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The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
The most enduring feature of US history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.
Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; Native nations helped shape England's crisis of empire; the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; and twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk's retelling of US history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.
Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; Native nations helped shape England's crisis of empire; the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; and twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk's retelling of US history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.
868 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 25, 2023
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About the author
Ned Blackhawk
17 books171 followersNed Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association awarded Violence over the Land its Book of the Decade Award as "one of the ten most influential books in Native American and Indigenous Studies in the first decade of the twenty-first century."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 477 reviews
August 31, 2024
Rounding up to 4.
Very slow start. Much preferred Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. It did eventually pick up momentum in terms of my interest, though I wish it had spent some more time on the forced sterilization practices, especially given how typical it was regarding the politically genocidal practices forced upon many Native Americans. However, this was also one of the more in depth looks at the eradication of Indian families, languages, and cultures through residential boarding schools, which I appreciated (though really, it still only scratched the surface).
Every time I read about US Indigenous history, I get so angry and wish they’d fought back more, even while recognizing I probably would still be living in Korea, had they done so. What the settlers did to them and what the US has continued to do to them since is unconscionable. I keep hoping things will get better for them and that surely, our collective society is rooting for them and wanting to see their circumstances and lives improve (as defined by the Indians), but then things like the 45th administration happens and all disenfranchised rights are trampled upon and rolled back decades, and then my hope dissipates. I can only wonder about the despair the tribes might feel and then be inspired that they continue to press forward and insist and persist on living despite all the many ways the US and the “explorers” before them have tried to delete them.
Very slow start. Much preferred Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. It did eventually pick up momentum in terms of my interest, though I wish it had spent some more time on the forced sterilization practices, especially given how typical it was regarding the politically genocidal practices forced upon many Native Americans. However, this was also one of the more in depth looks at the eradication of Indian families, languages, and cultures through residential boarding schools, which I appreciated (though really, it still only scratched the surface).
Every time I read about US Indigenous history, I get so angry and wish they’d fought back more, even while recognizing I probably would still be living in Korea, had they done so. What the settlers did to them and what the US has continued to do to them since is unconscionable. I keep hoping things will get better for them and that surely, our collective society is rooting for them and wanting to see their circumstances and lives improve (as defined by the Indians), but then things like the 45th administration happens and all disenfranchised rights are trampled upon and rolled back decades, and then my hope dissipates. I can only wonder about the despair the tribes might feel and then be inspired that they continue to press forward and insist and persist on living despite all the many ways the US and the “explorers” before them have tried to delete them.
March 11, 2024
North America’s oldest continuously inhabited communities are those of the twenty-one Pueblo Indian nations of Arizona and New Mexico. We were told back in school about Ponce De Leon, but not that he was a fortune seeker looking for mineral wealth who governed through terror, mercilessly hunting Indians with greyhounds in Hispaniola. When Columbus arrived, Hispaniola had a population of 3 million – fifty years later the population was down to a mere 500 souls. That’s a holocaust. Today we think of De Soto as a car, but centuries ago De Soto massacred or sold to slavery all Native Americans he crossed paths with. “Indigenous laborers extracted nearly a hundred times more silver than gold in the Americas”. Silver was separated from ore through using mercury “on which the Spanish crown maintained a monopoly.” The silver mine Potosi in Peru had more than 100,000 people in 1700. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries almost a million Native Americans were enslaved. Imagine being hired to force slaves to board a slave ship. “According to Rosier, five or six crew members were needed to subdue each victim.” Rosier wrote, “our best hold was their long hair.”
“North America’s total population nearly halved from 1492 to 1776: from approximately 7 or 8 million to 4 million.” “By 1776 there would be fewer living souls on the continent than in 1492.” Montreal was founded in 1642. “By 1700 France laid claims to two-thirds of North America, from eastern Canada to the Mississippi and New Orleans.” New France became the largest colony in early America, although French governance of the whole area was minimal. The Dutch were into trade, not conquest. For the Dutch, trading with native people was “essential” to their fortunes. The Dutch founded Fort Orange (near Albany) in 1624. Before 1715, the Native American slave trade was larger than the trans-Atlantic West Africa slave trade. Historian Francis Jennings tells us that Europeans “did not settle a virgin land. They invaded and displaced a resident population.”
You can thank Louis XIV for your Louisville Slugger baseball bat – St. Louis, Louisiana and Louisville were all named after that entitled French monarch. Pittsburgh was named after Prime Minister William Pitt. The Missouri River (2,341 miles) is the longest river in the US (the Mississippi is 2,320 miles long). The Mandan was the largest and most densely packed urban center in North America until the American Revolution. The Ojibwe term for half-man and half-woman was “hemaneh”.
At Treaty of Paris in 1763, Louis XIV cedes France’s claims to North America and New France “was no more.” The author says, “more territory changed hands in 1763 than any other time in US history.” But emerging from this Seven Year’s War, the British were suddenly land rich but were mired in debt. Natives felt the British treated them like dogs with none of the mutualism the French had given them. Washington and others in his Ohio Company wanted 200,000 acres of interior lands he felt Virginia’s governor had promised them. Busy Year 1763: In February the Treaty of Paris is signed, Pontiac’s War begins in May and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 is promulgated in October. The Paxton Boys were militant settlers causing trouble for natives in Pennsylvania during Pontiac’s War. Pennsylvania politics moved from diplomacy to violence. The Paxton Boys massacred peaceful Conestoga Indian villagers in 1763, which Benjamin Franklin condemned. These Paxton scumbags spared pacifist Quakers only if they didn’t interfere, but burned down the houses of anyone who hide Native Americans. Ben Franklin asked, what had one-year old Native children done to also deserve being shot or hatcheted? “The foundations of British authority in the interior (thanks to unchecked settlers) were now crumbling. An emergent settler sovereignty had formed.” In January 1764 Benjamin Franklin refers to settlers as “the mad armed mob”. Blackhawk attributes the beginning of the fall of British empire in North America to March 5th, 1765 at the Pennsylvania frontier with the Smith raid. In contrast, he notes that in most historical narratives, the American Revolution began in seaports. In 1784, J.F.D. Smith writes, “The white Americans… have the most rancorous antipathy to the whole race of Indians; and nothing is more common than to hear them talk of extirpating them totally from the face of the earth, men, women, and children.” At this time, John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the republic. He had got his money from paying men to rip fur off of animals, but then shifted his money to real estate and giving furs to mistresses.
Natives called these angry settlers “a plague of locusts in the territories of the Ohio River.” To help “Make America Great”, Pennsylvania’s “Governor Joseph Reed offered $100 bounties for Indian scalps.” It would have been justice if he paid $100 for one scalp only to later find it was forcibly taken from his own son’s head. George Washington (who well knew his Mount Vernon’s lands were exhausted soil) got tens of thousands of acres of “interior lands in return for his service to the crown after the Seven Year’s War.” Washington was wealthy but lacked money; George’s land expenses outran his earnings. Washington’s problem was being an absentee landlord leasing land from afar. He arrived at his new lands to find indigent squatters, who he tried to evict as well as collect back rent from. Washington noted how squatters didn’t develop the land but just squatted while hoping to claim ownership. Squatters saw ALL Indians as hostile whether they were peaceful or not, and by the end of Washington’s presidency, Indian hating was a “pervasive ideology”.
