Book Description
For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.
Customer Reviews:
In answer to conservative pseudointellectuals..........2007-09-24
All of the big words and "references" in the world won't change history for you, unfortunately. I notice that among the people who did not like this book, they all pretty much said the same thing: That Stannard didn't paint an accurate picture of the natives of the western hemisphere. That he didn't acknowledge cannabalism (he did), that he didn't acknowledge human sacrifice (he did - to the tune of 20,000 per year in the Inca capital), and that he didn't acknowledge inter-tribal warfare and cruelty (he most certainly did). One of the reasons I liked this book so much was its extensive reference section (with explanations as to most of the references, so if you have any questions about something...LOOK IT UP). It'd do you all some good, rather than blindly naysaying whatever doesn't fit your racist little mold. Does it really MATTER whether or not native peoples practiced unsavory rituals? They're all dead.
In any case, the book was superb and whatever your views are regarding the native peoples mentioned in the book, one point remains irrefutable: They were exterminated. It was deliberate. It was planned, sanctioned, supported, and financed by every exploratory realm in Europe and by the American government throughout it's short and brutal history. You all know it.
This is one of the most important books that you will ever read in your entire life.......2007-04-29
It is amazing that we live in a country that was built upon holocaust but we yet we are in complete denial. And not just the U.S., the entire Americas. This book discloses the atrocities committed by the Spaniards and and other Europeans. It also dispels the myth that prior to the arrival of Columbus, America was nothing more than open prairie lands. And it reveals that the so-called new world was heavily populated before the mosting devasting and the largest genocide committed in history. It does more than reveal the diseases that the Spaniards and other Europeans brought to the new world. It uncovers the enslavement and intentional massacres of countless natives of the new world. A sad thing about this book is that those who need to read this book most (the ones in denial), will probably never read this book and continue to perpetuate the lie that no holocaust or genocide was ever committed in the Americas by the Spaniards and other Europeans. If you only read one book over the next decade, this should be it.
Simplisitc and sensationalistic.......2007-03-26
Almost every time someone uses the word 'holocaust' when they are not referring to the actual Holocaust between 1939 and 1945, they use it in an incorrect and sensationalistic manner, comparing the incomparible. This is no exception. It is true that millions of people died following the arrival of Europeans in the New World in 1492. However 90% of them died from Disease. This was an extraordinary number, but there is a difference between planning to murder so many and having them die for biological reasons(not being immune to disease). Indeed many of even the most cynical Spaniards were dismayed that the Indians were dying, either because they could no longer be used as slaves or because they could no longer be enslaved. It is rediculous to pretend that this was a 'holocaust' unless the black Plague that swept Europe in the 13th-14th centuries was also a holocuast.
In addition this book accuses the Europeans of 'racism' which is a patent lie. Race did not propell Europeans across the seas in 1492 and the years afterword. It is true that Europeans looked different than the indigenous people of the New World, but it is not true that this was what motivated colonization, ensalvement, war or exploitation.
Just as the rise of most empires, such as the Chinese or Ottoman, are not accused of being tied up in racism, it is comical to pretend that men like Columbus had any concept of the 19th century ideas of race. The notions are neither found in thier writings or documents and that is why none are quoted in this book. In fact many Spaniards defended the Indians, such as Bartholemew De Las Casas, but all those people are conveniently ignored here. Not a suprise.
Seth J. Frantzman
Crimes of Aggression and Occupation Revealed.......2007-03-18
David Stannard reveals the awful truth of Aggression and Occupation, misnamed "Discovery" and "Settlement," in the Americas. Readers who, in the names of education and religion, have been exposed to five centuries of revisionist history should be horrified at the truth. If they aren't, it will be a testament to the effectiveness of the church, school and university propaganda to which they have been exposed. The horrors of other holocausts are not excused by recognition that the holcaust in the Americas, perpetrated by European Christians against ancient civilizations were the most horrible in the history of mankind. They continue to this day.
THE SINGLE FINEST AND MOST ESSENTIAL BOOK OF THE AGE .......2006-06-06
A masterpiece of scholarship and analysis.
