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Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
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.
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.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published September 20, 2022
About the author
Pekka Hämäläinen
20 books185 followersPekka Hämäläinen is the Rhodes Professor of American History and Fellow of St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University. He has served as the principal investigator of a five-year project on nomadic empires in world history, funded by the European Research Council. His previous book, The Comanche Empire, won the Bancroft Prize in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 310 reviews
May 9, 2023
An astonishing new book! The main myth that the book refutes is that in colonial American the Indians were just a sideshow. Author Hämäläinen shows that, in fact, it was the indigenous populations who were in charge most of the time. Therefore the book fills in many gaps left in the standard American histories and expunges many false claims.
This is not a review — the book's four-century scope won't allow that— rather it's a gathering of a few quotes that support the main themes of the book.
"The dual threat of Indigenous power and English expansion from the east terrified the French inhabitants in Louisiana to their core. The Natchez war had shown, with graphic immediacy, what disregard for Indigenous sovereignty, traditions, and needs could bring. Cataclysmic violence, massive loss of life and property, the utter collapse of colonial institutions. The violence discouraged French investments in the colony and impeded France's empire-building in the lower Mississipi Valley. It also taught the colonists how little they could do without Native approval. In Louisiana, Indigenous customs prevailed, turning a colonial space into a hybrid one. Choctaw, Illini, Quapaw, and Apalachee societies were all intact, and they expected the French to comply with their traditions. The consequences for Louisiana were far-reaching. Métissage — cultural mixing — became the norm, shaping the most intimate aspects of the colonists' lives: sexual practices, gender roles, and child-rearing. The French in Louisiana came to realize that to survive in North America, newcomers needed to embrace its Indigenous inhabitants and convince them to become allies. The French had been doing so elsewhere, and by the early eighteenth century, all the European empires had grasped, if not necessarily accepted, that reality. They had also learned that the most effective way of building alliances was generosity and trade, which could turn enemies into kin." (p 226-7)
This is a dense text, but a well written one. For me, a general reader, the key to conquering it was to sound out the sometimes complex Indian personal and place names early on: Thayendanegea, Michilimackinac, Meshekinnoqquah, etc. Happily, all Indian names are not this complex, but some are, and unless you are a scholar the book is probably not skimmable.
——
"ALL ACROSS THE CONTINENT, from the Southeast to the Southwest, from the deep interior to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, colonial ambitions had crashed into Indigenous geographies of power. . . . Fundamentally, it was a matter of distance and geography. North America had become divided in two: there was the narrow and patchy colonial belt on the coastal plains, where Europeans dominated, and there was the immense Indigenous interior, where Native territories extended deep into what, to Europeans, was a great unknown. The two Americas were almost complete opposites. In the interior, the Columbian Exchange often worked to the Indians' advantage. Deadly germs were brought inland by European traders, but their impact remained limited, whereas new military technology guns, powder, metal, and horses became available through colonial border markets and extensive Indigenous trade networks. In a transitional belt where the Indians were neither too close to European colonies to fall under their epidemiological shadow nor too far away to reap the benefits of their commerce, several geographically privileged Indigenous regimes rose to challenge colonial expansion on their own terms. This emerging belt was where great fortunes could be amassed, and where empires were won and lost." (p. 258)
——
"The Lenapes fought back. The sachem Shingas thought that if they stopped the English, 'we may do afterwards what we please with the French, for we have [them] as it were in a sheep den, and may cut them [off] at any time.' Ohio Country Indians kept attacking English settlements, forcing Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to focus on protecting their borders at a time when they should have been fighting the French. Highly mobile Native squadrons killed or captured hundreds of settlers, sending them into a chaotic retreat to the east. Soon the frontier was only a hundred miles from Philadelphia. The sudden contraction of British America became an opening for the French." (p. 278)
——
"THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR, Pontiac's War, Lord Dunmore's Was, and the Revolutionary War were to the British a single, twenty year conflict geared at preserving their hegemony in North America and, by extension, in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. The 1783 Treaty of Paris extinguished that long-standing ambition. The thirteen colonies were severed from the British Empire and recognized as the United States of America. Native Americans had not been invited to the treaty talks, and they knew to expect an undesirable outcome. Still, when the news arrived, they were shocked and appalled. The treaty gave the United States an enormous territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, including the southern Great Lakes. The United States was an instant empire, claiming lands far beyond its effective borders. . . .
"Contemporary Europeans saw the 1783 treaty as a decisive turning point in the North American continent's history that spelled doom for Native Americans, who could no longer play rival colonial powers against one another. That view of the situation was wishful thinking. The fledgling United States may have claimed an enormous swath of Indigenous territory, but it controlled very little of it. Native Americans . . . had retained their territorial supremacy in North America throughout the long war. The Great Lakes region and nearly all of the Trans-Mississippi West remained under Indigenous rule, with catastrophic consequences for the British Empire. . . ." (p. 318-9)
——
There can be no doubt about the genocide British, Spanish, French, and American colonists gradually brought against the Indians. President Andrew Jackson and Congress in the mid 1830s moved indigenous nations off of prime agricultural land in the south and onto far less arable tracts in the west. (The Third Reich was inspired by the accomplishment; during WW2 they wanted to move the "untermenschen" to less productive land in Asia, but they didn't have the luck of working in a news vacuum as early American colonial powers did.) The United States compelled marches in winter which killed off a good number of Indians either by extreme cold or germs. Although this book is about the triumph of the indigenous nations over the colonial powers — and that power over the colonizers was immense — it is in the end about the killing of the American Indians and the massive expropriation of their lands. (See Claudio Saunt's powerful Unworthy Republic).
"GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON BECAME president in 1829 and announced "Indian removal" — a euphemistic term if there ever was one — as his main ambition. He did not acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty, having once argued that Congress had 'the right to take it and dispose of it.' Events accelerated dangerously for the Cherokees. The Georgia General Assembly strove to extend its jurisdiction over the Indians' territory, and a year later gold was found in the Dahlonega region in northern Georgia, triggering the first gold rush in American history. The land belonged to the Cherokee Nation. Jackson argued that 'though lavish in its expenditures upon the subject, Government has constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians in general, receding farther and farther to the west, have retained their savage habits.' The Cherokees sent envoys to Washington, D.C., in March 1830. They stayed in Brown's Hotel, equidistant from the White House and Congress. The House of Representatives debated the expulsion of Indians from the South for two weeks before passing the Indian Removal Act by a paper-thin margin of 102-97. The Senate vote was 28-19 in favor of the act. Jackson declared that the new Indigenous domain in the West would be called the 'Indian Territory'" (p. 394)
——
The biggest surprise for this reader was the description of Indian-on-Indian slavery. It's made me think differently of the African slave experience, which I had previously thought without parallel in North America. But Indigenous peoples had been trading captives with each other long before Europeans arrived in North America. So extensive was such slavery that I have been unable to find a summarizing quote that might give you a sense of its scope, which was vast. Indian enslavement was eventually helped along by confederations Indians formed with the colonizers, once, that is, they grew powerful enough to participate.
——
"In October 1867, the Cheyennes, led by Black Kettle, signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty with U.S. representatives. Only a month later, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, burning with ambition, attacked Black Kettle's village on the Washita River, killing dozens of solders and women and children. U.S. Indian policy was misguided, vicious, and incompetent all at once, entangling the nation in unnecessary wars that only weakened its authority in the critical midsection of the continent. All in all, it was a massive miscalculation that would quickly come to haunt the U.S. Army. [W2 emphasis]. The central plains became dangerous to Americans, and soon a U.S. official complained that the Kiowas and Comanches 'have been doing much of this wrong. I shall however, continue to exert myself to prevent these acts of violence.' The Americans were making far too many enemies." (p. 440)
This is not a review — the book's four-century scope won't allow that— rather it's a gathering of a few quotes that support the main themes of the book.
"The dual threat of Indigenous power and English expansion from the east terrified the French inhabitants in Louisiana to their core. The Natchez war had shown, with graphic immediacy, what disregard for Indigenous sovereignty, traditions, and needs could bring. Cataclysmic violence, massive loss of life and property, the utter collapse of colonial institutions. The violence discouraged French investments in the colony and impeded France's empire-building in the lower Mississipi Valley. It also taught the colonists how little they could do without Native approval. In Louisiana, Indigenous customs prevailed, turning a colonial space into a hybrid one. Choctaw, Illini, Quapaw, and Apalachee societies were all intact, and they expected the French to comply with their traditions. The consequences for Louisiana were far-reaching. Métissage — cultural mixing — became the norm, shaping the most intimate aspects of the colonists' lives: sexual practices, gender roles, and child-rearing. The French in Louisiana came to realize that to survive in North America, newcomers needed to embrace its Indigenous inhabitants and convince them to become allies. The French had been doing so elsewhere, and by the early eighteenth century, all the European empires had grasped, if not necessarily accepted, that reality. They had also learned that the most effective way of building alliances was generosity and trade, which could turn enemies into kin." (p 226-7)
This is a dense text, but a well written one. For me, a general reader, the key to conquering it was to sound out the sometimes complex Indian personal and place names early on: Thayendanegea, Michilimackinac, Meshekinnoqquah, etc. Happily, all Indian names are not this complex, but some are, and unless you are a scholar the book is probably not skimmable.