Washington saw that only a national government could keep the peace with natives, and that a national government could help make real estate a safe good investment (for fellow whites). Washington’s replacement of random settler terror with official state terror led Natives to call him “Conotocarious” which, depending on the translator, means either “town destroyer” or “devourer of villagers.” Sing to the tune of Strawberry Fields, “Let me take your land, cause we’re going to… render you homeless (while we dishonor the land of your ancestors…) There’s nothing to get up about… Settler-colonialism forever…” The US passes the Indian Removal Act in 1830 which led to Indian removal from the eastern states. If Hitler was born one hundred years earlier and was a decorator, he would have said, “I just love what you’ve done to this place.”
The Erie Canal led to New York replacing New Orleans and Montreal as the “terminus for the region’s trade.” “By 1860, 31 million barrels of grain flowed annually from Buffalo.” NYC’s population surged after the canal’s completion. Funny how our most revolutionary texts about American freedom were written by slaveholders. Pause to salute the flag. Napoleon offered Jefferson the Louisiana Purchase because France was so money poor after fighting European wars and losing Haiti.
Spanish California: Mission priests demanded that Natives live in the mission otherwise authorities would go “seek them and will punish them.” Herds belonging to the Spanish would defile Native drinking water and eat Native seasonal foods without care. Juniper Serra, head of the California missions, said missionaries “would catch Indian women with their lassos to become prey to their unbridled lust” and any husbands, fathers, or sons who complained would be “shot down with bullets.” Serra and his fellow missionaries/rapists must have studied a different bible than the rest of us. California genocide made the Native population plunge from 310,000 under Spanish domination, to 150,000 in 1846 and then to 30,000 in 1873. Spanish San Francisco was lusted after by the French, British, Russian, and US leaders because it was for all the top West Coast harbor for ships. Russians had two Russian colonies near San Francisco and called the Pacific, Otter Sea. “Before 1769, California was, in fact, among the most linguistically diverse areas on earth.” Mission Santa Barbara had “ubiquitous and lethal” syphilis while Mission San Miguel wrote that there its dominant sickness was venereal disease.
Facts: The Louisiana Purchase happens in 1803, and the Monroe Doctrine starts in 1823. “Like the Declaration of Independence, the Monroe Doctrine also became a declaration of war against America’s Indigenous nations whose long-standing ability to ally with European powers became further inhibited.” The Civil War was partly fought over the West – both sides wanted to control its settler future regarding slavery (slavery vs freedom). “Only seven of California’s fifty-three newspapers endorsed Lincoln.” A delicate mélange of brutal settler-colonialism and odious racial capitalism constituted Lincoln sympathizers in California. But, concentrating on just the slavery vs freedom conflict in CA will obscure from your vision the “multiple campaigns of dispossession, removal, and even genocide.” Strangely “thousands of Indian volunteers joined the Confederate army.” “In January 1862, Lincoln ordered an invasion of Indian territory.” The Union adds Colorado and Nevada in 1861, Idaho and Arizona in 1863, and Montana in 1864. “Western mines also helped the Union to win the Civil War” as the Civil War cost (near its end) over $1,000,000 per day.
After Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis from their famous expedition, it’s almost four decades before the next overland cracker expedition (John Fremont’s in 1843). But “by 1860, a total of more than three hundred thousand immigrants and at least five times as many animals had crossed the plains.” “Ethnic cleansing became the expressed aim of US military leaders”; Colonel Chivington at Sand Creek before slaughtering the women, children and the elderly there reportedly said, “Damn any man who is in sympathy with an Indian.” During the Civil War, “across much of the West, campaigns against Native peoples, such as the Dakota War, elicited more passion than those against the confederacy.” “The killing of Indian non-combatants by US soldiers and officers characterized California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico during the Civil War.”
During the Reservation Era (1879-1934), “Native held land went from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres in 1934.” Natives were intentionally excluded from the Civil Rights Act of 1866. President Grant opposed the ongoing Native genocide saying to Congress in 1869 that “the extinction of a race is too horrible for a nation to adopt.” Railways led the US to be focused east to west as opposed to north to south along the waterways. Railways were a gift to settler-colonialism, allowing the government to easily move soldiers, supplies and settlers to counter remaining Native freedom. These white settlers across the west soon started coldly killing 459,000 buffaloes en masse for their hide and not for their meat; this near extermination intentionally crippled Native economies. Replacing the native bison were invasive species – cattle, sheep and wheat that shouted, “whitey is here”.
The Compromise of 1877 (where Hayes gets elected but Union soldiers must stop protecting blacks in the South) was “a return to unbridled white supremacy.” “After Reconstruction, Custer’s Last Stand was the largest loss of Union soldiers since the Civil War”. The idea of Native boarding schools was that eliminating Native culture was less messy than exterminating the entire race. All boys hitting those Native boarding schools had their hair shorn, and all their clothes taken – if they spoke their native tongue, their mouths were washed with soap. “Untold numbers suffered physical and sexual abuse, and thousands died due to disease, overly strict discipline, and deprivation.” Assimilation = Americanization. Some Indians sold out and joined Indian police units and were labeled sycophants by fellow natives. The biggest champions of forced assimilation were Protestants. Jesus wants me to shamelessly destroy who people are so we can take their land and control them better. How noble. Teddy Roosevelt, known today for his outdated eye wear once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are. I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” What a charmer.
The 20th Century: some Native-Americans fought for the US in WWI and one Native, Joseph Oklahombi, courageously captured 171 prisoners. Native-Americans were not granted US citizenship until 1924. Did you know that Nazis sent 45 lawyers to the US in 1935 to study how the US had successfully kept races down in the US? Hollywood used white actors to play Natives. Belittling cultural appropriation without remuneration. “By 1958, Hollywood was turning out a western per week.” Eight of the top ten US TV shows of 1959 were westerns. The Native occupation of Alcatraz was the first time in the 20th century when Native Americans “dominated the headlines.” Great book. I learned a lot. Bravo.
“North America’s total population nearly halved from 1492 to 1776: from approximately 7 or 8 million to 4 million.” “By 1776 there would be fewer living souls on the continent than in 1492.” Montreal was founded in 1642. “By 1700 France laid claims to two-thirds of North America, from eastern Canada to the Mississippi and New Orleans.” New France became the largest colony in early America, although French governance of the whole area was minimal. The Dutch were into trade, not conquest. For the Dutch, trading with native people was “essential” to their fortunes. The Dutch founded Fort Orange (near Albany) in 1624. Before 1715, the Native American slave trade was larger than the trans-Atlantic West Africa slave trade. Historian Francis Jennings tells us that Europeans “did not settle a virgin land. They invaded and displaced a resident population.”