This book is nothing less than the single most important work that you will ever read.
Our entire culture is built on Holocaust Denial while those most responsible for this abnesia drape themselves in the flag of holocaust memorialism but have little honesty in their true agenda. An agenda that allows in North America alone for there to be at least 50 Holocaust memorials, museums and monuments...
only problem is they are ALL about the Holocaust that happened in Europe and NOT about the colossal extermination that took place where they live. It is not only denial on the part of the nations of the Americas and Europe but those responsible for this Holocaust Denial in relation to Indian America insist on an image of being the world's caretakers of holocaust memory. What a bloody audacity.
Why do we let the Spanish off the hook so lightly? Why is there no demand for Spain to make its Mea Culpa? Why is there no AMERICAS HOLOCAUST memorial in Madrid, Washington, London and Ottawa ?
This brilliant book re-addresses the imbalance.
POST SCRIPT....
There is a reviewer further down who uses the monica of
"history buff" who rejects the value and integrity of this work. In fact he utterly insults Mr Stannard and his thesis.
So I thought I would check out his other reviews...oh boy!
One of the remarks he makes in a book claiming that Saddam was behind 9/11 goes "But it is very difficult to argue with the facts that were available to the agencies which pointed to a direct link between Saddam and Al Qaeda." This example of his world view is the mild end of it. So people consider the character of the self-described "history buff" who rejects Stannard's brilliant thesis on the Holocaust in the Americas.
The reviewer "history buff" has a world view that comes straight out of the 1950's HUAC committee (he associates all Left wing thought with the Soviet Union not knowing that the Bolshevik regime prohibited the platform of the revolution and that its first victims were in fact the most sincere and dedicated Left revolutionaries. Clearly he has never read the finest autobiography in the history of English language autobiography; Emma Goldman's LIVING MY LIFE volume 1 and volume 2. The latter volume includes a first hand account of the destruction NOT construction of socialism by Lenin and his cohorts ).
.
Book Description
In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers.
Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States.
Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in which Native people discovered Europeans and struggled to make sense of a new world. Well into the seventeenth century, the most profound challenges to Indian life came less from the arrival of a relative handful of European colonists than from the biological, economic, and environmental forces the newcomers unleashed. Drawing upon their own traditions, Indian communities reinvented themselves and carved out a place in a world dominated by transatlantic European empires. In 1776, however, when some of Britain's colonists rebelled against that imperial world, they overturned the system that had made Euro-American and Native coexistence possible. Eastern North America only ceased to be an Indian country because the revolutionaries denied the continent's first peoples a place in the nation they were creating.
In rediscovering early America as Indian country, Richter employs the historian's craft to challenge cherished assumptions about times and places we thought we knew well, revealing Native American experiences at the core of the nation's birth and identity.
Customer Reviews:
Bad History.......2007-09-29
The book has many problem sin my view as a history graduate student. Although many important arguments were included in this work, I found it to be a struggle to determine which was an "Eastern" view or an actual fact. Richter used his imagination a bit too much. Sometimes historians have to make the best possible interpretation but going on a limb and guessing what someone may have thought is not HISTORY. Furthermore, Richter is somewhat unclear throughout the work. He switches between imagination and reality, and sometimes it becomes a task in itself deciphering what is his idea or fact. Richter uses almost NO missionary documents when trying to argue his point. Very few examples of missionary texts were given, creating a situation of where did your idea come from. Furthermore, Richter generalizes far too much. A tribe in Delaware is not going to react similar to one in S. Carolina. While trying to put his point across he fails to discuss changing regimes in Europe (England, France, and Spain) and their effect on colonial policies against natives. He mentions that Louis XIV wants natives wiped out, but says nothing of the Stuarts or Hapsburg policies.
Now I understand this was supposed to be a work facing east, not west, but Richter seemed to go too far outside the scope of the sources and use his imagination a little to often. What happen to American Natives was sad, but imagining history to glorify them does not do justice to them or the faculty of history.