——
"ALL ACROSS THE CONTINENT, from the Southeast to the Southwest, from the deep interior to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, colonial ambitions had crashed into Indigenous geographies of power. . . . Fundamentally, it was a matter of distance and geography. North America had become divided in two: there was the narrow and patchy colonial belt on the coastal plains, where Europeans dominated, and there was the immense Indigenous interior, where Native territories extended deep into what, to Europeans, was a great unknown. The two Americas were almost complete opposites. In the interior, the Columbian Exchange often worked to the Indians' advantage. Deadly germs were brought inland by European traders, but their impact remained limited, whereas new military technology guns, powder, metal, and horses became available through colonial border markets and extensive Indigenous trade networks. In a transitional belt where the Indians were neither too close to European colonies to fall under their epidemiological shadow nor too far away to reap the benefits of their commerce, several geographically privileged Indigenous regimes rose to challenge colonial expansion on their own terms. This emerging belt was where great fortunes could be amassed, and where empires were won and lost." (p. 258)
——
"The Lenapes fought back. The sachem Shingas thought that if they stopped the English, 'we may do afterwards what we please with the French, for we have [them] as it were in a sheep den, and may cut them [off] at any time.' Ohio Country Indians kept attacking English settlements, forcing Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to focus on protecting their borders at a time when they should have been fighting the French. Highly mobile Native squadrons killed or captured hundreds of settlers, sending them into a chaotic retreat to the east. Soon the frontier was only a hundred miles from Philadelphia. The sudden contraction of British America became an opening for the French." (p. 278)
——
"THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR, Pontiac's War, Lord Dunmore's Was, and the Revolutionary War were to the British a single, twenty year conflict geared at preserving their hegemony in North America and, by extension, in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. The 1783 Treaty of Paris extinguished that long-standing ambition. The thirteen colonies were severed from the British Empire and recognized as the United States of America. Native Americans had not been invited to the treaty talks, and they knew to expect an undesirable outcome. Still, when the news arrived, they were shocked and appalled. The treaty gave the United States an enormous territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, including the southern Great Lakes. The United States was an instant empire, claiming lands far beyond its effective borders. . . .
"Contemporary Europeans saw the 1783 treaty as a decisive turning point in the North American continent's history that spelled doom for Native Americans, who could no longer play rival colonial powers against one another. That view of the situation was wishful thinking. The fledgling United States may have claimed an enormous swath of Indigenous territory, but it controlled very little of it. Native Americans . . . had retained their territorial supremacy in North America throughout the long war. The Great Lakes region and nearly all of the Trans-Mississippi West remained under Indigenous rule, with catastrophic consequences for the British Empire. . . ." (p. 318-9)
——
There can be no doubt about the genocide British, Spanish, French, and American colonists gradually brought against the Indians. President Andrew Jackson and Congress in the mid 1830s moved indigenous nations off of prime agricultural land in the south and onto far less arable tracts in the west. (The Third Reich was inspired by the accomplishment; during WW2 they wanted to move the "untermenschen" to less productive land in Asia, but they didn't have the luck of working in a news vacuum as early American colonial powers did.) The United States compelled marches in winter which killed off a good number of Indians either by extreme cold or germs. Although this book is about the triumph of the indigenous nations over the colonial powers — and that power over the colonizers was immense — it is in the end about the killing of the American Indians and the massive expropriation of their lands. (See Claudio Saunt's powerful Unworthy Republic).
"GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON BECAME president in 1829 and announced "Indian removal" — a euphemistic term if there ever was one — as his main ambition. He did not acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty, having once argued that Congress had 'the right to take it and dispose of it.' Events accelerated dangerously for the Cherokees. The Georgia General Assembly strove to extend its jurisdiction over the Indians' territory, and a year later gold was found in the Dahlonega region in northern Georgia, triggering the first gold rush in American history. The land belonged to the Cherokee Nation. Jackson argued that 'though lavish in its expenditures upon the subject, Government has constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians in general, receding farther and farther to the west, have retained their savage habits.' The Cherokees sent envoys to Washington, D.C., in March 1830. They stayed in Brown's Hotel, equidistant from the White House and Congress. The House of Representatives debated the expulsion of Indians from the South for two weeks before passing the Indian Removal Act by a paper-thin margin of 102-97. The Senate vote was 28-19 in favor of the act. Jackson declared that the new Indigenous domain in the West would be called the 'Indian Territory'" (p. 394)
——
The biggest surprise for this reader was the description of Indian-on-Indian slavery. It's made me think differently of the African slave experience, which I had previously thought without parallel in North America. But Indigenous peoples had been trading captives with each other long before Europeans arrived in North America. So extensive was such slavery that I have been unable to find a summarizing quote that might give you a sense of its scope, which was vast. Indian enslavement was eventually helped along by confederations Indians formed with the colonizers, once, that is, they grew powerful enough to participate.
——
"In October 1867, the Cheyennes, led by Black Kettle, signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty with U.S. representatives. Only a month later, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, burning with ambition, attacked Black Kettle's village on the Washita River, killing dozens of solders and women and children. U.S. Indian policy was misguided, vicious, and incompetent all at once, entangling the nation in unnecessary wars that only weakened its authority in the critical midsection of the continent. All in all, it was a massive miscalculation that would quickly come to haunt the U.S. Army. [W2 emphasis]. The central plains became dangerous to Americans, and soon a U.S. official complained that the Kiowas and Comanches 'have been doing much of this wrong. I shall however, continue to exert myself to prevent these acts of violence.' The Americans were making far too many enemies." (p. 440)
October 18, 2022
Comprehensive Account of Indigenous Powers in the Americas
The best part of the book is found in the first chapters. The main point the author drives home with multiple examples is that the American continents were not unoccupied when Europeans arrived from 1492 to the 1600s. In fact, the European colonists would never have survived without help from Indian tribes. The other main point is that interactions in trade and diplomacy between various indigenous nations had a huge impact on the success of colonies. In wars fought in the region east of the Mississippi the part played by Indian fighters was often greater than that of the white troops. The author provides some fascinating insights on the clever strategies of the natives.
