native nations whose members, far from simple victims of colonial aggression, controlled the continent well into the nineteenth century, fundamentally shaping the actions of the European imperialists and the development of the United States. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America’s past, present, or future, Indigenous Continent restores Native Americans to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history.
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Release date: April 9, 2024
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
by Kathleen DuVal (no photo)Synopsis:
In this magisterial history, Kathleen DuVal tells the story of Native nations, from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to the present, reframing North American history with Indigenous power and sovereignty at its center. Before and during European colonization, Indigenous North Americans built diverse civilizations and lived in history, adapting to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. As DuVal explains, no civilization came to a halt when a few wandering explorers arrived, even when the strangers came well-armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size, but following a period of climate change and instability DuVal shows how numerous smaller nations emerged from previously centralized civilizations, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, patterns of egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand, having developed differently from their own, and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries after these first encounters, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests.
In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch--and influenced global markets--and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to control the majority of the continent. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created new institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their preponderance of power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.
In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal uses these stories to show how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant and will continue far into the future.
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The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America (other topics)Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America (other topics)
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (other topics)
American Indians/American Presidents: A History (other topics)
American Indians/American Presidents: A History (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Kathleen DuVal (other topics)Pekka Hämäläinen (other topics)
Charles C. Mann (other topics)
National Museum of the American Indian (other topics)
National Museum of the American Indian (other topics)
More...
Synopsis:
A gripping account of the legendary battle, told from the Lakota perspective
The 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn has become known as the quintessential clash of cultures between the Lakota and white settlers. The men who led the battle - Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Colonel George A. Custe -have become legends.
Here award-winning Lakota historian Joseph Marshall reveals the nuanced complexities that led up to and followed the battle. Until now, this account has been available only within the Lakota oral tradition. The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn is required reading for anyone enthralled by the tale of the tragic fight that changed the scope of both America and the American landscape.