"Eastward" Approach of Studying Native Americans.......2007-05-18
Traditional histories of Native Americans have focused on the point of view, or history, of European Americans. But in 2001, historian Daniel Ricther breaks this trend in his novel work - Facing East From Indian Country. The "eastward" approach incorporates the interpretations, or stories, of early Native Americans who observed the movements of Europeans from eastern America. His research is by no means exhaustive, but advances a fresh perspective of the scant pre-existing primary sources on early Native Americans. His sophisticated synthesis and analysis of the aforementioned sources, coupled with his incisive imagination shed light on a virtually untold Native American history.
Richter chronologically organizes his work and concentrates heavily on early colonial times in his opening chapters, which appear to be his area of expertise. His passages of primary sources are often lengthy and precariously worded, but his strong narrative and eloquent articulation of Indian culture supersede these minor distractions.
Revisiting the oft told stories of Pocahontas and Metacon, Ricther articulately portrays these individuals as being champions of peaceful co-existence, and cooperation, in the New World. In addition to the previously noted amenable traits, Native Americans also possessed sound diplomatic skills. For instance, Richter provides considerable detail about the sophisticated "treaty protocol" that early Americans utilized. Noting that this process "ideally consisted of nine stages," ( 135) Ricther explicitly detailed the expectations of Iroquois during these meetings in the mid-eighteenth century and illuminated the European's poor cultural understanding of these protocols. These examples, and others, highlighted the European's ignorance of Indian culture.
The latter chapters chronicle the Indians transgression from peaceful co-existence with the Europeans in the eighteenth century to all out war with them in the early nineteenth century. In the mid-eighteenth century, for instance, Ricther convincingly argues that "diversity wrought an increasingly pervasive view that Indians and Whites were utterly different, and utterly incompatible." (180) These views became more solidified in the nineteenth century. And Indians gradually surrendered more rights, and property, in the New World.
In the epilogue, which was more suited for the introduction or opening chapters, Ricther outlines the writings of Native American writer William Apess who sought to promote an eastward narrative of Indian history in the early eighteenth century. According to Richter, his work was silenced by European histories.
This work, in closing, creates new opportunities for scholars to re-interpret Native American history. This paradigm shift will likely lead to more sophisticated studies of early Indian culture in the New World, and ultimately add to our rather meager understanding of Indian history. A must read for Native American scholars and graduate and undergraduate history students who wish to broaden their understanding of early American history.
Informative and analytical.......2007-03-06
Mr. Richter does a fine job of deftly parsing small bits of information to imagine the Indian American's point of view. I was rather expecting an I-hate-America diatribe, but that's not at all what this is. It DOES show that between the clash of cultures in North America, the natives were much more adept to adapting (because they had no choice) than were the Europeans. And adapt they did, somewhat successfully until the war of Independence was fought between the US and Britian. After that, well, there were so many indefensible acts by the new US that it came down to "civilize-or-die" to the natives. Even those that did civilize were not safe, being punished by vigilantes for 'outrages' by other Indians - not even of the same linguistic group.
Those few who understood the complicated culture of the natives were by and large ignored, while small bands of cunning Indians would sell land that wasn't even theirs.
Sometimes it is said that there's enough blame to go around; if by that it's meant that because all Natives were not "Good Injuns" we should exterminate those who refuse to be deported, well okay.
Some say slavery was the darkest blot on our history, I believe it was the lies, broken treaties, forced removals, genocide and outright stealing of land that is that darkest chapter.
Read also Eve Ball's "indeh", and Britton Davis' "The Truth About Geronimo."
Refreshing switch of viewpoint.......2006-08-30
The author does an excellent job tracking down the limited available sources that shed light on the earliest Native American perspectives of Colonial history in a way that never come out in our traditional histories. This is a very readable book that is superior to "Mayflower" in providing a detailed analysis for the Indian view of that history. Facing East doesn't stop with the Pilgrims, but explores its theme through numerous early interactions between Native and European peoples.
