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One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark
This magnificent, sweeping work traces the histories of the Native peoples of the American West from their arrival thousands of years ago to the early years of the nineteenth century. Emphasizing conflict and change, One Vast Winter Count offers a new look at the early history of the region by blending ethnohistory, colonial history, and frontier history. Drawing on a wide range of oral and archival sources from across the West, Colin G. Calloway offers an unparalleled glimpse at the lives of generations of Native peoples in a western land soon to be overrun.
652 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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2091 people want to read
About the author
Colin G. Calloway
95 books84 followersColin G. Calloway is John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. His previous books include A Scratch of the Pen and The Victory with No Name.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
November 10, 2016
A recognized classic, a landmark work - not much comment needed from me. 132 pages of endnotes in small print. Some of the interior is hard yards. All the effort is rewarded, however, in the sweeping and masterly conclusion. I feel as though if one had not persevered through the entire text, one would feel like a cheater enjoying the conclusion.
July 22, 2022
This is a clear, readable, and brilliant account of the Native American West from the earliest human inhabitants to the Lewis and Clark expedition. The book is divided into eight chapters, each with several subheadings: early history, corn agriculture, first Spanish entradas, resistance to the Spanish, the French, the rise of horsemanship, the 1700s European colonial wars, and then the close of the 1700s up through the Lewis and Clark expedition.
If I had to describe the theme briefly, it is that the West is not a static, transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. The native peoples and the environment both have dynamic histories and real historic change. The West did not look the same 4000 years ago, 1000 years ago, 400 years ago, and 200 years ago, and it will NOT look the same in the future either. I really appreciate the effort the author took to highlight hundreds of different Native American groups, to incorporate their histories, artifacts, and oral traditions, and to really "flesh out" their agency and role in the historic processes that have affected the West.
If I had to describe the theme briefly, it is that the West is not a static, transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. The native peoples and the environment both have dynamic histories and real historic change. The West did not look the same 4000 years ago, 1000 years ago, 400 years ago, and 200 years ago, and it will NOT look the same in the future either. I really appreciate the effort the author took to highlight hundreds of different Native American groups, to incorporate their histories, artifacts, and oral traditions, and to really "flesh out" their agency and role in the historic processes that have affected the West.
June 24, 2012
This is critical book. It fits right in between Charles Mann's 1491 and 1493. It is a amazing portrait of the vast and highly changing world of the Western United States after the arrival of the Europeans. Calloway covers in detail much of what has been written off as being unknowable. He does this through historical records, archeology, and environmental science to present a lost history.
November 18, 2021
Calloway’s One Vast Winter Count, hereafter referred to as One Vast, begins with a note on terminology regarding his interchangeable use of the term Indian and Native American, uses of Blackfeet (an American term for the people who live in the United States) and Blackfoot (the Canadian term for the same people). Why not call them by what they call themselves? Niitsitapi, or “The Real People.” Perhaps to do so would require another book just about the etymology of indigenous tribal names.
Chapter 1, Pioneers, takes readers on comparative indigenous narrative study regarding how they arrived in North America. Calloway retreads the Beringia Land Bridge Theory in Pioneers. He carefully weaves in indigenous stories of emergence and arrival, even drawing on the work of N Scott Momaday seemingly contradictory acknowledgement that native peoples came to North America by way of an ancient land bridge but also that the people come from here. Calloway describes thousands of years of survival, hunting, gathering, fishing, and tribal accounts of their own migrations.
Then follows the millennia odyssey of corn from a grass pod known as teosinte. Squash and beans get a mention too as agriculture developed and spread across the American Southwest. The Hohokam culture is featured for several pages, and rightly so. They developed means of wet and dry farming, and established a system of irrigation and architecture of which some remains to this day. Chaco Canyon also gets several pages dedicated to their architectural developments in the desert setting: cool pit homes that absorbed the heat of the day and kept radiated warmth after dark. Cahokia too gets to shine, but the takeaway of this chapter is adaptability to a changing environment. Questions linger too. Why did some cultures disappear? Did others assimilate into other native peoples?
Calloway tells us that the Native American West before the Corps of Discovery is, in fact, the colonial North American landscape from the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, the Mississippi River valley, the Missouri River watershed, and the American Southwest. This point in hand, he revisits the many Spanish campaigns in the American Southwest and even present-day Mexico. Calloway is familiar with this content. There is far more detail here in One Vast than can be found in his First Peoples, though this other work serves as a basic introduction to Native American studies.
The Pueblo fight for independence gets a spotlight. Calloway describes with great sympathy, the generations long plight of the Pueblo, worn down by years of slavery and mistreatment of their women. The Pueblo credit their sacred powers for their deliverance; the Spanish attribute Popé.
Calloway informs readers of the general distinction between the French and Spanish missionaries. The French sought peace and occupation through means of gift-giving. The Jesuits tended to enter Indian Country and learn their languages and befriend the native peoples, whereas the Spanish enslaved and forcefully converted the people they encountered. Later chapters bring the English into the picture. In fact, by chapter 8, The Killing Years, Calloway guides readers into the American Revolution. What Calloway does here is masterful as he narrates Indian Country in the late 1700’s at the frontiers of Spain, France, Great Britain, and the United States.