The biggest fault is that the author then goes on to list almost all of the subsequent wars and often gets things wrong. For example, Fort Pierre was not on the Platte, it was on the Missouri, just across from where the present capital of South Dakota is located . Another error is his mixing of the first battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas pan handle. The big battle that involved Kit Carson in 1864 (not 1863) was ten years before Quanah Parker was wounded there in the second battle of Adobe Walls. Later, he mentions that second battle, but it would have been better to be consistent and correct.
But, nitpicking aside, this is a good examination of the Indian cultures that were in the Americas when the first Europeans arrived and the part they played in creating the world as it is today. The treachery, mendacity and outright racism of many political and military figures during colonial times and later left a shameful stain on the history of these lands. But the descendants of the indigenous people are still here despite it all and they should be respected. Their contributions should also be acknowledged so that we will have a better understanding of the role these people played
in history.
The best part of the book is found in the first chapters. The main point the author drives home with multiple examples is that the American continents were not unoccupied when Europeans arrived from 1492 to the 1600s. In fact, the European colonists would never have survived without help from Indian tribes. The other main point is that interactions in trade and diplomacy between various indigenous nations had a huge impact on the success of colonies. In wars fought in the region east of the Mississippi the part played by Indian fighters was often greater than that of the white troops. The author provides some fascinating insights on the clever strategies of the natives.
The biggest fault is that the author then goes on to list almost all of the subsequent wars and often gets things wrong. For example, Fort Pierre was not on the Platte, it was on the Missouri, just across from where the present capital of South Dakota is located . Another error is his mixing of the first battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas pan handle. The big battle that involved Kit Carson in 1864 (not 1863) was ten years before Quanah Parker was wounded there in the second battle of Adobe Walls. Later, he mentions that second battle, but it would have been better to be consistent and correct.
But, nitpicking aside, this is a good examination of the Indian cultures that were in the Americas when the first Europeans arrived and the part they played in creating the world as it is today. The treachery, mendacity and outright racism of many political and military figures during colonial times and later left a shameful stain on the history of these lands. But the descendants of the indigenous people are still here despite it all and they should be respected. Their contributions should also be acknowledged so that we will have a better understanding of the role these people played
in history.
December 29, 2022
This book turns much of what has been taught and understood about American history and specifically the role of Native Americans in that history on its head. Instead of the usual fare served up of the discovery of a new world open for exploration and claiming as one's own, it presents a picture of the "new world" as new only to the Europeans who came to colonize it. That is not particularly new but what is new is the argument (exhaustingly researched and extremely well detailed) that the Indigenous people people fought back, blow for blow, gave as good as they got and until the post Civil War when the railroads covered the country, brought bison to near extinction, and the government acquired the resources, they controlled vast quantities of the country. From the Iroquois to the Cherokee to the Comanches to the Lakota, Native Americans fought to preserve their culture and country unlike the oft presented picture of a civilization in defeat who faded away. First, the author makes clear how different each nation was and how in their own distinct ways they fought to maintain the life they had before the arrival of the Europeans. There is no attempt to sugar coat the behavior on either side but obviously, begins with the notion that it was the Europeans who were the colonizers and genociders.
This book is a very important contribution to our understanding of the people who inhabited this country before us, how they fought to maintain their culture and also how they were open to compromise through treaties and land cessions but how the treaties were almost always scrapped or simply ignored. It is the story of the racist and genocidal policies and behaviors of the people who came to claim the country.
This book is a very important contribution to our understanding of the people who inhabited this country before us, how they fought to maintain their culture and also how they were open to compromise through treaties and land cessions but how the treaties were almost always scrapped or simply ignored. It is the story of the racist and genocidal policies and behaviors of the people who came to claim the country.
September 26, 2023
It has become something of a truism that history books are written by the winners. In this book Pekka Hamalainen (I apologize for not having a keyboard that allows me to put the little dots above his As") provides a narrative that while not written by the indigenous peoples of North America, certainly relates the history of the past 500 years from their perspective. What really galls Professor Hamalainen are the maps showing North America in the 17th and 18th centuries divided into sections claimed by various European countries. He points out that the moccasins on the ground at this time belonged to Native Americans and that Europeans had little influence in the vast majority of the continent. Despite French claims to much of the continent during this period, I understand that one could travel hundreds of miles without finding a decent baguette.