Thinking Opposite and Otherwise.......2006-08-29
Most historians have sufficient presence of mind to clear from their brains the Panglossian cant which insists we live in the best of all possible worlds. The best histories, of which Daniel K. Richter's Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America is most certainly one, are able to envision a historical narrative where paths not taken would lead to a counterfactual narrative to our own.
To this end, Richter musters the sources traditional to any historian--varied secondary sources, the journals of participants of historical interactions between Natives and Europeans, literary sources by Natives and sundry oral sources likely to be their own. Utilizing a vast knowledge of the period between the first arrival of Europeans in the Americas through the period of "Jacksonian Democracy," Richter paints a lucid picture of European interaction with the tribes of North America, and how it altered the behavior of all parties involved. This narrative is neither a record of triumphant civilization moving west, nor is it an account of genocide moving ferociously from East--though Richter makes clear both of these fit, respectively, into American myth and American realty--he is much more concerned with how the cultures interacted with each other in creating the circumstances that Natives lived under and how they viewed their changing world.
Richter's approach to understanding how the world did and would appear to Natives is grounded in the understanding that commerce, politics, environment, and ideologies will be discernibly altered by any new presence. Just as North America became a new market for European goods, so Europe allowed for the prospering of some tribes through a need for raw materials such as leather and beaver pelts. The same interaction could, and did, sometimes, lead to intertribal and international conflict (as well as a combination of both at once) or to the unforeseen environmental degradations associated with depopulating a large area of beavers. Richter's understanding of history acknowledges the law of unforeseen consequences--a law that is in fact central to his explanation of how so many Native communities were wiped out, radically altered, even created by European diseases--and how a good deal of the history between Europeans and Natives was the result reciprocal relations and not conflict, to say nothing of an irreconcilable conflict.
Perhaps the most interesting area Richter explores is in the realm of culture. The importation of European goods, African slaves, and Christianity led to profound changes in the ways that many natives lived. The foreseeable creations of Moravian, Catholic, or Anglican communities of Natives; changes in work wrought by iron made tools and warfare through the importation of muskets; expansion of world views due to contact with truly foreign cultures: all of these were the logical consequences of European arrival in North America. These facts were do as much to reciprocity and basic cultural interchanges as they are to the unequal relations that materialized between the two cultures as time passed. Richter is keen to point out that none of this was solely the result of the conqueror and subject role which so Natives were forced to accept.
Richter does not shy away from showing the disgraceful, murderous, and ultimately tragic side Euro-American and Native American relations. Throughout the whole of the book, Richter carefully records the injustices, massacres, broken promises and treaties, as well as the demagoguery that insured Natives even less than second class status. Richter quite convincingly argues that it is the proliferation of all of these factors which led to the creation of an ideology of irreconcilable conflict between Natives and Europeans--later Americans. By implication, Richter shows that this myth required those who believed it to repudiate, if not altogether forget, much past history.
To steal a phrase from Professor Ronald Takaki, Richter is able to look at history through a different mirror. Through his creative reading of the history of Native contact with their own New World, Richter does much illuminate what was one of the most central tragedies of American history.
Book Description
In the past thirty years historians have come to realize that the shape and temper of early America was determined as much by its Indian natives as it was by its European colonizers. No one has done more to discover and recount this story than James Axtell, one of America's premier ethnohistorians. Natives and Newcomers is a collection of fifteen of his best and most influential essays, available for the first time in one volume. In accessible and often witty prose, Axtell describes the major encounters between Indians and Europeans--first contacts, communications, epidemics, trade and gift-giving, social and sexual mingling, work, cultural and religious conversions, military clashes--and probes their short- and long-term consequences for both cultures. The result is a book that shows how encounters between Indians and Europeans ultimately led to the birth of a distinctly American identity. Natives and Newcomers is an essential text for undergraduate and graduate courses in Colonial American history and Native American history.