You can thank Louis XIV for your Louisville Slugger baseball bat – St. Louis, Louisiana and Louisville were all named after that entitled French monarch. Pittsburgh was named after Prime Minister William Pitt. The Missouri River (2,341 miles) is the longest river in the US (the Mississippi is 2,320 miles long). The Mandan was the largest and most densely packed urban center in North America until the American Revolution. The Ojibwe term for half-man and half-woman was “hemaneh”.
At Treaty of Paris in 1763, Louis XIV cedes France’s claims to North America and New France “was no more.” The author says, “more territory changed hands in 1763 than any other time in US history.” But emerging from this Seven Year’s War, the British were suddenly land rich but were mired in debt. Natives felt the British treated them like dogs with none of the mutualism the French had given them. Washington and others in his Ohio Company wanted 200,000 acres of interior lands he felt Virginia’s governor had promised them. Busy Year 1763: In February the Treaty of Paris is signed, Pontiac’s War begins in May and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 is promulgated in October. The Paxton Boys were militant settlers causing trouble for natives in Pennsylvania during Pontiac’s War. Pennsylvania politics moved from diplomacy to violence. The Paxton Boys massacred peaceful Conestoga Indian villagers in 1763, which Benjamin Franklin condemned. These Paxton scumbags spared pacifist Quakers only if they didn’t interfere, but burned down the houses of anyone who hide Native Americans. Ben Franklin asked, what had one-year old Native children done to also deserve being shot or hatcheted? “The foundations of British authority in the interior (thanks to unchecked settlers) were now crumbling. An emergent settler sovereignty had formed.” In January 1764 Benjamin Franklin refers to settlers as “the mad armed mob”. Blackhawk attributes the beginning of the fall of British empire in North America to March 5th, 1765 at the Pennsylvania frontier with the Smith raid. In contrast, he notes that in most historical narratives, the American Revolution began in seaports. In 1784, J.F.D. Smith writes, “The white Americans… have the most rancorous antipathy to the whole race of Indians; and nothing is more common than to hear them talk of extirpating them totally from the face of the earth, men, women, and children.” At this time, John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the republic. He had got his money from paying men to rip fur off of animals, but then shifted his money to real estate and giving furs to mistresses.
Natives called these angry settlers “a plague of locusts in the territories of the Ohio River.” To help “Make America Great”, Pennsylvania’s “Governor Joseph Reed offered $100 bounties for Indian scalps.” It would have been justice if he paid $100 for one scalp only to later find it was forcibly taken from his own son’s head. George Washington (who well knew his Mount Vernon’s lands were exhausted soil) got tens of thousands of acres of “interior lands in return for his service to the crown after the Seven Year’s War.” Washington was wealthy but lacked money; George’s land expenses outran his earnings. Washington’s problem was being an absentee landlord leasing land from afar. He arrived at his new lands to find indigent squatters, who he tried to evict as well as collect back rent from. Washington noted how squatters didn’t develop the land but just squatted while hoping to claim ownership. Squatters saw ALL Indians as hostile whether they were peaceful or not, and by the end of Washington’s presidency, Indian hating was a “pervasive ideology”.
Washington saw that only a national government could keep the peace with natives, and that a national government could help make real estate a safe good investment (for fellow whites). Washington’s replacement of random settler terror with official state terror led Natives to call him “Conotocarious” which, depending on the translator, means either “town destroyer” or “devourer of villagers.” Sing to the tune of Strawberry Fields, “Let me take your land, cause we’re going to… render you homeless (while we dishonor the land of your ancestors…) There’s nothing to get up about… Settler-colonialism forever…” The US passes the Indian Removal Act in 1830 which led to Indian removal from the eastern states. If Hitler was born one hundred years earlier and was a decorator, he would have said, “I just love what you’ve done to this place.”
The Erie Canal led to New York replacing New Orleans and Montreal as the “terminus for the region’s trade.” “By 1860, 31 million barrels of grain flowed annually from Buffalo.” NYC’s population surged after the canal’s completion. Funny how our most revolutionary texts about American freedom were written by slaveholders. Pause to salute the flag. Napoleon offered Jefferson the Louisiana Purchase because France was so money poor after fighting European wars and losing Haiti.
Spanish California: Mission priests demanded that Natives live in the mission otherwise authorities would go “seek them and will punish them.” Herds belonging to the Spanish would defile Native drinking water and eat Native seasonal foods without care. Juniper Serra, head of the California missions, said missionaries “would catch Indian women with their lassos to become prey to their unbridled lust” and any husbands, fathers, or sons who complained would be “shot down with bullets.” Serra and his fellow missionaries/rapists must have studied a different bible than the rest of us. California genocide made the Native population plunge from 310,000 under Spanish domination, to 150,000 in 1846 and then to 30,000 in 1873. Spanish San Francisco was lusted after by the French, British, Russian, and US leaders because it was for all the top West Coast harbor for ships. Russians had two Russian colonies near San Francisco and called the Pacific, Otter Sea. “Before 1769, California was, in fact, among the most linguistically diverse areas on earth.” Mission Santa Barbara had “ubiquitous and lethal” syphilis while Mission San Miguel wrote that there its dominant sickness was venereal disease.
Facts: The Louisiana Purchase happens in 1803, and the Monroe Doctrine starts in 1823. “Like the Declaration of Independence, the Monroe Doctrine also became a declaration of war against America’s Indigenous nations whose long-standing ability to ally with European powers became further inhibited.” The Civil War was partly fought over the West – both sides wanted to control its settler future regarding slavery (slavery vs freedom). “Only seven of California’s fifty-three newspapers endorsed Lincoln.” A delicate mélange of brutal settler-colonialism and odious racial capitalism constituted Lincoln sympathizers in California. But, concentrating on just the slavery vs freedom conflict in CA will obscure from your vision the “multiple campaigns of dispossession, removal, and even genocide.” Strangely “thousands of Indian volunteers joined the Confederate army.” “In January 1862, Lincoln ordered an invasion of Indian territory.” The Union adds Colorado and Nevada in 1861, Idaho and Arizona in 1863, and Montana in 1864. “Western mines also helped the Union to win the Civil War” as the Civil War cost (near its end) over $1,000,000 per day.
After Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis from their famous expedition, it’s almost four decades before the next overland cracker expedition (John Fremont’s in 1843). But “by 1860, a total of more than three hundred thousand immigrants and at least five times as many animals had crossed the plains.” “Ethnic cleansing became the expressed aim of US military leaders”; Colonel Chivington at Sand Creek before slaughtering the women, children and the elderly there reportedly said, “Damn any man who is in sympathy with an Indian.” During the Civil War, “across much of the West, campaigns against Native peoples, such as the Dakota War, elicited more passion than those against the confederacy.” “The killing of Indian non-combatants by US soldiers and officers characterized California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico during the Civil War.”