There are fascinating accounts of the internal politics among and between the indigenous nations of North America and the misreading of the situation by the newly arrived Europeans. There are also disturbing accounts of the role that European diseases played in reducing the size of the indigenous population. Although the author concludes that many indigenous nations remain undefeated and unconquered, he does not mention the thousands of genocidal Americans that have been reduced to penury in the indigenous casinos.
There are fascinating accounts of the internal politics among and between the indigenous nations of North America and the misreading of the situation by the newly arrived Europeans. There are also disturbing accounts of the role that European diseases played in reducing the size of the indigenous population. Although the author concludes that many indigenous nations remain undefeated and unconquered, he does not mention the thousands of genocidal Americans that have been reduced to penury in the indigenous casinos.
November 22, 2022
Good history, oversold the thesis. Hämäläinen can't disguise that A) Colonial numbers were overwhelming (generally by about a factor of 10 no matter the theater) B) Indigenous victories were temporary in the face of expanding U.S. hegemony.
Yes, the U.S. routinely claimed lands they weren't really in control of. Yes, the indigenous population put up spirited resistance. But the regular claims throughout the book that U.S. dealings with the Indigenous population (such as the Indian Removal Act) were signs of weakness rather than strength fall flat. If the U.S. was able to exert this massive influence from a weak position, what does that say about the indigenous position? Maybe the U.S. wasn't powerful enough to eradicate the indigenous population (as they almost certainly wanted to), but the Native Americans were devastated by years of warfare and epidemics and powerless to resist.
The standard American History narrative may undersell Indigenous power, but this massively oversells American weakness.
Yes, the U.S. routinely claimed lands they weren't really in control of. Yes, the indigenous population put up spirited resistance. But the regular claims throughout the book that U.S. dealings with the Indigenous population (such as the Indian Removal Act) were signs of weakness rather than strength fall flat. If the U.S. was able to exert this massive influence from a weak position, what does that say about the indigenous position? Maybe the U.S. wasn't powerful enough to eradicate the indigenous population (as they almost certainly wanted to), but the Native Americans were devastated by years of warfare and epidemics and powerless to resist.
The standard American History narrative may undersell Indigenous power, but this massively oversells American weakness.
August 29, 2022
Deeply researched, strongly documented, and well written history of indigenous people of North America.
February 22, 2024
This is an all-encompassing history of the conquest of North America. It covers a lot of ground quickly. Familiar names and battles are discussed, but Hamalainen is more interested in presenting evidence of the strength of Indigenous resistance to American expansionism. Think of this more as an encyclopedia of the Indian Wars. When reading it, you could identify people, events or tribes that seem of interest to you, and then research additional reading material that might focus on the details a little more or even dramatize the events.
For example, I think the Comanches are a fascinating tribe. Hamalainen's book depicts the power of the tribe in the middle of the 19th century, but Quanah Parker's resistance is only mentioned. I would recommend SC Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon" for those who want to learn more about Quanah Parker and the Comanches. Same with the Lakotas, the Apaches, the Nez Perce, and the Iroquois. To be fair, Hamalainen does have books dedicated to some of these tribes, particularly the Lakotas and the Comanches, neither of which I have read.
That is not to say this book is disappointing. Far from it. This is an important overview of how the common narrative of the conquest of North America is often misleading or even false. The Indigenous peoples were no pushovers, even with the devastating effects of smallpox and cholera. It is a delightful book and I recommend it for anyone who loves the history of the American settlement of the west.
For example, I think the Comanches are a fascinating tribe. Hamalainen's book depicts the power of the tribe in the middle of the 19th century, but Quanah Parker's resistance is only mentioned. I would recommend SC Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon" for those who want to learn more about Quanah Parker and the Comanches. Same with the Lakotas, the Apaches, the Nez Perce, and the Iroquois. To be fair, Hamalainen does have books dedicated to some of these tribes, particularly the Lakotas and the Comanches, neither of which I have read.
That is not to say this book is disappointing. Far from it. This is an important overview of how the common narrative of the conquest of North America is often misleading or even false. The Indigenous peoples were no pushovers, even with the devastating effects of smallpox and cholera. It is a delightful book and I recommend it for anyone who loves the history of the American settlement of the west.
April 24, 2023
This book argues that "Indigenous America" (not sure if the author coined this term or not) has always succeeded in surviving, when not defeating, various empires (british, french, spanish) and countries (the u.s., mexico) that had designs on its land or wanted to extirpate entire peoples and countries.
The evidence presented is substantial. Balancing two main bodies of history (empire or imperial and Indigenous) must have been tricky, but Hämäläinen succeeds, without losing sight of the main thrust of his thesis. The historical and analytical quotations are many without being too numerous, and a look at the citations indicates the depth of sources this book uses. There are massacres (on all sides) and treaties (usually broken), "genocide" (Hämäläinen's word) and times of peace. Hämäläinen tracks multiple people, subjects, and themes without obscuring the history or drowning in names and dates. There's never the danger of the narrative becoming boring. Recommended.