Customer Reviews:
Some Aboriginal perspective.......2006-02-04
This book deals with northeast North America, east of the Appalachians, in the period 1492-1783, i.e. from the first Columbus' voyage to the end of the Independence War. The main argument of the book is that cultural frontiers in early North america were "two-way"- interactive and dynamic. Thus, both sides influenced each other. The author attempted also to "write history from the other side of the frontier." (p.10) He is sympathetic to the Indian's point of view and tries to shed some light and understanding upon it.
He rejects the perception about the European moral superiority over the Indians and argues that the French and the English governments periodically fostered scalping of European and Indian enemies by offering bounties or other economic incentives. (p.269)
The only drawback of the book is the Axtell is repating himself, because this book is a compilation of papers and chapters from previous books, so he doesn't have a lot of new information in this book.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent and valuable book that appeals to the head, not the heart .......2006-09-01
Lewis and Clark among the Indians by James P. Ronda is one of the most respected books in the L&C literature. It is not a general history of the expedition, but instead focuses entirely on Indian relations of the Expedition, explaining not only L&C's responsibilities, actions, and mistakes in dealing with the native people they encountered, but also on the motivations and views of the Indians.
The most interesting aspect of the book for me was the discussion of Lewis and Clark as ethnographers (or recorders of primary data about native American life). Several members of the Expedition made particularly valuable notes on the lifestyles of the Indians they met. Sergeant John Ordway had a talent for recording homey details that give us a glimpse into a long-vanished world of Indians at the moment of first contact with whites. Sergeant Patrick Gass, a carpenter, perceptively described the houses of the Indians. William Clark gravitated instinctively toward political analysis, grasping who the leadership was and how Indian power politics worked. It's not surprising he later proved so talented as a diplomat managing Indian affairs in the West long after the Expedition. But it was Meriwether Lewis who emerged as the premier ethnographer of the Expedition. Food, clothing, cooking utensils, weapons all caught Lewis's eye and were recorded, and often drawn, in painstaking detail.
Thankfully, Ronda steers clear of political correctness, refusing to portray the Indians as saintly victims or L&C as the vanguard of American imperialism. Lewis and Clark among the Indians is academic history at its finest. The research is fresh, measured, and dispassionate. As such it will appeal to those readers with a particular interest in the topic.
It's worth noting that Ronda sets a goal in the introduction of avoiding the themes of "high adventure, national triumph, and male courage." One sometimes senses that he bends over backwards to drain excitement and humor from the narrative.
Well Written and Exciting Look at the Explorers' Interactions with All the Tribes Along the Way .......2006-02-17
As the title indicates, Ronda's book concentrates primarily on Lewis and Clark's interactions with Indians along their journey to the Pacific. Aside from the exploration, Jefferson's other mission, as described by Ronda, was to make peace with the Indians, establishing not only a relationship with the U.S. but to also broker peace among the tribes. As the author points out, the latter was very naïve as the two explorers' did not comprehend the complex relationships among the various tribes. For example, the tribes closest to traders had a distinct advantage over the interior tribes due to their access to guns, ammunition and other material sought by the interior tribes such as the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes living well up the Missouri. Tribes such as the powerful Teton Sioux were protective of their roles as dominant traders while their enemies the Mandans and Hidatsas traded with many plains tribes due to their ability to grow vegetables and corn that the plains Indians lacked. Although trying to bridge gaps between rivals such as the Mandan and the Arikaras seemed plausible to the explorers, Ronda points out well that presents and well meaning speeches by Lewis and Clark could not realistically alter relationships until the whites provided a dominant presence among the tribes. A good portion of the book concentrates on the Mandan and Hidatsa since the explorers spent their first winter on the upper Mississippi enduring a very supportive relationship. Strong bonds were made with the Mandan but Ronda well documents the intricate relationships that the explorer's had with the various tribes including sexual contact that Ronda describes had a mystical tribal benefit aside from some cases of trade. It is quite impressive that the explorers were well treated among the less fortunate Indians such as the Flatheads, Shoshone and Nez Perce who assisted L & C over the most crucial part of the trip supplying needed horses, food and guides. After reading of L & C's fortunes with the mountain and plains Indians, Ronda described a different contrast with the Indians closer to the Pacific who had either direct or indirect contact with traders. The Chinooks prove to be savvy traders as well as other tribes along the Columbia River. This change and more aggressive stance toward pilfering, which Ronda describes as possible cultural misunderstandings, try the corps almost to violence altering the more congenial relationship that the expedition featured for the most of their contacts with the natives. Ronda goes beyond describing the contacts between the corps and the Indians; he also explains the cultures of each tribe and clarifies issues that were not clear to the explorers. This is most notable when Lewis and his three man platoon make contact with the aggressive Blackfeet that ends in the only bloodshed between Indians and the corps. Ronda indicates that Lewis may have unintentionally raised tensions by explaining that the U.S. would be aiding the Blackfeet's traditional enemies and in turn under cut there trade dominance. Interesting that later, the Blackfeet become the most feared tribe of future Mountain men. Excellent book that fits well after a general read of the journey since the book covers activities of only key corps members concentrating primarily on Indian relations.