During the Reservation Era (1879-1934), “Native held land went from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres in 1934.” Natives were intentionally excluded from the Civil Rights Act of 1866. President Grant opposed the ongoing Native genocide saying to Congress in 1869 that “the extinction of a race is too horrible for a nation to adopt.” Railways led the US to be focused east to west as opposed to north to south along the waterways. Railways were a gift to settler-colonialism, allowing the government to easily move soldiers, supplies and settlers to counter remaining Native freedom. These white settlers across the west soon started coldly killing 459,000 buffaloes en masse for their hide and not for their meat; this near extermination intentionally crippled Native economies. Replacing the native bison were invasive species – cattle, sheep and wheat that shouted, “whitey is here”.
The Compromise of 1877 (where Hayes gets elected but Union soldiers must stop protecting blacks in the South) was “a return to unbridled white supremacy.” “After Reconstruction, Custer’s Last Stand was the largest loss of Union soldiers since the Civil War”. The idea of Native boarding schools was that eliminating Native culture was less messy than exterminating the entire race. All boys hitting those Native boarding schools had their hair shorn, and all their clothes taken – if they spoke their native tongue, their mouths were washed with soap. “Untold numbers suffered physical and sexual abuse, and thousands died due to disease, overly strict discipline, and deprivation.” Assimilation = Americanization. Some Indians sold out and joined Indian police units and were labeled sycophants by fellow natives. The biggest champions of forced assimilation were Protestants. Jesus wants me to shamelessly destroy who people are so we can take their land and control them better. How noble. Teddy Roosevelt, known today for his outdated eye wear once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are. I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” What a charmer.
The 20th Century: some Native-Americans fought for the US in WWI and one Native, Joseph Oklahombi, courageously captured 171 prisoners. Native-Americans were not granted US citizenship until 1924. Did you know that Nazis sent 45 lawyers to the US in 1935 to study how the US had successfully kept races down in the US? Hollywood used white actors to play Natives. Belittling cultural appropriation without remuneration. “By 1958, Hollywood was turning out a western per week.” Eight of the top ten US TV shows of 1959 were westerns. The Native occupation of Alcatraz was the first time in the 20th century when Native Americans “dominated the headlines.” Great book. I learned a lot. Bravo.
March 27, 2023
I really liked Blackhawk's refiguration of American history. He's got a very straightforward way of writing that would win over a lot of popular audiences, instead of focused on academics. I was at first perplexed by his title, but as I began reading, it started to make sense very quickly. I've read Blackhawk's other work and found this one to be much more readable. Not only that, but I appreciate that there is now a narrative history of America focused from the indigenous side, rather than the usual Eurocentric model.
My only critique is that the narrative does not go up to the present day. While there is much about the Black Hills for instance, I would have liked to see the connections between the fight over the Laramie Treaty land to the present day, and the establishment of the Smithsonian museum in D.C. While this wouldn't fit the bill for many people's first foray into a more detailed history of America (although, many wouldn't have a problem with that) I think that it could definitely be read in conjunction as a supplement or lateral read.
My only critique is that the narrative does not go up to the present day. While there is much about the Black Hills for instance, I would have liked to see the connections between the fight over the Laramie Treaty land to the present day, and the establishment of the Smithsonian museum in D.C. While this wouldn't fit the bill for many people's first foray into a more detailed history of America (although, many wouldn't have a problem with that) I think that it could definitely be read in conjunction as a supplement or lateral read.
August 25, 2023
I took a 30-hour professional development course on teaching America Indian History with Professor Blackhawk. He is one of our nation's foremost indigenous scholars. This book chronicles the history of American Indians, how much they have been absolutely central to US History, and how overlooked they have been. Blackhawk notes that all of American History is impossible without the native peoples. There has been a move in recent years to recognize the vital contributions of enslaved African-Americans to the development of the United States and to place that awful experience at the center of US History. But there has been no such move in relation to Native American History. America's original inhabitants have been relegated to the fringes, discussed in early episodes and in units on westward expansion, but forgotten the rest of the time. Blackhawk counters this by noting how much of American History can be explained as a response to indigenous action. It can be a little disconcerting to readers familiar with the top-down (read: white-centric) version of American History to see a history that only deals with those events as tangential. But it also shows how American Indians influenced the greater history as much as being influenced by it. It's also worth noting how different some of the American heroes look when viewed from the indigenous point of view (certainly Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt decline in stature). And the activist government that is justly celebrated for attempting to reconstruct the post-Civil War Union on a more equitable basis for former enslaved folks turned that activist role into breaking up tribes and stealing tribal land.
The book is certainly very dense and requires a lot of investment. It is also a bit top-heavy as Blackhawk focuses a good 2/3 of the book on pre-Jackson America, making the Civil War-present seem a bit rushed. This is not an easy read. But it is very important to start these conversations with native scholars. This country was built through enslaved labor on stolen land. And this was not a one-time thing. Blackhawk demonstrates that throughout US History, decisions have been made again and again to try and strip the Indian tribes of their land and rights to benefit the majority-white population. The genocide has been ongoing, in some ways to this day, as their land has been restricted and they've had to fight for everything. Regardless of Florida's hang-ups, this is an important part of history and not learning it has real world implications when people act as if Native Americans aren't central to our nation. I hope to see more books like this in the mainstream soon.
The book is certainly very dense and requires a lot of investment. It is also a bit top-heavy as Blackhawk focuses a good 2/3 of the book on pre-Jackson America, making the Civil War-present seem a bit rushed. This is not an easy read. But it is very important to start these conversations with native scholars. This country was built through enslaved labor on stolen land. And this was not a one-time thing. Blackhawk demonstrates that throughout US History, decisions have been made again and again to try and strip the Indian tribes of their land and rights to benefit the majority-white population. The genocide has been ongoing, in some ways to this day, as their land has been restricted and they've had to fight for everything. Regardless of Florida's hang-ups, this is an important part of history and not learning it has real world implications when people act as if Native Americans aren't central to our nation. I hope to see more books like this in the mainstream soon.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1645808644i%2F7494844._UX200_CR0%2C6%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
April 30, 2024
Another must-read.
The history of the US is not complete without the history of its Native peoples.
The history of the US is not complete without the history of its Native peoples.
February 25, 2024
Too often in the past, Indigenous people were relegated to the margins of US history, In The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History, Indigenous author and professor Ned Blackhawk sets out to rectify this by showing that, from the beginning of American history, starting from the Spanish colonialism to the end of the 20th century, Indigenous peoples played an essential role in the success of the US although rarely to their benefit. He outlines how the violence, the diseases, the enslavement, and the dispossession of Native Americans across five centuries shaped America, how the success of British colonization and European settlement depended on the dispossession of the Native Americans, their role in the American Revolution and the Civil War as well as in the shaping of US laws, how much of American history was predicated on attempted destruction of their way of life, their culture, and, even their very existence, and how, despite every effort to erase them, they survived and continued to influence American history.