Chapter 6, The Coming of the Centaurs, and the topic of indigenous peoples’ first horse encounter should have been a revelation. This reader was even more disappointed today than when this book was first purchased when it came out during the Lewis & Clark craze. Calloway missed an opportunity to draw on one of the earliest mentions of the horse (in 1692) arriving on the Northern Great Plains recorded in the Drifting Goose Winter Count which was published in 1976 by James H. Howard as Yanktonai Ethnohistory and the John K. Bear Winter Count in the Plains Anthropologist. Calloway’s otherwise magnificent work is marred by the collective assumptions of other historians that agree to the horses’ arrival to the northern great plains “about 1750.” The Crow acquisition of horses gets a mention from the late Joseph Medicine Crow with his long tribal memory recalling their first encounter “around 1725 or 1730.” (Calloway, 2003; 303).
Indeed, Calloway tucks the Lakota acquisition of horses into the same paragraph in which branded horses are spotted by Hudson Bay Company traders in the 1750’s. Further, he writes that the “Lakota obtained horses at the Arikara villages and traded them to their eastern Yankton, Yanktonai, and Dakota relatives.” (Calloway, 2003; 270). A reference to the Battiste Good Winter Count published by ethnologist Garrick Mallory in the Tenth Annual Report to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1893. This winter count details a first bison hunt on horseback in 1700, the first recorded horse-stealing raid in 1708-1709.
Calloway is an ace western historian. The strength of his scholarship is evident in his bibliography. Roughly a third of One Vast is notes, bibliography, and index. His wistful conclusion winds down a race spanning 300 years. “If American history west of the Mississippi ‘begins’ with Lewis and Clark, then Indian history and, by extension, the history of the United States seems pretty simple: ‘Indians owned the West and then they lost it.’ But the story was never simple.” (Calloway, 2003; 429). This reader was left feeling exhausted and defeated just reading this work; left feeling not entirely certain what to think, thankful for Calloway’s impeccable scholarship, and thirsty as though my whistle was only just wetted.
One Vast is both too much and too little. It is, indeed, a strong book about American western history before the Corps of Discovery. Calloway has drawn almost entirely from non-indigenous records of mainly three competing national agendas. It also just doesn’t draw enough from indigenous primary resources.
In Calloway’s acknowledgements, he recalls Roger Echo-Hawk pushing him to think “about how historians can, and must, make better use of oral traditions.” Like water dashed upon stone, the unmoving stone dried and remained in the process that shaped it. Calloway wrote a long thoughtful incomplete piece. After three readings it earned its place on this reader’s shelf.
Get your copy of Calloway’s One Vast Winter Count. Give yourself some time after each chapter to absorb and appreciate this work.
Chapter 1, Pioneers, takes readers on comparative indigenous narrative study regarding how they arrived in North America. Calloway retreads the Beringia Land Bridge Theory in Pioneers. He carefully weaves in indigenous stories of emergence and arrival, even drawing on the work of N Scott Momaday seemingly contradictory acknowledgement that native peoples came to North America by way of an ancient land bridge but also that the people come from here. Calloway describes thousands of years of survival, hunting, gathering, fishing, and tribal accounts of their own migrations.
Then follows the millennia odyssey of corn from a grass pod known as teosinte. Squash and beans get a mention too as agriculture developed and spread across the American Southwest. The Hohokam culture is featured for several pages, and rightly so. They developed means of wet and dry farming, and established a system of irrigation and architecture of which some remains to this day. Chaco Canyon also gets several pages dedicated to their architectural developments in the desert setting: cool pit homes that absorbed the heat of the day and kept radiated warmth after dark. Cahokia too gets to shine, but the takeaway of this chapter is adaptability to a changing environment. Questions linger too. Why did some cultures disappear? Did others assimilate into other native peoples?
Calloway tells us that the Native American West before the Corps of Discovery is, in fact, the colonial North American landscape from the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, the Mississippi River valley, the Missouri River watershed, and the American Southwest. This point in hand, he revisits the many Spanish campaigns in the American Southwest and even present-day Mexico. Calloway is familiar with this content. There is far more detail here in One Vast than can be found in his First Peoples, though this other work serves as a basic introduction to Native American studies.
The Pueblo fight for independence gets a spotlight. Calloway describes with great sympathy, the generations long plight of the Pueblo, worn down by years of slavery and mistreatment of their women. The Pueblo credit their sacred powers for their deliverance; the Spanish attribute Popé.
Calloway informs readers of the general distinction between the French and Spanish missionaries. The French sought peace and occupation through means of gift-giving. The Jesuits tended to enter Indian Country and learn their languages and befriend the native peoples, whereas the Spanish enslaved and forcefully converted the people they encountered. Later chapters bring the English into the picture. In fact, by chapter 8, The Killing Years, Calloway guides readers into the American Revolution. What Calloway does here is masterful as he narrates Indian Country in the late 1700’s at the frontiers of Spain, France, Great Britain, and the United States.