Interesting and thoughtful read.......2004-03-07
A well researched book that is not meant to replace a reading of the original journals. Dr. Rhonda did an excellent job putting the American Indians back in to the narrative of Lewis & Clark's expedition. The information regarding the various tribes and nations is quite accurate and helps to give an introduction to American Indian history for someone who might not have any familiarity of the western nations. Generally, the book is well-written and interesting. It could be interesting and entertaining for both academic and general readers.
Technically and politically correct.......2004-01-31
This was an excellent bed time book - 3 or 4 pages a night and your off to dream land. Ronda reconstructs meetings with the Indians with the use of footnoted quotations from the journals. This is supposedly better than reading the journals yourself because Ronda brings his objective view to the table were as L & C had Euro-American bias. The book, much like the journey itself, has moments of interest and moments of repetitive dullness.
Insightful, unique and first-class.......2003-10-28
Responsibilities of proclaiming U.S. sovereignty, promoting intertribal peace between Indians, and advancing American trade were major components of the Corps of Discovery. This book portrays the relationships between Indian and white convergences when the U.S. was spreading its wings into unknown but recently acquired territories.
Ronda chronologically takes the reader up the Missouri River with Lewis and Clark first beginning with the Oto and Missouri Indians, followed by the Yankton Sioux, the intimidating and challenging Teton Sioux, the apprehensive Arikaras, winter life in the Mandan/Hidatsa village, the amiable Shoshones, Nez Perce and Flathead tribes and culminating with the ever so pilfering, troublesome lower Columbia River Indians.
What Ronda makes very clear, and what Lewis and Clark were hard pressed to alter and/or understand, were the intricate and byzantine trade network systems which existed among the various tribes. For example, there was the Teton Sioux and Arikara trade, followed by the Mandan/Hidatsa and Assinboine trade alliances which were difficult and demanding systems to change.
Secondly, encouraging intertribal peace between tribes was like swimming against the current. After decades and possibly centuries of intertribal warring, peace was not going to happen overnight.
If the reader is somewhat versed in the Lewis and Clark literature and assumes that there is not much else to learn from the expedition, this is an extraordinary look into a different side of the journey.
Book Description
Through dramatic depictions of significant moments in American history, this informative series gives young readers a vivid sense of Colonial American life -- its farms and villages, cities and ports, and the struggles and dreams of its inhabitants. Illustrated and indexed.
Customer Reviews:
Great for Children!.......2000-06-27
I read this with my daughter and son as a chap book (one chapter a night) and they were always eager to hear more the next night! It's a wonderful book to use as a conversation starter about the treatment and lifestyle of indians in Colonial America.
Average customer rating:
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Daily Life on the Old Colonial Frontier:
James M. Volo , and
Dorothy Denneen Volo
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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The frontier region was the interface between the American wilderness and European-style civilization. To the Europeans, the frontier teemed with undomesticated and unfamiliar beasts. Even its indigenous peoples seemed perplexing, uninhibited, and violent. The frontier wasn't just a place, but a process, too. It was a hazy line between colliding cultures, and a volatile region in which those cultures interacted. This volume explores the frontier, explorers, traders, missionaries, colonists, and native peoples that came into contact. Everyday life is presented with all of its difficulties-the trading, trapping, and farming, not to mention the chronic threat of violence. Examining the period from the perspective of both Europeans and Native Americans, this book features over 40 illustrations, photographs, and maps, making it the perfect source for anyone interested in how people lived on the old colonial frontier.