I cannot say this was an easy read albeit a very interesting one. Despite Blackhawk’s straightforward even, at times, dry writing style, it is hard not to be made, at the very least, uncomfortable by the cruelties and injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples throughout the five centuries of American (and Canadian) colonialism right to the end of the 20th century. But it is an important one giving a different side of history that few of us learned in school but one we should have learned. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Jason Grasl who does an excellent job.
I received an audio version of this book from Netgalley and Tantor Audio in exchange for an honest review
I cannot say this was an easy read albeit a very interesting one. Despite Blackhawk’s straightforward even, at times, dry writing style, it is hard not to be made, at the very least, uncomfortable by the cruelties and injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples throughout the five centuries of American (and Canadian) colonialism right to the end of the 20th century. But it is an important one giving a different side of history that few of us learned in school but one we should have learned. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Jason Grasl who does an excellent job.
I received an audio version of this book from Netgalley and Tantor Audio in exchange for an honest review
November 17, 2023
New York Times review is the one to read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/bo...
Excerpt:
“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?” This is the provocative question with which Ned Blackhawk opens his important new book, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.” A historian at Yale and a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Blackhawk rejects the myth that Native Americans fell quick and easy victims to European invaders. Instead, he asserts that “American Indians were central to every century of U.S. historical development.”
More boldly still, he insists that “Indigenous dispossession facilitated the growth of white male democracy and African American slavery” to constitute America’s historical trifecta of flaws. Built to serve and expand a settler society, the United States limited full citizenship to white men; helped them start new farms on lands taken from Indians; and protected their property rights, including their possession of enslaved people.
..................
Despite heavy losses and dispossession along the coasts, Native peoples still controlled most of the continental interior until the 19th century. They persisted by adapting creatively to new challenges. Some formed new confederations to practice a shrewd diplomacy, playing rival European powers against one another. During the 18th century, Native nations on the Great Plains took horses from the Spanish and obtained firearms from the French to remake their way of life around bison hunting. Within a few generations, their populations surged, reversing two centuries of decline as they drove back Hispanic colonists in New Mexico and Texas. Myth casts Indians as primitive peoples incapable of coping with allegedly superior invaders. In fact, Natives innovated within a framework of tradition and sovereignty meant to preserve their distinctive identities.
“The Rediscovery of America” gains momentum as the narrative moves beyond the colonial period and into the American Revolution. Blackhawk finds Native peoples shaping both the origins of the Revolution and its primary consequence: a federal constitution to unite 13 states and manage their territorial expansion. Shifting attention away from Eastern seaports, where mobs protested British Parliament’s taxes, Blackhawk highlights rural settlers seeking a freer hand to smite and kill Indians. “The start of the fall of the British Empire in North America began on the Pennsylvania frontier” in 1765, he argues."
Also see the good WSJ review: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-redi...
Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is a Professor of History at Yale. Book is long, and (per others) bogs down in academic stuff at times. Might be one to skim.
===================================
11/17/23: Interesting read and skim. I'm not going to write a formal review. Book was somewhat frustrating to read -- the author makes good points, but then wanders off into less-convincing stuff and loses me. I made a good-faith effort and was only partly convinced. Weak 3-star-book for me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/bo...
Excerpt:
“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?” This is the provocative question with which Ned Blackhawk opens his important new book, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.” A historian at Yale and a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Blackhawk rejects the myth that Native Americans fell quick and easy victims to European invaders. Instead, he asserts that “American Indians were central to every century of U.S. historical development.”
More boldly still, he insists that “Indigenous dispossession facilitated the growth of white male democracy and African American slavery” to constitute America’s historical trifecta of flaws. Built to serve and expand a settler society, the United States limited full citizenship to white men; helped them start new farms on lands taken from Indians; and protected their property rights, including their possession of enslaved people.
..................
Despite heavy losses and dispossession along the coasts, Native peoples still controlled most of the continental interior until the 19th century. They persisted by adapting creatively to new challenges. Some formed new confederations to practice a shrewd diplomacy, playing rival European powers against one another. During the 18th century, Native nations on the Great Plains took horses from the Spanish and obtained firearms from the French to remake their way of life around bison hunting. Within a few generations, their populations surged, reversing two centuries of decline as they drove back Hispanic colonists in New Mexico and Texas. Myth casts Indians as primitive peoples incapable of coping with allegedly superior invaders. In fact, Natives innovated within a framework of tradition and sovereignty meant to preserve their distinctive identities.
“The Rediscovery of America” gains momentum as the narrative moves beyond the colonial period and into the American Revolution. Blackhawk finds Native peoples shaping both the origins of the Revolution and its primary consequence: a federal constitution to unite 13 states and manage their territorial expansion. Shifting attention away from Eastern seaports, where mobs protested British Parliament’s taxes, Blackhawk highlights rural settlers seeking a freer hand to smite and kill Indians. “The start of the fall of the British Empire in North America began on the Pennsylvania frontier” in 1765, he argues."
Also see the good WSJ review: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-redi...
Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is a Professor of History at Yale. Book is long, and (per others) bogs down in academic stuff at times. Might be one to skim.
===================================
11/17/23: Interesting read and skim. I'm not going to write a formal review. Book was somewhat frustrating to read -- the author makes good points, but then wanders off into less-convincing stuff and loses me. I made a good-faith effort and was only partly convinced. Weak 3-star-book for me.
April 25, 2023
Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History is a survey history of the more than 500 year history of genocidal dispossession and survival of the Native Peoples of America. Central to Blackhawk's history, is how native Americas are central to the development of the United States from the colonial age to the present.
Blackhawk begins the history from the first interactions between Europeans and Native Americans. Each empire, first the Spanish through to the English has a chapter of its own. This leads to some repetition as each one is detailed chronologically. They all consider the European dispossession and spread of disease that lead to considerable native population death (Best estimates suggest an almost 90% mortality rate). However, these chapters also are much more nuanced than a standard textbook, discussing how the Nations learned quickly, playing the European powers against one another for their own benefit and embracing new technologies and animals. It was a period of great waves of violence that generated large amounts of movement, enslavement and trade.
Once Blackhawk reaches the American Revolutionary, the narrative is more focused and clear. As the founding fathers developed the structure of the United States government, one of the many consequences was the shift in political tones, focus on territory ownership and control, and frontier killings of native peoples. It is also the time when what it meant to be a citizen was codified in law to typical mean a white (at first land owning ) man.
Linking to the major driver of American expansion, natural resources and slave supported agriculture, Blackhawk details the Manifest Destiny's effects on Native Peoples and the other war(s) that took place during the Civil War, the war against Native Americans in the west.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the US government switched from removal and treaties or reservations to re-education and coercing the end of tribal status. One slight benefit, was this taught Native Americans about the United States sufficiently to use the legal system to pursue justice.