Chapter 6, The Coming of the Centaurs, and the topic of indigenous peoples’ first horse encounter should have been a revelation. This reader was even more disappointed today than when this book was first purchased when it came out during the Lewis & Clark craze. Calloway missed an opportunity to draw on one of the earliest mentions of the horse (in 1692) arriving on the Northern Great Plains recorded in the Drifting Goose Winter Count which was published in 1976 by James H. Howard as Yanktonai Ethnohistory and the John K. Bear Winter Count in the Plains Anthropologist. Calloway’s otherwise magnificent work is marred by the collective assumptions of other historians that agree to the horses’ arrival to the northern great plains “about 1750.” The Crow acquisition of horses gets a mention from the late Joseph Medicine Crow with his long tribal memory recalling their first encounter “around 1725 or 1730.” (Calloway, 2003; 303).
Indeed, Calloway tucks the Lakota acquisition of horses into the same paragraph in which branded horses are spotted by Hudson Bay Company traders in the 1750’s. Further, he writes that the “Lakota obtained horses at the Arikara villages and traded them to their eastern Yankton, Yanktonai, and Dakota relatives.” (Calloway, 2003; 270). A reference to the Battiste Good Winter Count published by ethnologist Garrick Mallory in the Tenth Annual Report to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1893. This winter count details a first bison hunt on horseback in 1700, the first recorded horse-stealing raid in 1708-1709.
Calloway is an ace western historian. The strength of his scholarship is evident in his bibliography. Roughly a third of One Vast is notes, bibliography, and index. His wistful conclusion winds down a race spanning 300 years. “If American history west of the Mississippi ‘begins’ with Lewis and Clark, then Indian history and, by extension, the history of the United States seems pretty simple: ‘Indians owned the West and then they lost it.’ But the story was never simple.” (Calloway, 2003; 429). This reader was left feeling exhausted and defeated just reading this work; left feeling not entirely certain what to think, thankful for Calloway’s impeccable scholarship, and thirsty as though my whistle was only just wetted.
One Vast is both too much and too little. It is, indeed, a strong book about American western history before the Corps of Discovery. Calloway has drawn almost entirely from non-indigenous records of mainly three competing national agendas. It also just doesn’t draw enough from indigenous primary resources.
In Calloway’s acknowledgements, he recalls Roger Echo-Hawk pushing him to think “about how historians can, and must, make better use of oral traditions.” Like water dashed upon stone, the unmoving stone dried and remained in the process that shaped it. Calloway wrote a long thoughtful incomplete piece. After three readings it earned its place on this reader’s shelf.
Get your copy of Calloway’s One Vast Winter Count. Give yourself some time after each chapter to absorb and appreciate this work.
February 9, 2025
Impressive and revelatory. I’m amazed at the scope of this book - synthesizing the archaeological and oral historical records to tell the story of the American west from the beginning of human settlement up to Lewis and Clark. It might be the most useful in dispelling the sense that the ways native populations lived at the beginning of US history was how things had always been. With grounding in the preceding millennia, it’s stunningly different. Also very striking to see how differently the approaches of British and Spanish colonial powers were from the French, who come off relatively well because they were so much more focused on trade than controlling land and native people.
September 26, 2021
In this work, Calloway attempts to reposition the narrative of the American West by highlighting Native-American history and sources. He destabilizes many traditional narratives such as the development of America east to west, rather focusing on the south-north development and dislodging Lewis and Clark’s expedition as the point when the American West’s history began. He argues that the West is not a process but rather a place with a long history that requires investigation to understand its interaction with colonial projects and its current state. Concepts such as “American frontier,” “American West,” and “New World” are simply colonial constructs that fail to encapsulate the lengthy history of the area. Indeed, Calloway makes clear that when Lewis and Clark arrived in the West it was not a pristine, untouched wilderness but rather an area that experienced change, destruction, growth, and migration over thousands of years. Another major theme that emerges throughout Calloway’s work is not just the focus on Native American sources and perspectives, but the agency and focus given to the topography, climate, and land throughout the book. For example, while covering the “ancient history” of Paleo-Indians Calloway notes mass extinction brought about by climatic shifts forced both humans and animals to adapt. Similarly, corn, horses, and buffalo all exacted a level of influence and agency over how Native-American’s utilized them over time. The emphasis on land is similar, although much more evident than, Arthur Ray’s An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People (2018). By demonstrating the West’s long history Calloway deconstructs any notions of American exceptionalism and idealistic national narratives, instead stating that Americans would do well to remember they are but another transitory phase adding “symbols to the American West” (p. 434).
The one limitation to Calloway’s argument is that by emphasizing the historical continuity of change that the West always underwent he almost diminishes the brutality and long-lasting impacts of colonization, especially in his epilogue where he highlights how the West possesses a transitory element that even notions of American exceptionalism cannot overcome. Perhaps this weakness is offset by the attention Calloway pays to Native American women throughout the book, often using oral traditions as well as European sources. Women’s involvement in farming, fishing, fur trade relationships, elevating status through Catholic conversion are highlighted. Moreover, Calloway details the negative impact equestrian culture had on women.
The one limitation to Calloway’s argument is that by emphasizing the historical continuity of change that the West always underwent he almost diminishes the brutality and long-lasting impacts of colonization, especially in his epilogue where he highlights how the West possesses a transitory element that even notions of American exceptionalism cannot overcome. Perhaps this weakness is offset by the attention Calloway pays to Native American women throughout the book, often using oral traditions as well as European sources. Women’s involvement in farming, fishing, fur trade relationships, elevating status through Catholic conversion are highlighted. Moreover, Calloway details the negative impact equestrian culture had on women.