The evidence presented is substantial. Balancing two main bodies of history (empire or imperial and Indigenous) must have been tricky, but Hämäläinen succeeds, without losing sight of the main thrust of his thesis. The historical and analytical quotations are many without being too numerous, and a look at the citations indicates the depth of sources this book uses. There are massacres (on all sides) and treaties (usually broken), "genocide" (Hämäläinen's word) and times of peace. Hämäläinen tracks multiple people, subjects, and themes without obscuring the history or drowning in names and dates. There's never the danger of the narrative becoming boring. Recommended.
September 23, 2023
This book was not for me. I couldn't help but feel like Hämäläinen overly complicated things. I get that history is a dense subject, but there were times when I was reading “Indigenous Continent” and had to pause and think, "Wait, what?" There's a fine line between being thorough and being convoluted. This book teetered on the latter far too often.
This book was just disorganized. The narrative jumped around, and it wasn’t always in a way that made logical sense. I found myself flipping back a few pages just to remember where we were and who we were talking about. In a book that’s aiming to tackle the vastness of an entire continent’s history, it's imperative to have a clear structure.
I was also disappointed by how Hämäläinen missed the mark in creating emotional connection. This is a history about people, about cultures, about genuine human stories. And yet, a lot of it felt flat. This made it even harder to stay engaged with the material.
So it was this weird mix of too much info and then not enough. There were times when it felt like the book was just skimming over significant details. I get that you can't dive deep into every single event when covering such a broad scope, but there were instances when I thought, “Okay, why did we spend three pages on this minor event, and then gloss over this major one in a paragraph?” It just seemed imbalanced.
Lastly, I wasn't a fan of the writing style. It felt a bit too academic for my taste. I'm all for academic rigor, especially in historical accounts, but there's a way to balance that with approachability. This felt like a missed opportunity to make a deeply important topic accessible to a wider audience. Instead, I found myself slogging through unnecessarily complex sentences and jargon that felt out of place for what could have been a much more engaging narrative.
I wanted to love “Indigenous Continent.” The topic is undeniably important, and I believe that more people should be exposed to this side of North American history. But with its structural issues, lack of emotional depth, and sometimes off-kilter focus, it just didn't hit the mark for me.
This book was just disorganized. The narrative jumped around, and it wasn’t always in a way that made logical sense. I found myself flipping back a few pages just to remember where we were and who we were talking about. In a book that’s aiming to tackle the vastness of an entire continent’s history, it's imperative to have a clear structure.
I was also disappointed by how Hämäläinen missed the mark in creating emotional connection. This is a history about people, about cultures, about genuine human stories. And yet, a lot of it felt flat. This made it even harder to stay engaged with the material.
So it was this weird mix of too much info and then not enough. There were times when it felt like the book was just skimming over significant details. I get that you can't dive deep into every single event when covering such a broad scope, but there were instances when I thought, “Okay, why did we spend three pages on this minor event, and then gloss over this major one in a paragraph?” It just seemed imbalanced.
Lastly, I wasn't a fan of the writing style. It felt a bit too academic for my taste. I'm all for academic rigor, especially in historical accounts, but there's a way to balance that with approachability. This felt like a missed opportunity to make a deeply important topic accessible to a wider audience. Instead, I found myself slogging through unnecessarily complex sentences and jargon that felt out of place for what could have been a much more engaging narrative.
I wanted to love “Indigenous Continent.” The topic is undeniably important, and I believe that more people should be exposed to this side of North American history. But with its structural issues, lack of emotional depth, and sometimes off-kilter focus, it just didn't hit the mark for me.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1645808644i/7494844._UX200_CR0,6,200,200_.jpg)
October 30, 2023
Hmm.
It was good. But.
I dunno.
I guess I was hoping for what this was advertised as (a history of North America through an Indigenous lens) instead of what it was (a history of European and Indigenous conflict in North America through mostly European lenses). And some of the arguments made didn't quite hit nearly as much as Hämäläinen intended, and often had the reverse effect.
It was good, but honestly I think that An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is the book to read instead of this one.
It was good. But.
I dunno.
I guess I was hoping for what this was advertised as (a history of North America through an Indigenous lens) instead of what it was (a history of European and Indigenous conflict in North America through mostly European lenses). And some of the arguments made didn't quite hit nearly as much as Hämäläinen intended, and often had the reverse effect.
It was good, but honestly I think that An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is the book to read instead of this one.
January 14, 2023
An admirable, though not entirely groundbreaking, revisionist history of post-Columbian North America; one that shifts our focus away from the colonial powers that made ludicrously bold territorial claims but typically lacked the substantial power to make those claims anything more than tenuous, self-flattering fictions, and instead centers the Indigenous nations that dominated the heart of the continent militarily, economically, culturally, and demographically until well into the nineteenth century; the preeminent shapers of the fortunes and folkways of the landmass. Reversing familiar tropes about Native American history, Hämäläinen presents a story not of noble savages, primitive and naïve but spiritually attuned, being inevitably steamrolled by the technological superiority, material greed, lethal pathogens, and eventual population disparities brought to bear against them by White colonists, but rather of the astonishing skill and persistence with which the Indigenous nations, for centuries after the colonial project began, defeated the colonists in battle, coerced them into submission diplomatically, corralled them into isolated settlements, exploited them for access to their weapons and other technologies, pitted them against each other for their own benefit, created vast intertribal bulwarks that shielded great and small nations alike from imperial expansion, and utilized a social system based on personal merit, egalitarian decision-making processes, and extensive, durable, and adaptable kinship networks to foil colonial pretensions and adjust nimbly to changing conditions on the frontier.