The latter chapters directly address the myth that Native Americans are historic figures by detailing the development of advocacy organizations and melding with the American expectations. Native Americans who took part in the World Wars helped to fuel greater awareness, and the New Deal programs of the 1930s also directly benefited Native Americans by supporting Native self government and reviving treaty rights.
Blackhawk's history looks at both the grand scale of our nation's history while also detailing key individuals, organizations and events. It is a slow starting, distressing, betrayal filled journey of survival with a surprisingly hopeful ending. A strong work to better understand American History for all its peoples.
I received a free digital version of this ebook via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
Blackhawk begins the history from the first interactions between Europeans and Native Americans. Each empire, first the Spanish through to the English has a chapter of its own. This leads to some repetition as each one is detailed chronologically. They all consider the European dispossession and spread of disease that lead to considerable native population death (Best estimates suggest an almost 90% mortality rate). However, these chapters also are much more nuanced than a standard textbook, discussing how the Nations learned quickly, playing the European powers against one another for their own benefit and embracing new technologies and animals. It was a period of great waves of violence that generated large amounts of movement, enslavement and trade.
Once Blackhawk reaches the American Revolutionary, the narrative is more focused and clear. As the founding fathers developed the structure of the United States government, one of the many consequences was the shift in political tones, focus on territory ownership and control, and frontier killings of native peoples. It is also the time when what it meant to be a citizen was codified in law to typical mean a white (at first land owning ) man.
Linking to the major driver of American expansion, natural resources and slave supported agriculture, Blackhawk details the Manifest Destiny's effects on Native Peoples and the other war(s) that took place during the Civil War, the war against Native Americans in the west.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the US government switched from removal and treaties or reservations to re-education and coercing the end of tribal status. One slight benefit, was this taught Native Americans about the United States sufficiently to use the legal system to pursue justice.
The latter chapters directly address the myth that Native Americans are historic figures by detailing the development of advocacy organizations and melding with the American expectations. Native Americans who took part in the World Wars helped to fuel greater awareness, and the New Deal programs of the 1930s also directly benefited Native Americans by supporting Native self government and reviving treaty rights.
Blackhawk's history looks at both the grand scale of our nation's history while also detailing key individuals, organizations and events. It is a slow starting, distressing, betrayal filled journey of survival with a surprisingly hopeful ending. A strong work to better understand American History for all its peoples.
I received a free digital version of this ebook via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
May 3, 2023
I recommend this book but not for casual reading. It is academic. The book reads smoothly in some parts and some parts bog down in heavy analysis. With that said…The Rediscovery of America does not retell history but rather includes the significant part that was left out. It is an important work that covers topics that include the subjugation of Native people through settler colonialism and indiscriminate violence but also the power wielded by the Iroquois Confederacy.
April 21, 2023
This book is a necessary and difficult read -- difficult because of the history of injustices we have committed against native peoples in the misnamed "founding" of America. Most American history starts with the Northeastern United States and therefore misses out on critical history - the maps in the book clearly show thriving communities of indigenous peoples throughout North America. We also learn that nearly a million Native Americans were enslaved across America during the 16th and 17th centuries. By the time the Mayflower came, the region was already undergoing colonization. Indigenous dispossession fueled a British North America and created the foundation for chattel slavery. This is a story of imperialism and how the real history is erased by who tells the story "who are the victors." The author has done meticulous research and the history is so rich with how in the 1700's "Indian hating" became an ideology that paints native peoples as inferior to whites to justify taking away their rights, committing violence against them and stealing their land. By 1787, treaties became the supreme law of the land in the Constitution. Native peoples outside the 13 colonies maintained control over the majority of North America. By 1776, few settlers had crossed the Ohio River but the American Revolution had depopulated and devastated huge swaths of interior homeland but did not "conquer" the Indian people. The Constitution ended up legitimizing the process of American colonialism - and by creating an empire, created histories to glorify this expansion. Part II of the book addresses the struggle for sovereignty and in 1830 the Federal Government passed the "Indian Removal Act." - now history shows up that this sanctioned the removal of indigenous peoples, expanded white male constitutional democracy and expanded African American slavery. By the 1870's during reconstruction, Congress assumed new power to undermine treaty commitments and began to seize native children to send the to boarding schools to erase their history and identities - and through the 1920's - the name of the game was expansion of assimilation. During this time, a native-led organization called the Society of American Indians" started to raise awareness and lobby -- under a remarkable woman named Kellogg. In 1924 they helped to advance the American Indian Citizenship Act. During the New Deal, some progressive advances were made for American Indians but by 1953 again these began to unravel -- a new commission of Indian Affairs was created led by the man who was responsible for relocating Japanese-Americans to internment camps during WWII. Even Hitler and other Nazi officials came to learn how we handled race-based colonialism and American Law as well as how we treated African-Americans. As the United States government sought to terminate agreements with American Indians, they created an Indian Adoption Act -- one quarter to one third of all American Indian children were removed from their families and put into foster care, adopted or orphanages. The final chapters address self-determination and the rise of "Red Power." By learning the history after reading this book, I finally feel I am only beginning to understand the systemic and institutionalized racism against our native peoples. This was a great foundation and there is more I want to and need to learn about other truths about the history of America. I highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and Yale University Press for an ARC and I voluntarily left this honest review.
Thank you to Netgalley and Yale University Press for an ARC and I voluntarily left this honest review.
March 8, 2024
I'm not a scholar of American history and apart from the big events I know little about it. However indigenous peoples and their plight in whatever country has always interested me so I hoped this tome might shed some light.
It certainly did that. I had to listen to it in increasingly shorter gobbets because as time goes on and (for some reason) I expected the lives of the Native Americans to improve and even though the mass slaughter had gone the actual rights of the people got worse.
I can't count how many treaties were signed, broken, manipulated and revised unilaterally. Then there was the Termination policy which seemed like a good idea but was only designed to do the US government good.
The whole of this book made me feel somewhat sick. I knew that many Natives had lost their lives but the total approximate figure of 56 million floored me.
I am British. We have a long and disgusting history of subjugation and genocide all over the world but it seems that in the US everyone wanted rid of the people whose land they'd stolen. Once the British were gone this was all on the emigrants.
After that the government tried to assimilate - destroying Natives way of life, families and dignity. Termination just about finished off the indigenous peoples but thankfully a reversal has begun in more recent years.
So it's true to say that this is a very uncomfortable read. However it is thoroughly researched, detailed, interesting and I'd highly recommend it.
I listened to the audio version which was read clearly by Jason Grasl but I'd like the print version to read again.
Thanks to Netgalley and RB Media for the advance review audio copy.
It certainly did that. I had to listen to it in increasingly shorter gobbets because as time goes on and (for some reason) I expected the lives of the Native Americans to improve and even though the mass slaughter had gone the actual rights of the people got worse.