May 5, 2020
Magisterial. The breadth and depth is best explained by the author:
"To judge by most history books, public television documentaries, and popular culture, the 'winning of the West' is the real history of the West; what went before is just prelude. But American history is not as short as it seems we would like it to be. The West that Lewis and Clark saw was not a pristine wilderness; it was a landscape that had evolved over millions of years and an environment that had been shaped by Indian and animal life for thousands of years. Crops, technologies, and rituals from Mesoamerica; flora and fauna, plagues and peoples from Europe; and indigenous pioneers had all altered the West long before Lewis and Clark arrived. They saw an ecosystem in which abundances and scarcities of wildlife were determined by the repercussions on animal populations of human disease that thinned the ranks of human predators and intertribal warfare that created buffer zones where game flourished. Lewis and Clark did not see an unchanging West, they saw 'a snapshot of time and place'" (pp. 428-429).
I can think of no better description.
The details in this work are staggering, giving the feeling that for many of the times and peoples mentioned this is a breath of life so that they may be remembered if only confined to a narrative. I have not a few works on Indian lore and history, including several volumes of Handbook of North American Indians, and this book rates right up there in authority.
"To judge by most history books, public television documentaries, and popular culture, the 'winning of the West' is the real history of the West; what went before is just prelude. But American history is not as short as it seems we would like it to be. The West that Lewis and Clark saw was not a pristine wilderness; it was a landscape that had evolved over millions of years and an environment that had been shaped by Indian and animal life for thousands of years. Crops, technologies, and rituals from Mesoamerica; flora and fauna, plagues and peoples from Europe; and indigenous pioneers had all altered the West long before Lewis and Clark arrived. They saw an ecosystem in which abundances and scarcities of wildlife were determined by the repercussions on animal populations of human disease that thinned the ranks of human predators and intertribal warfare that created buffer zones where game flourished. Lewis and Clark did not see an unchanging West, they saw 'a snapshot of time and place'" (pp. 428-429).
I can think of no better description.
The details in this work are staggering, giving the feeling that for many of the times and peoples mentioned this is a breath of life so that they may be remembered if only confined to a narrative. I have not a few works on Indian lore and history, including several volumes of Handbook of North American Indians, and this book rates right up there in authority.
May 24, 2024
"The Sioux used to keep winter counts, picture writings on buffalo skin, which told our people's story from year to year."
That quote on the first page helps me understand the title of the book. It takes the author a bit more than a sentence to get around to the subtitle. The book is intended to give a history of the West within the borders of the current USA (i.e. between Mexico and Canada), generally west of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio in the three centuries or so before the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The native peoples of the area had no written language. No matter how strong the oral tradition is, the depth and breadth of the story is limited. So it is natural that much of this story is constructed from the journals and documents of the Spaniards, French, and British who traversed this land.
That said, this is the story of the native peoples, not of the "explorers". Lewis and Clark are mentioned, but their journey is not described. The same goes for Zebulon Pike. Fremont barely gets a mention.
As an American who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I have a certain view of the native peoples that was formed primarily through popular culture. I went through elementary school in Colorado, my brother in Ohio, and my son in Arizona. We all learned radically different things about the indigenous peoples and European exploration of our homes: my brother had no idea that Colorado has buildings built by Spaniards that predate by a couple of centuries anything Europeans built in Ohio. None of us got what I'd call a thorough lesson of the history of the native peoples, and pop culture pretty much got everything wrong.
I've always had trouble with names. In this context, the author floods the reader with the names of the native nations and tribes. Many of them I'd never heard before. It's my fault, not the authors of any history I've read, that I still don't have a great idea of where these nations/tribes were situated. After reading this book, I'm less upset with myself. I often spout the cliché that "the only constant is change." Somehow, I never considered how much change occurred over a couple of centuries in the lands I grew up in and often travel through.
The native peoples of North America weren't ancient and unchanging. The Chaco people moved away, the Anasazi moved away. Because of climate change, drought, and disease, nations/tribes fractured, relocated, and merged with other nations/tribes. In retrospect, this should have been obvious to me. Nothing is forever.
Two of the topics that I found quite interesting are horses and corn.
I knew that the horse evolved in North America, then spread into Asia before becoming extinct here. I also knew that by the middle of the 19th century, some of the tribes had 20-30 horses for each man, woman, and child in the community. How did this happen?
Corn was grown from Central America to New England. How did this happen? We learn something of the cultural aspects of corn (yellow, white, red, blue), who cultivated it, and how it was traded.
Both horses and corn are important throughout the book. Some peoples were sedentary and cultivated crops, some were nomadic. Native farmers traded with bison hunters. Both corn and horses are important parts of the trans-continental trading network.
I'd put this squarely in the "scholarly work" category of non-fiction. It has extensive source notes, a thorough bibliography, and index, and a couple of dozen b&w drawings. But "scholarly work" doesn't mean dry and boring.
That quote on the first page helps me understand the title of the book. It takes the author a bit more than a sentence to get around to the subtitle. The book is intended to give a history of the West within the borders of the current USA (i.e. between Mexico and Canada), generally west of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio in the three centuries or so before the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The native peoples of the area had no written language. No matter how strong the oral tradition is, the depth and breadth of the story is limited. So it is natural that much of this story is constructed from the journals and documents of the Spaniards, French, and British who traversed this land.