Book Description
The updated and revised second edition of American Encounters features new essays from the vibrant field of Native American studies and the classic essays on early Native American history from the first edition. Over the past thirty years, historians, anthropologists, and other scholars have transformed our understanding of the history of North America's native people between first contact with Europeans in 1492 and the era of Indian removal in the early 19th century. This essential anthology offers comprehensive yet focused coverage on a wide range of topics, including contact, exchange, disease, religion, and warfare.
Customer Reviews:
A Deeper Understanding.......2003-12-30
A dispassionate, scholarly look at what happened in North America to its native peoples when the Europeans arrived. The book spans 1500 to 1850, the latter being essentially before the American Civil War. It concentrates on events inside the present day United States. You should be aware that there is little coverage of Mexico and the Canadas. Lest you think this restrictive, remember that we are still referring to a span of 350 years and the US. Given this vast field in time and space, the book does not claim comprehensiveness. What it does have are chapters on numerous aspects of the encounters. Intermarriage, religion, trading, disease and, of course, war and the forced relocation of the few survivors.
There is coverage not just of the eastern seaboard, with the well known incidents at Plymouth and the selling of Manhattan. Also presented are chapters on the Spanish incursions and settlements in the South West. The chapters strive to go beyond the stereotypical, marginal roles played by the natives in standard histories. You can get some understanding of the intricacies of their societies and the range of their dealings with the Europeans. There is, though, a continual frustration; which is not the fault of the authors. The written records we have are overwhelmingly those left by the settlers. We can only wonder now at what was never recorded directly by the natives, and which has been irretrievably forsaken to the nameless dust of history.
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Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges (Native Americans of the Northeast)
David Murray
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
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ASIN: 1558492445 |
Book Description
Whether they involved goods, words, or ideas, acts of giving and trading were fundamental in early Indian-white contacts. But how did these transactions function across the two cultures, and what did they mean to each? In this book, David Murray explores a range of early exchanges between Europeans and Indians, showing how they operated within a set of interlocking economies-linguistic, religious, as well as material.
Murray begins by examining the crucial role of gift-giving. Like the double function of the key, which both locks and unlocks, the gift-with its simultaneous action of offering something and demanding a return-expressed the paradoxical nature of early Indian-white encounters. Because the power to give was associated with ideas of sovereignty, both sides often preferred to represent exchanges as gift-giving rather than trading or selling.
To illustrate the complexities of these cross-cultural transactions, the author looks closely at the work of linguist, trader, and missionary Roger Williams, whose A Key into the Language of America at once serves the purposes of translation, conversion, and trade. Murray also examines the changing meaning and representation of wampum, the quintessential medium of exchange in the early colonial period, as well as the multiple processes of conversion taking place as Christian ideas were incorporated into Indian cultures.
According to the author, only by recognizing the ways in which objects and ideas circulated and took on value in interrelated economies can we understand the contested "middle ground" between Europeans and Indians of the colonial Northeast.
Book Description
In The Native Ground, Kathleen DuVal argues that it was Indians rather than European would-be colonizers who were more often able to determine the form and content of the relations between the two groups. Along the banks of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, far from Paris, Madrid, and London, European colonialism met neither accommodation nor resistance but incorporation. Rather than being colonized, Indians drew European empires into local patterns of land and resource allocation, sustenance, goods exchange, gender relations, diplomacy, and warfare. Placing Indians at the center of the story, DuVal shows both their diversity as well as our contemporary tendency to exaggerate the influence of Europeans in places far from their centers of power. Europeans were at times more dependent on Indians than Indians were on them.