I can't count how many treaties were signed, broken, manipulated and revised unilaterally. Then there was the Termination policy which seemed like a good idea but was only designed to do the US government good.
The whole of this book made me feel somewhat sick. I knew that many Natives had lost their lives but the total approximate figure of 56 million floored me.
I am British. We have a long and disgusting history of subjugation and genocide all over the world but it seems that in the US everyone wanted rid of the people whose land they'd stolen. Once the British were gone this was all on the emigrants.
After that the government tried to assimilate - destroying Natives way of life, families and dignity. Termination just about finished off the indigenous peoples but thankfully a reversal has begun in more recent years.
So it's true to say that this is a very uncomfortable read. However it is thoroughly researched, detailed, interesting and I'd highly recommend it.
I listened to the audio version which was read clearly by Jason Grasl but I'd like the print version to read again.
Thanks to Netgalley and RB Media for the advance review audio copy.
November 3, 2024
Very comprehensive history and ‘otter sea’ 🥹and so much more I never knew.
June 5, 2024
“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?”
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher and author for offering this book, via Netgalley, an entire year post publication! As an expansive American history that reframes the narrative by placing native peoples, rather than European settlers, in a central role, the shape and meaning of our history, and indeed our identity, as an American people, begins to change. And indeed it should.
I'm happy to report that one of the Long Essay Questions for the APUSH exam this year dealt with Native suppression by the expansive Europeans: "Evaluate the extent to which settler expansion influenced North America from 1754 to 1800." This is a topic in which Ned Blackhawk excels, in depicting how the Native resistance to settler expansion was one of the leading foundations to the American Revolution. He elaborates as well on how the early Republic is shaped by the need for treaty powers in dealing with the various tribal powers in the interior.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I will be looking to use excerpts of it in my high school history classes next year. Thank you, Netgalley. You, and Dr. Blackhawk, rock!
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher and author for offering this book, via Netgalley, an entire year post publication! As an expansive American history that reframes the narrative by placing native peoples, rather than European settlers, in a central role, the shape and meaning of our history, and indeed our identity, as an American people, begins to change. And indeed it should.
I'm happy to report that one of the Long Essay Questions for the APUSH exam this year dealt with Native suppression by the expansive Europeans: "Evaluate the extent to which settler expansion influenced North America from 1754 to 1800." This is a topic in which Ned Blackhawk excels, in depicting how the Native resistance to settler expansion was one of the leading foundations to the American Revolution. He elaborates as well on how the early Republic is shaped by the need for treaty powers in dealing with the various tribal powers in the interior.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I will be looking to use excerpts of it in my high school history classes next year. Thank you, Netgalley. You, and Dr. Blackhawk, rock!
Read
July 5, 2023The book is fascinating but the tremendous amount of detail is a little overwhelming at times.
August 22, 2024
this is a book which covers a vast breadth of the history of Native peoples living in the US - from the moment of colonial contact to the 20th century, spanning over 500 years. it primarily covers legal aspects of history, since so many of the wrongs committed against Native peoples have been institutionalized through legal measures. Blackhawk decidedly makes the case that Native and colonizing encounters and relations have together transformed north america into its current form of statehood, while simultaneously transforming Native peoples statehood and sovereignty though this relationship is often hidden by mythologized ideas of American nationhood. it is very well researched and informative but is definitely not for beginners of US history.
November 20, 2025
Oh, good golly I finished this sucker! I started it mid-way through November and finished today. The point down is really on me because I crawled through it.
It is a deserving book and won the Nonfiction National Book Award. The premise is that Native Americans have had a huge hand in the history of our nation, but have been largely left out, because our history has mostly been told through the eyes of white men.
Blackhawk, a Yale history professor writes:
"Scholars have long conflated U.S. history with Europeans, maintaining that the United States evolved from its British settlements.
If history provides the common soil for a nation’s growth and a window into its future, it is time to reimagine U.S. history outside the tropes of discovery that have bred exclusion and misunderstanding. Finding answers to the challenges of our time—racial strife, climate crisis, and domestic and global inequities, among others—will require new concepts, approaches, and commitments. It is time to put down the interpretive tools of the previous century and take up new ones.
Indigenous absence has been a long tradition of American historical analysis."
Blackhawk sets out to right that wrong and he does so with a fine tooth comb, examining many strands. At some 800 pages it is a hefty book both in its size and in the detail. For the serious reader this takes some time to digest and reflect upon.
It is truly a text of American History and I am sure it will be used as such.
I applaud Blackhawk for his worthy scholarship and I do heartily recommend this book.
It is a deserving book and won the Nonfiction National Book Award. The premise is that Native Americans have had a huge hand in the history of our nation, but have been largely left out, because our history has mostly been told through the eyes of white men.
Blackhawk, a Yale history professor writes:
"Scholars have long conflated U.S. history with Europeans, maintaining that the United States evolved from its British settlements.
If history provides the common soil for a nation’s growth and a window into its future, it is time to reimagine U.S. history outside the tropes of discovery that have bred exclusion and misunderstanding. Finding answers to the challenges of our time—racial strife, climate crisis, and domestic and global inequities, among others—will require new concepts, approaches, and commitments. It is time to put down the interpretive tools of the previous century and take up new ones.
Indigenous absence has been a long tradition of American historical analysis."
Blackhawk sets out to right that wrong and he does so with a fine tooth comb, examining many strands. At some 800 pages it is a hefty book both in its size and in the detail. For the serious reader this takes some time to digest and reflect upon.
It is truly a text of American History and I am sure it will be used as such.
I applaud Blackhawk for his worthy scholarship and I do heartily recommend this book.
April 6, 2024
Great concept, a subject I would love to learn more about. Tragically it is so horribly organized and bogged down it becomes nearly impossible to get anything out of it before your mind starts begging for you to stop.
Half of the text is redundant, either restating something that was just mentioned because the author needed to take a whole paragraph to assure you that what you just read about history... had an impact on history. Thanks, but I'm not grading you on connecting your points back to your thesis statement. I can figure it out from here.
It also is frustratingly structured in that it unnecessarily goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth through time, so you have to read about the same span of 10-15 years 30 times in related and connected accounts that could have been consolidated into one section to offer more flow, instead of constantly repeating things that were just gone over one or two sections ago and then tossing in one individual's perspective on the matter.
Frustrating, frustrating. I've decided halfway through to let myself give up and put it down. Hopefully someone picks it up as a documentary series and has some more sense of organization, because yeah, I really wanted to be able to learn from this book.
Half of the text is redundant, either restating something that was just mentioned because the author needed to take a whole paragraph to assure you that what you just read about history... had an impact on history. Thanks, but I'm not grading you on connecting your points back to your thesis statement. I can figure it out from here.
It also is frustratingly structured in that it unnecessarily goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth through time, so you have to read about the same span of 10-15 years 30 times in related and connected accounts that could have been consolidated into one section to offer more flow, instead of constantly repeating things that were just gone over one or two sections ago and then tossing in one individual's perspective on the matter.