That said, this is the story of the native peoples, not of the "explorers". Lewis and Clark are mentioned, but their journey is not described. The same goes for Zebulon Pike. Fremont barely gets a mention.
As an American who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I have a certain view of the native peoples that was formed primarily through popular culture. I went through elementary school in Colorado, my brother in Ohio, and my son in Arizona. We all learned radically different things about the indigenous peoples and European exploration of our homes: my brother had no idea that Colorado has buildings built by Spaniards that predate by a couple of centuries anything Europeans built in Ohio. None of us got what I'd call a thorough lesson of the history of the native peoples, and pop culture pretty much got everything wrong.
I've always had trouble with names. In this context, the author floods the reader with the names of the native nations and tribes. Many of them I'd never heard before. It's my fault, not the authors of any history I've read, that I still don't have a great idea of where these nations/tribes were situated. After reading this book, I'm less upset with myself. I often spout the cliché that "the only constant is change." Somehow, I never considered how much change occurred over a couple of centuries in the lands I grew up in and often travel through.
The native peoples of North America weren't ancient and unchanging. The Chaco people moved away, the Anasazi moved away. Because of climate change, drought, and disease, nations/tribes fractured, relocated, and merged with other nations/tribes. In retrospect, this should have been obvious to me. Nothing is forever.
Two of the topics that I found quite interesting are horses and corn.
I knew that the horse evolved in North America, then spread into Asia before becoming extinct here. I also knew that by the middle of the 19th century, some of the tribes had 20-30 horses for each man, woman, and child in the community. How did this happen?
Corn was grown from Central America to New England. How did this happen? We learn something of the cultural aspects of corn (yellow, white, red, blue), who cultivated it, and how it was traded.
Both horses and corn are important throughout the book. Some peoples were sedentary and cultivated crops, some were nomadic. Native farmers traded with bison hunters. Both corn and horses are important parts of the trans-continental trading network.
I'd put this squarely in the "scholarly work" category of non-fiction. It has extensive source notes, a thorough bibliography, and index, and a couple of dozen b&w drawings. But "scholarly work" doesn't mean dry and boring.
August 15, 2019
Having read dozens of books on similar topics, I've always felt I had a pretty good handle on the narratives that are pre-Columbian and colonial in regards to North America. Plot twist: Colloway shows me that I didn't.
Colin Colloway does a massive thing here and gives the reader the ultimate bird's eye view on sweeping cultural and historical processes moving throughout the North American landscape over thousands of years. I've never seen it told this way. The author also incorporates oral history and archaeology to a very satisfying degree. This book is a cornerstone for understanding the United States.
While his definition of "the West" starts at the Great Lakes and Appalachia and moves to the Pacific coast, it dips deeply into Mexico and Canada also. It examines the Spanish, French, and English colonial actions from the air, shows how the pre-Columbian movement of peoples dovetails into and throughout the colonial period, how ancient infrastructure informs modern cities, the rise and fall of various indigenous empires, the ultimate role of disease in massive population crashes, and he explains the true context of the various moments of resistance throughout the European invasion. Tecumseh or Pontiac or Popé...they were not isolated incidents, not by a long shot. Instead, the individual acts of resistance are part of much larger trends occurring over centuries. This much detail and this much scope paints "the West" as it truly is...a swirling multicultural melting pot of constant movement, tragedy, triumph, and mystery.
The book does get slow in places. But, honestly, the material demands that. Keeping track of so many nations of people and so many big trends and movements must have required a crazy amount of research. Some of that is going to be tough to read at times. But other moments of exquisite tragedy and heartbreak carry the reader through, like the French genocide against the Mesquaki or various wars to exterminate the Osage people. Nuggets of mystery, of lost colonies, of expeditions that vanished between nations, of some of the oldest known art on the continent, of entire cities of people rising and falling before a single European set foot on American shores...it'll keep you glued to the page.
I recommend this for anyone who wants to understand what US cultural heritage really is. Our history is deeper, more complex, and more surprising than is commonly known. The United States Of America is just another chapter in an old, old story. I would make this required reading for every public high school in the empire.
From the book:
'There is no American exceptionalism. Charting the creation and subsequent decline of both Cheyenne and settler society in nineteenth century Colorado, Elliot West says simply: "Everything passes,...no one escapes." It is a simple reminder of the human condition and a simple lesson from history.
But it's a lesson lost in American history if we look on Jamestown, Santa Fe, the American Revolution, and the Lewis and Clark expedition as opening chapters in a story of nation building and progress, a story that, because it is our story, we assume will be different from everybody else's. It won't. The cycles of history will continue as they always have, and, ultimately, the only truly exceptional thing about American history is that it happened in America.'
Colin Colloway does a massive thing here and gives the reader the ultimate bird's eye view on sweeping cultural and historical processes moving throughout the North American landscape over thousands of years. I've never seen it told this way. The author also incorporates oral history and archaeology to a very satisfying degree. This book is a cornerstone for understanding the United States.