Consider this remarkable fact: from the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Five Nations (later Six) of the Iroquois Confederacy, decimated by smallpox, began a long series of “Mourning Wars,”—in which thousands of people from rival nations were captured and transformed into born-again Iroquois to replace the fallen, spurring a period of rapid Iroquois ascendancy—arguably until the expulsion of the French from the continent in 1763, the most powerful empire in the present-day United States was not Britain, France, or Spain, but that of the Iroquois themselves. The Iroquois battered the French-aligned Great Lakes tribes into submission, monopolized trade with the French outposts on the St. Lawrence river, assisted the English by helping defeat Metacom’s Wampanoag-Narragansett coalition, established a Covenant Chain between New England and Iroquoia that hemmed in English expansion, and forced Albany and Montreal, each eager for the pelts, lands, and people to which the Iroquois controlled access, to compete as supplicants for the favor of Onondaga. The Five Nations lived in towns imposing enough that European observers often described them as “forts” or “castles,” governed themselves with a sophisticated intertribal political system, conducted an astute and multifaceted foreign policy, and established contacts as far away as present-day South Carolina. The utility of the comparatively weak European settlements as ports of entry for valuable Old World goods often drew the surrounding Indigenous nations aggressively towards the colonists who claimed to rule them, producing furious intra-Indigenous clashes, the victor of which would enjoy the benefits of European products while keeping European power firmly in check.
Even after the United States gained a titular continental supremacy in the mid-nineteenth century, the Lakota and Comanche empires, which dominated the great plains and spanned a north-south axis running from Minnesota to northern Mexico, proved an implacable obstacle to the consolidation of the American west. Though by this time far more numerous and well-armed than the Natives, the Americans struggled to project power into the arid, sparse, poorly-navigable, and (for an urban, sedentary society) weakly-defensible lands beyond the Mississippi, leaving the region dotted with small towns based around extractive industries (namely mining and ranching) and vulnerable to reprisals from the horse lords who—far more quickly and successfully than the Americans—made the interior west their home. Because Indigenous power was rooted primarily in kinship networks rather than strategically-crucial cities, forts, or natural features, the Lakotas, Comanches, and smaller nations under their aegis could easily outmaneuver the U.S. Army, avoid giving battle in unfavorable conditions, evade capture, and materialize in unexpected places. The Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in which George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment suffered a legendary defeat at the hands of the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies, far from a mere fluke, was merely a powerful demonstration of the advantages the Natives had over the U.S. Army on their own soil, even into the late nineteenth century.
Sadly, it was the very advantageousness of the Native kinship relations that prompted the long-frustrated United States to wage campaigns of genocidal ferocity against them. Following the American Civil War, the United States, as Hämäläinen points out, launched two reconstruction projects, both aimed at accomplishing the real sovereignty of the U.S. government over the territories it officially controlled. In addition to the more familiar Reconstruction regime in the south, the United States also undertook a “reconstruction” effort in the west: namely, a concerted, systematic campaign to destroy Indigenous power and “civilize,” i.e. assimilate, Indigenous people. Since the people themselves were the basis of Native resistance, it was the people themselves who were subjugated piecemeal, cordoned off into reservations, enrolled in Indian schools, and, most notoriously, outright massacred in such infamous atrocities as those at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee.
Hämäläinen’s Native-centered history may be an overcorrection of the traditional narrative, but it could be a necessary one.
Consider this remarkable fact: from the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Five Nations (later Six) of the Iroquois Confederacy, decimated by smallpox, began a long series of “Mourning Wars,”—in which thousands of people from rival nations were captured and transformed into born-again Iroquois to replace the fallen, spurring a period of rapid Iroquois ascendancy—arguably until the expulsion of the French from the continent in 1763, the most powerful empire in the present-day United States was not Britain, France, or Spain, but that of the Iroquois themselves. The Iroquois battered the French-aligned Great Lakes tribes into submission, monopolized trade with the French outposts on the St. Lawrence river, assisted the English by helping defeat Metacom’s Wampanoag-Narragansett coalition, established a Covenant Chain between New England and Iroquoia that hemmed in English expansion, and forced Albany and Montreal, each eager for the pelts, lands, and people to which the Iroquois controlled access, to compete as supplicants for the favor of Onondaga. The Five Nations lived in towns imposing enough that European observers often described them as “forts” or “castles,” governed themselves with a sophisticated intertribal political system, conducted an astute and multifaceted foreign policy, and established contacts as far away as present-day South Carolina. The utility of the comparatively weak European settlements as ports of entry for valuable Old World goods often drew the surrounding Indigenous nations aggressively towards the colonists who claimed to rule them, producing furious intra-Indigenous clashes, the victor of which would enjoy the benefits of European products while keeping European power firmly in check.