Frustrating, frustrating. I've decided halfway through to let myself give up and put it down. Hopefully someone picks it up as a documentary series and has some more sense of organization, because yeah, I really wanted to be able to learn from this book.
July 12, 2023
The information in this book is very good. I wouldn’t call this a retelling of history, however, but an academic history of Native Peoples. I was thinking it would be more narrative, more focused on their cultures and history. This reminded me of other books I’ve read about the history of Native People and the conflicts with colonial powers. Very well researched, complete, and is a good text for study.
Read
January 6, 20253,5*
August 19, 2023
Well researched, but less engaging than Roxanne Dunbar's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
October 14, 2025
I first heard of Ned Blackhawk by way of an Inupiaq historian named Holly Miowak Guise, whose work I really appreciate. Dr. Blackhawk was her doctoral advisor at Yale. I managed to catch a lecture by Dr. Blackhawk at McGill not long ago, but the room was very full and the sound system was not working well and I could not hear the talk very well. I can say reading this book was a much better experience. It was very engaging, and for anyone interested in or working on Canadian history, this book will be extremely helpful as well. A large portion of it covers New France, which in many ways later became the British settler colony of Canada. I have been struggling to figure out how to approach Haudenosaunee history in Ontario for the first chapter of my dissertation, because so much white scholarship on that history has been fairly racist and unhelpful. This book has in many ways helped in that respect. A very helpful overview. If you live in a specific region of North America, you likely have already encountered fragments that are in this book, but I found it really helpful to have the bigger picture drawn out and connections made, while centering Indigenous peoples and Nations as the primary actors in this continent's history.
November 17, 2023
So many added truths to American History must not remain unknown. New Histories written will include and not exclude Indigenous people. In this instance, we are thinking and writing about the Native Americans. God only knows how much physical and emotional pain these people have endured. More negative realities will coexist with Native American as long as long as their histories remain buried far from the eyes of successive generations. Just thinking of future ways the Native American might suffer is heart rending.
December 13, 2024
Extremely informative. It is not narrative nonfiction, it’s a history book, so be prepared. If you’re interested in learning the history of American Indians from 1492-now and how it ties to American history, I would recommend. It included a lot of information about tribes from around the area I grew up, so those sections held my interest more so than some others. The audio delivery can be a bit dry at times, but overall I was engaged with the text.
April 4, 2024
I should be rating this book higher because it is such an important correction to the way I was raised to think about American history, but it was a slog for me to read. History tends to come alive when we have first account stories of lives, and of course, there are few of these by native peoples in the beginning. On the other hand, there are so many tribes that it is difficult to keep track of them and to have a sense of the big picture. What is clear, is that for the British settlers, their minds were just not big enough to consider that these people that they encountered, were equal to them and had first rights to the land. It is incredibly sad how much the American Indians suffered generation after generation and how long it has taken for the majority to even realize this, let alone care.
September 7, 2023
Excellent book on the true history of Native Americans from the time of European invasion to today. The history is much more complex than I even imaged, and of course I learned I knew nearly nothing before I started reading. Had to put it down several times because the actions of English, Spanish, and Americans was so atrocious I felt I was covered in blood. Includes Indian territory map before English & others arrived - an astonishing number and variety of tribes across what is now the US. Then has a current map of federal and state recognized Indians peoples. Fascinating book - glad I bought it so I could learn what really went down.
November 30, 2024
an ambitious synthesis affirming the centrality of Indigenous perspectives in U.S. history. any ambitious synthesis cannot cover everything, but this one is packed w/ detailed research, fresh interpretation, AND it’s readable. some early Americanists have suggested that it’s stronger in the contemporary & modern stretches, but I as an early Americanist found the first third, pre-Constitution, to be equally strong. personally, I would’ve liked to see more Alaska & Hawai’i, but of course, nothing can cover everything. impeccable coverage and endlessly useful for a wide range of historical endeavors.
March 10, 2025
I was disappointed in this book. While there was good information, I felt it was poorly written. The book jumped around which made it hard to follow. For instance there was a chapter about the Cold War followed by a chapter about WW11, then returned back to the Cold War. The author also try to draw analogies that didn't always make sense. I love the concept, but I didn't learn as much as I was hoping!
August 20, 2025
This book didn’t live up to its title nor my expectations. From the title I expected to learn how from the natives’ experience of U.S. History would be re-imagined, that the familiar would be presented as dramatically different from my previous understanding. That’s a high bar but what the title suggests.
Now what the book actually does is to give a deeper and sometimes horrific version of a story that is pretty familiar and it does this very well. For instance the colonial and revolutionary period was more complex than the story I knew because the natives were treated better by the French and Spanish than by the British. The French in particular were much more adept at negotiating with tribes from a position of parity while the British didn’t believe they should have to negotiate. Then during the revolutionary period, the British and the Americans had to deal the rapacious settlers who treated the natives as if they were in the way. This made for a three way struggle between the tribes, the governments and the pioneering settlers.
The rest of the book covers familiar territory but does detail the ways that the states in particular worked hard at undermining the native people at every turn. Federal administrations were better than the states but the real heros are the Federal courts that made it possible for tribes today to have the degree sovereignty that they have.
Oh and the stories of white people destroying native communities and replacing the indigenous names with European names reminds me of Nakba.
Now what the book actually does is to give a deeper and sometimes horrific version of a story that is pretty familiar and it does this very well. For instance the colonial and revolutionary period was more complex than the story I knew because the natives were treated better by the French and Spanish than by the British. The French in particular were much more adept at negotiating with tribes from a position of parity while the British didn’t believe they should have to negotiate. Then during the revolutionary period, the British and the Americans had to deal the rapacious settlers who treated the natives as if they were in the way. This made for a three way struggle between the tribes, the governments and the pioneering settlers.
The rest of the book covers familiar territory but does detail the ways that the states in particular worked hard at undermining the native people at every turn. Federal administrations were better than the states but the real heros are the Federal courts that made it possible for tribes today to have the degree sovereignty that they have.
Oh and the stories of white people destroying native communities and replacing the indigenous names with European names reminds me of Nakba.
May 19, 2025
Finally finished this dense text on Native U.S. History. Difficult in emotions, events, and in reading. It was more like a textbook and a valuable one at that. Native history has so often been written by eurocentric eyes viewing a continent of peoples enduring an apocalypse of disease violence and lies from colonizers. Every time Natives had advantage a treaty would get made and then when convenient broken. But the resistance is one that endures and their time on this land has been thousands of years longer than this young and faulty empire
June 16, 2024
A total retelling of America's history through the eyes of Native Americans from Colonial times till the recent past. It is not a happy story but one that needs to be told. There are some victories over the years of ongoing struggle. He covers times and areas of North America that have been largely ignored including the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest with the influence of the Catholic Church there. As a college history teacher this is a very valuable book.
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