While his definition of "the West" starts at the Great Lakes and Appalachia and moves to the Pacific coast, it dips deeply into Mexico and Canada also. It examines the Spanish, French, and English colonial actions from the air, shows how the pre-Columbian movement of peoples dovetails into and throughout the colonial period, how ancient infrastructure informs modern cities, the rise and fall of various indigenous empires, the ultimate role of disease in massive population crashes, and he explains the true context of the various moments of resistance throughout the European invasion. Tecumseh or Pontiac or Popé...they were not isolated incidents, not by a long shot. Instead, the individual acts of resistance are part of much larger trends occurring over centuries. This much detail and this much scope paints "the West" as it truly is...a swirling multicultural melting pot of constant movement, tragedy, triumph, and mystery.
The book does get slow in places. But, honestly, the material demands that. Keeping track of so many nations of people and so many big trends and movements must have required a crazy amount of research. Some of that is going to be tough to read at times. But other moments of exquisite tragedy and heartbreak carry the reader through, like the French genocide against the Mesquaki or various wars to exterminate the Osage people. Nuggets of mystery, of lost colonies, of expeditions that vanished between nations, of some of the oldest known art on the continent, of entire cities of people rising and falling before a single European set foot on American shores...it'll keep you glued to the page.
I recommend this for anyone who wants to understand what US cultural heritage really is. Our history is deeper, more complex, and more surprising than is commonly known. The United States Of America is just another chapter in an old, old story. I would make this required reading for every public high school in the empire.
From the book:
'There is no American exceptionalism. Charting the creation and subsequent decline of both Cheyenne and settler society in nineteenth century Colorado, Elliot West says simply: "Everything passes,...no one escapes." It is a simple reminder of the human condition and a simple lesson from history.
But it's a lesson lost in American history if we look on Jamestown, Santa Fe, the American Revolution, and the Lewis and Clark expedition as opening chapters in a story of nation building and progress, a story that, because it is our story, we assume will be different from everybody else's. It won't. The cycles of history will continue as they always have, and, ultimately, the only truly exceptional thing about American history is that it happened in America.'
February 2, 2022
This book is an exhaustive outline of the ongoing, cyclic history of the land most recently named America. I found it valuable as a ‘big picture’ of the thousands of years of human society on this continent and the interaction of native peoples, Spanish, French, British and eventually Americans. Details of migration, climate change, competition for resources, shifting allegiances, trade, slavery, ethnocentrism, conquest and resistance that seem repetitive serve to provide a good overview of North American History. It is a long, busy and often brutal story. The final chapter is concerned with smallpox, which decimated the Indian population during the late 18th century, paving the way for pioneers to take control of the west, demonstrating that likely “Microbes, not men, determined the continent’s history.” By placing the relatively brief American history within the long span of human history in the west, the author makes a convincing case that “there is no American exceptionalism.” History is constantly changing.
March 31, 2018
Imagine, if you can, your world without borders. Unless you've seen the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, your world has no limits. The only governing factor is survivability. If you can live there, you can stay there. This is the beginning of the Native American history in the American West.
Calloway presents a broad history of the Native American history of the west( trans-Mississippi) and the areas surrounding it that ultimately affected its history. Comprehensive but not tedious. Well researched but concise considering the volume of data available. It is an excellent recap or summarization for the vast number of peoples involved in this history. He presents a concise history covering topics that others have written complete books about. It can be considered a good introduction or a good summarization of Native American history depending on your level of expertise on the subject.
Calloway presents a broad history of the Native American history of the west( trans-Mississippi) and the areas surrounding it that ultimately affected its history. Comprehensive but not tedious. Well researched but concise considering the volume of data available. It is an excellent recap or summarization for the vast number of peoples involved in this history. He presents a concise history covering topics that others have written complete books about. It can be considered a good introduction or a good summarization of Native American history depending on your level of expertise on the subject.
November 14, 2018
One vast epic work. An amazing synthesis of Native American and Euro-American activity in North America from prehistory to 1800, this work has a global approach, connecting up the pieces we usually get in less ambitious histories. While I have read many books about various tribes at various times, along with studies of Europeans in N. America and US history, I was delighted to learn even more. I had no idea how successful tribes like the Comanches and Osage were for centuries at trade and warfare. Even a little fact like the number of trading ships off the NW coast in the early 19th century changed how I view the Lewis & Clark expedition. I was constantly reading some interesting piece out loud to my husband. So much information so interestingly presented. This is the third of Calloway's books I have read and by far my favorite.
Read
February 18, 2021Fantastic. Extremely well researched from archives centuries past and sourced worldwide. This books continues to break down my biased education proclaiming American Exceptionalism, showing perhaps the opportunity of a newly arrived people to be of what in the long view will be another historical note.
A vacuum created by pestilence, war and deceit of indigenous communities across North America demands to be satisfied. The rapacious appetite of previously repressed Europeans encouraged by an infant government prove capable by any fault stepped means adequate to the challenge.
A vacuum created by pestilence, war and deceit of indigenous communities across North America demands to be satisfied. The rapacious appetite of previously repressed Europeans encouraged by an infant government prove capable by any fault stepped means adequate to the challenge.
December 15, 2024
An all-encompassing book that gives an epic portrait of North America before 1800: a place of competing empires, both European and Indigenous, a place of constant, shifting change.
Given the paucity of non-colonial records, the first chapters are full of archaeology and supposition that still paints a definite picture. Wood uses Indigenous oral history to supplement the sketches, the huge mound cities and the clifftop dwellings in the vast geography, corn interweaving through everything.
