Indigenous Continent

The Epic Contest for North America

Pekka Hämäläinen

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Hardback

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English

Liveright
31 October 2022

History; History of the Americas; Social & cultural history; Indigenous peoples

"There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus ""discovers"" a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing ""New World"" as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they cannot stop the onslaught. White imperialists are destined to rule the continent, and history is an irreversible march toward Indigenous destruction.

Yet as with other long-accepted origin stories, this one, too, turns out to be based in myth and distortion. In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals. From the Iroquois in the Northeast to the Comanches on the Plains, and from the Pueblos in the Southwest to the Cherokees in the Southeast, Native nations frequently decimated white newcomers in battle. Even as the white population exploded and colonists' land greed grew more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and leadership structures.

By 1776, various colonial powers claimed nearly all of the continent, but Indigenous peoples still controlled it-as Hämäläinen points out, the maps in modern textbooks that paint much of North America in neat, color-coded blocks confuse outlandish imperial boasts for actual holdings. In fact, Native power peaked in the late nineteenth century, with the Lakota victory in 1876 at Little Big Horn, which was not an American blunder, but an all-too-expected outcome.

Hämäläinen ultimately contends that the very notion of ""colonial America"" is misleading, and that we should speak instead of an ""Indigenous America"" that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. The evidence of Indigenous defiance is apparent today in the hundreds of Native nations that still dot the United States and Canada. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America's past, present, and future, Indigenous Continent restores Native peoples to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history."

By: Pekka Hämäläinen
Imprint: Liveright
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 244mm, Width: 165mm, Spine: 41mm
Weight: 957g
ISBN: 9781631496998
ISBN 10: 1631496999
Pages: 592
Publication Date: 31 October 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Pekka Hamalainen is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University and the author of The Comanche Empire, winner of the Bancroft Prize, and Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power. He lives in Oxford, England.

Reviews for Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America

[A] towering achievement. By gathering the experiences of multiple Native peoples-across an astounding expanse of time and space-Indigenous Continent explodes the view that American history unfolded inexorably according to European and American design. -- Andrew Graybill - The American Scholar [M]agisterial . . . the pace and the scope of the book have a force of their own: Hamalainen makes it clear that America's past is crazily, energetically, tumultuously crowded with incident; that Indigenous power has affected everything about America . . . I can only wish that, when I was that lonely college junior and was finishing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I'd had Hamalainen's book at hand. It would have helped me see that there was indeed a larger story: that my civilization hadn't been destroyed; that my tribe's contribution to the past wasn't merely to fade away in the face of history; that Native peoples-for better or for worse-made this country what it was, and have a role to play in what it now struggles to be. -- David Treuer - The New Yorker [T]he single best book I have ever read on Native American history, as well as one of the most innovative narratives about the continent. -- Thomas E. Ricks - The New York Times Book Review Mr. Hamalainen's book provides a useful introduction to a vast history... -- Kathleen DuVall - The Wall Street Journal The author, an Oxford historian, recasts the history of North America from a Native American perspective, making clear that Native tribes controlled the continent for millenniums ('On an Indigenous time scale, the United States is a mere speck'). One of the best books ever written on Native American history. -- The New York Times Book Review