Now the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, this native ground was originally populated by ancient indigenous peoples, became part of the French and Spanish empires, and in 1803 was bought by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. Drawing on archaeology and oral history, as well as documents in English, French, and Spanish, DuVal chronicles the successive migrations of Indians and Europeans to the area from precolonial times through the 1820s. These myriad native groups--Mississippians, Quapaws, Osages, Chickasaws, Caddos, and Cherokees--and the waves of Europeans--French, Spanish, British, and Americans--all competed with one another for control of the region.
Only in the nineteenth century did outsiders initiate a future in which one people would claim exclusive ownership of the mid-continent. After the War of 1812, these settlers came in numbers large enough to overwhelm the region's inhabitants and reject the early patterns of cross-cultural interdependence. As citizens of the United States, they persuaded the federal government to muster its resources on behalf of their dreams of landholding and citizenship.
Book Description
Presents native accounts--some translated for the first time from native American languages--of the plunder and persecution wrought by white settlers and explorers on the one hundred million people already living in the Americas in 1492.
Customer Reviews:
Simply a "must" read.......2004-10-28
Simply a "must" read for the Americans (talking about the whole continent for those who are geographically challenged LOL), the Europeans and anybody else interested in the "discovery" of America.
Well-researched and full of interesting facts concentrating on the 5 significant native cultures of the Americas: The Aztecs, the Mayas, the Incas, the Cherokees and the Iroquois. It is easy to read as well !!!
IMO it should be part of every high school history curriculum. Guaranteed to dispel many of the myths that are taught in schools today and reinforced by Hollywood.
Bravo Mr. Wright !!!!
hi.......2002-07-19
Although the material in this book is probably covered in greater detail elsewhere, it is pretty unique that the experiences of indigenous groups as diverse as the Iroquois and Incas, are presented here with equal detail. One learns interesting facts about each of them. While I knew about Manco Inca's revolt and establishing a mini-Inca state in the jungle, I had no idea that this was followed by a sort of "Inca Renaissance," with plays, histories and poems written in Quechua. In addition, the five groups that Wright chose either had their own written language or quickly learned one after European contact (and the Cherokee even had their own newspaper), so this history is genuinely "through Indian eyes." The unifying thread (in addition to the resilience of all 5 groups) is that the colonization of the New World by Europeans was not significantly different that of Africa and Asia- without the disease factor, the Americas might today be wholly governed by their original inhabitants.
Add this to your Curriculum.......2001-03-26
My emotions, while reading this book, ranged from disbelief to outrage. Do not read this book on a full stomach.
For me, Ronald Wright exposed the faulty notion of America's 'virgin wilderness'. Before I read this I did not appreciate the size or sophistication the Native American nations he has profiled in 'Stolen Continents'.
Though this is a tragic history, it is one that should be told. The section on 'Rebirth' is encouraging, for some nations. For others it seems like the relentless attacks, that have deprived so many of so much, will never end.
I hope Mr. Wright profiles other aboriginal nations with this all too rare perspective.
Very accurate history.......1998-07-14
I can't speak for the history of all the five nations, but my wife is Cherokee. Her family predates the arrival of the white race. She has a big thick book documenting the family genealogy compiled by her father, a true researcher. The words of Dragging Canoe, a realitive, are comprehensive and exact. Some quotes are new to the family, so Mr. Wright really did his research.
Mr. Wright painted an eye opening view of the real American Indian history, not what I learned in school and saw on TV.
An essential book in the history of the Americas.......1998-05-19
As a native American whose people came perilously close to being wiped out completely, I welcome and applaud the care, consideration and integrity with which Ronald Wright has addressed the history of five native nations in the Americas--the Aztecs, Maya, Inca, Iroquois and Cherokee. By selecting cultures from north, central and south America, he shows, unequivocally, how pervasive disease and the voracious appetite for gold, land and vassals were in the nearly total devastation of the peoples of this land.
This book should be a "must" read for high school and college students in every nation in the Americas. It is phenomenal in its exploration of past and current circumstances of native Americans.
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- Eisenhower
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