Somehow he manages a deft weaving of the push and pull of Spanish, then French, then British, then American will to power, the shifting alliances with Indigenous peoples who had their own dreams of conquest. Apache, Comanche, Osages, the awe of the Iroquois Confederacy, the absolute transformation that the horse wrought, and smallpox too.
What is most striking is how many centuries it really took for Europeans to make their mark and push in, acting on the same levels as powerful Indigenous nations they were forced to temporarily treat with respect. Fascinating, too, is the flavour of colonialism: Spain's Catholic fervour, France's intermarrying, dirty fur traders, Britain's haughtiness.
Wood traces the shifting powers as tribes vie for supremacy as Apaches shift to Comanches, as Europeans break their treaties. The book is full of fascinating facts, from the adoption of vegetable paints as Spain took over the lead mines, to a lacrosse game used as a Trojan horse to capture a fort, to acorns being the primary crop in California.
The book, in its respect and space for Indigenous peoples, still feels very contemporary 20 years on and is a monumental archive of not only research, but to its seamless presentation.
http://lawrencedebbs.home.blog/2024/1...
Given the paucity of non-colonial records, the first chapters are full of archaeology and supposition that still paints a definite picture. Wood uses Indigenous oral history to supplement the sketches, the huge mound cities and the clifftop dwellings in the vast geography, corn interweaving through everything.
Somehow he manages a deft weaving of the push and pull of Spanish, then French, then British, then American will to power, the shifting alliances with Indigenous peoples who had their own dreams of conquest. Apache, Comanche, Osages, the awe of the Iroquois Confederacy, the absolute transformation that the horse wrought, and smallpox too.
What is most striking is how many centuries it really took for Europeans to make their mark and push in, acting on the same levels as powerful Indigenous nations they were forced to temporarily treat with respect. Fascinating, too, is the flavour of colonialism: Spain's Catholic fervour, France's intermarrying, dirty fur traders, Britain's haughtiness.
Wood traces the shifting powers as tribes vie for supremacy as Apaches shift to Comanches, as Europeans break their treaties. The book is full of fascinating facts, from the adoption of vegetable paints as Spain took over the lead mines, to a lacrosse game used as a Trojan horse to capture a fort, to acorns being the primary crop in California.
The book, in its respect and space for Indigenous peoples, still feels very contemporary 20 years on and is a monumental archive of not only research, but to its seamless presentation.
http://lawrencedebbs.home.blog/2024/1...
July 18, 2020
I never looked forward to picking up this book, but finished it out of a personal obligation. I feel bad giving such an epic, insightful work three stars, but I have to look forward to picking it up to give it four stars. As with many vast histories, I find it tedious to keep track of thousands of people/place names and the ever-changing context. I found the writing to be good, although unwieldy at times. I believe the author is biased towards Native Americans in this history. Of course, this is a refreshing perspective in that the norm is bias towards colonists/Americans. However, violence and war during the American conquest of the West was altogether dismissed, when I have read multiple books on the subject. The timeline ending in the early 1800’s was somewhat abrupt, when some of the most legendary tales lay ahead. If you are doing to start at prehistory, then you might as well continue to present day. The challenge is that the next 200 years would need their own volume.
October 27, 2024
Having lived in Santa Fe for many years I felt fairly well informed about Native American history in the Southwest. But this author filled in so many gaps in my knowledge and did it in a concise but very in depth way.
April 27, 2019
A fantastic book, so much information!
August 28, 2021
This book should be required reading in every American History classroom.
March 9, 2025
MY PROF!
December 10, 2025
Hell yeah 🔥🦅🇺🇸
August 24, 2021
In the Notes to 1491, Charles Mann says that he regrets that he had to leave out everything about the American West, but that this book does a great job of telling that story. Detailed and comprehensive, and always told from the point of view of the Indians (his word choice, which he explains), this book fills out a story that you sort of think you know, and does it so well that it's a different story when you are done. It covers pre-contact times, but also covers the Spanish, French, English and American attempts to extend their empires to the American West, and the various reasons why all but the Americans failed. Spoilers: Imperialism really was a terrible idea; and Old World diseases really determined the outcome.
September 8, 2013
In the minds of many American history begins in either 1492 or 1776. Even today, the history of the western United States is seen almost entirely through the narrative of manifest destiny. Calloway's book challenges this mindset by presenting a comprehensive history of the West and its inhabitants from their first footsteps from Beringia into the interior to the beginning of the United States' westward expansion. Of course, it is no suprise that the bulk of the book covers the period after European contact, from which time written accounts were kept by explorers and colonial administrations. Earlier chapters are based on archaeological evidence and to a lesser extent, the folk memories of Native American cultures. Calloway's treatment is balanced; this is not a political screed with villains and victims. Rather, it is a nuanced chronicle of the interplay of different cultures with each other and the environment. Impermanence is the only constant. Sophisticated cultures rose and collapsed. People migrated thousands of miles on foot in mere centuries. Tribes dissipated and new nations coalesced in response to the arrival of Spanish colonists, French traders and later, Anglo-American settlers. Native Americans found themselves connected to trading networks that eventually stretched from Europe to China and beyond. Ultimately, they found their most devastating foe in smallpox. This is very much an account of the influence of "Guns, Germs and Horses," on Native America, if you'll pardon the paraphrasing of Jared Diamond's bestselling title. Calloway is less environmentally deterministic than Diamond, and human agency looms large in One Vast Winter Count, but admittedly there is little room for an examination of individual lives against such a vast backdrop of time and space. Consequently, some readers may find it dry and difficult. Nevertheless, whether discussing the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the role of the Caddos in trade between the Mississippi and the Southwest, or the impact of the American Revolution on the Ohio Valley, Calloway is detailed and perceptive. One Vast Winter Count is at heart a powerful argument for beginning American history truly at the beginning, and is an admirable volume in every respect.
