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.