May 6, 2011
Colin Calloway begins this book with a look at societies that were once thriving communities but are now nothing more than abandoned and often overlooked sites. He ends his book by warning that our communities could end in the same way if we do not learn from the history of past peoples. In between these pages, the author utilizes vast amounts of sources to tell the stories of the Indians who lived and died in the American West. He shows that the American West was constantly changing. There were battles between Indian tribes, with the Spanish, the French, the English, and the Americans, who all set out in one way or another to control the Indians through religion, trade, promises, and land use. He shows that they were not always one sided battles and that the Indians were often as cunning and brave as any of these other groups. They put up a good fight, but in the end, they were overcome by disease and the overwhelming number of people moving into their lands. Calloway shows how the west has always been in a constant state of change and that change is still occurring today. There is so much good information in this book. Calloway gathered sources from many people, and shows as many angles to the stories as he can. Unfortunately, most of history is written by the winners, and the Indians in most cases did not win. Still, he includes numerous citations from the Indian peoples. This book is nothing like what we are taught in our watered down American History books, and it is somewhat refreshing to get a better idea of what really happened in the American West.
December 1, 2017
I started this book back in New York City after spending 6 months in Southern California (Los Angeles) and visiting various parts of the American West for the first time. I finished it in Leeds, England, where I moved in the fall for a Full Professor position in the School of Media and Communication.
That trajectory explains a good part of the reason why I wanted to read this book - it spoke to a growing personal interest in the Western United States. It doesn’t explain why I found this book so wonderful. It is a wonderful book in its integration of historical evidence, American Indian myth, and anthropological findings. It paints a picture of the United States deeply at odds with our traditional understanding of the West as a depopulated and empty land. And it reminds us that the European presence in North America is so short as to constitute the blink of an eye in historical time. West Yorkshire, where I am sitting and writing this review, is an old place. But Southern California is old too, just in a different way.
That trajectory explains a good part of the reason why I wanted to read this book - it spoke to a growing personal interest in the Western United States. It doesn’t explain why I found this book so wonderful. It is a wonderful book in its integration of historical evidence, American Indian myth, and anthropological findings. It paints a picture of the United States deeply at odds with our traditional understanding of the West as a depopulated and empty land. And it reminds us that the European presence in North America is so short as to constitute the blink of an eye in historical time. West Yorkshire, where I am sitting and writing this review, is an old place. But Southern California is old too, just in a different way.
March 10, 2014
Wow - I learned so much about the native population of North America for tens of thousands of year. The United States is more of just a phase that the continent is going through. The real history of this place involves thousands of years and huge populations that have changed with the times through the years. Indians were impacted and were in decline in the United States well before the white man expanded westward. Buffalo were already in decline, also. It was great to learn about the history of native Americans before 1500 and to see the relatively minor impact of white Europeans relative to everything else. Very extensive!
January 11, 2022
A wonderful book, written by one of my favorite historican. Colin G. Calloway shows in this book, that the American West is so much more than only the typical pictures than most of people know from movies about the wild west, which show only the historical fragments after the Americans started to conquer it. The American West was not a free land, waiting to be grabbed. There lived a number of different ethnicities with their own trade, culture, rituals and settlements like Mesa Verde in Colorado. In this book you can learn about how the Native Americans lived in the American West before Lewis and Clark started their expedition to spy out how the West was shaped.
April 3, 2012
The pre-contact history of native America is an important topic. This book is very strong from the point of the European discovery through the beginning of the 19th century (when it ends).
Its much weaker on the history prior to 1492. Obviously the sources are fewer and different, but the change is very noticeable, the author is much strong with historical sources than anthropological and archaeological.
Its much weaker on the history prior to 1492. Obviously the sources are fewer and different, but the change is very noticeable, the author is much strong with historical sources than anthropological and archaeological.
Want to read
January 21, 2010What I learned is the Best of Good Intentions will never get me to read this 600-page epic. Maybe if I broke my leg and couldn't go outside. Or in the event of nuclear holocaust and I was in a fallout shelter for 25,000 years. So I better return it to the library and give somebody else a chance to not get around to it because of contemporary society's short attention span.
August 10, 2012
It has been too long since I finished this book to give a detailed review. My general impression is that it is interesting and informative to the motivated reader, but written in a fairly dry, academic manner -- so it is a bit of a slog. Not being an expert in the field, I can't really speak to the novelty or interest of the narrative, but I learned alot from it.
May 9, 2017
"Only by considering America as Indian country can we get a sufficiently long span of history to recognize that civilizations here have risen and fallen as they have elsewhere in the world." Absolutely astounding in it's sweeping breadth, One Vast Winter Count imparts depth and yet opens the door for finding so much more beyond its pages. I love how Colin Calloway writes history.
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