Even after the United States gained a titular continental supremacy in the mid-nineteenth century, the Lakota and Comanche empires, which dominated the great plains and spanned a north-south axis running from Minnesota to northern Mexico, proved an implacable obstacle to the consolidation of the American west. Though by this time far more numerous and well-armed than the Natives, the Americans struggled to project power into the arid, sparse, poorly-navigable, and (for an urban, sedentary society) weakly-defensible lands beyond the Mississippi, leaving the region dotted with small towns based around extractive industries (namely mining and ranching) and vulnerable to reprisals from the horse lords who—far more quickly and successfully than the Americans—made the interior west their home. Because Indigenous power was rooted primarily in kinship networks rather than strategically-crucial cities, forts, or natural features, the Lakotas, Comanches, and smaller nations under their aegis could easily outmaneuver the U.S. Army, avoid giving battle in unfavorable conditions, evade capture, and materialize in unexpected places. The Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in which George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment suffered a legendary defeat at the hands of the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies, far from a mere fluke, was merely a powerful demonstration of the advantages the Natives had over the U.S. Army on their own soil, even into the late nineteenth century.
Sadly, it was the very advantageousness of the Native kinship relations that prompted the long-frustrated United States to wage campaigns of genocidal ferocity against them. Following the American Civil War, the United States, as Hämäläinen points out, launched two reconstruction projects, both aimed at accomplishing the real sovereignty of the U.S. government over the territories it officially controlled. In addition to the more familiar Reconstruction regime in the south, the United States also undertook a “reconstruction” effort in the west: namely, a concerted, systematic campaign to destroy Indigenous power and “civilize,” i.e. assimilate, Indigenous people. Since the people themselves were the basis of Native resistance, it was the people themselves who were subjugated piecemeal, cordoned off into reservations, enrolled in Indian schools, and, most notoriously, outright massacred in such infamous atrocities as those at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee.
Hämäläinen’s Native-centered history may be an overcorrection of the traditional narrative, but it could be a necessary one.
January 11, 2023
They also missed a fundamental fact about Indigenous warfare: fighting on their homelands, the Indians did not need to win battles and wars; they just needed not to lose them.
I'd first become aware of Hämäläinen's work a few months ago - the Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, and The Comanche Empire. The aim of his scholarly project, first in specific cases and now more broadly, is to write indigenous peoples as being more powerful than portrayed elsewhere, and in no sense "doomed" - as the contention between them and other European powers was less of a hapless shuffling off of the stage of history and more of a series of fierce contests that lasted centuries, and where the outcomes were at first not at all certain.
The main narrative starts with a more archaeological history before taking up the closer details in the late 15th and early 16th century - much of the narrative follows the 17th and 18th centuries. I receive the impression that Hämäläinen cramming in hundreds of different peoples across centuries. Aside from a long listing of names, peoples, and incidents, I get the impression of rapid movement across conflict zones - the Chesapeake Bay, the Ohio Valley. Some more decentralized peoples could not be decapitated as the Spanish had attempted further south; prolonged resistance was easier and while territories were claimed by colonial powers they were in no sense controlled by them.
In further reading, the book becomes compilation of details about how these societies were organized, how they formed, where they moved - a listing of names and places. That is not a bad thing! These details do make the narrative pop out and, at least to me, taught me about a world that I did not know I did not know about. Hämäläinen introduces, for example, the "mourning wars" fought by the Haudeosaunee (aka Iroquois) and suggests they resulted in a deliberate western expansion; instead of control over natural resources. I should also single out the excitement and energy of the equestrian writing and the chapter on the introduction of horses, as this focus was likely inherited from his earlier writing on the Lakota and Comanche.
How exactly did colonies manage to hold on after all this? Hämäläinen suggests the sheer weight of numbers was a cause of their success. It is only by the late 18th century that colonial expansion begins to take root. But there, later explanations for conflict brings disbelief. When I read about colonists in he 1600s, wracked with disease and half-starving, burn some local crops, I can believe Hämäläinen's assertion that it is an expression of fear and weakness. But as the years roll on, that explanation grows less certain - going on to say the reservation system was a sign of weakness, that even Wounded Knee was a sign of weakness. That makes me skeptical. No need to hide about it, just say something was an atrocity.
The last chapter of the book lays out the authorial intentions, and not least an ambition to write indigenous people as active in their own story, neither compliant nor inflexible and certainly not just passive agents of history; and that ambition is credible. There is a need for more books in this direction for the popular eye.
I'd first become aware of Hämäläinen's work a few months ago - the Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, and The Comanche Empire. The aim of his scholarly project, first in specific cases and now more broadly, is to write indigenous peoples as being more powerful than portrayed elsewhere, and in no sense "doomed" - as the contention between them and other European powers was less of a hapless shuffling off of the stage of history and more of a series of fierce contests that lasted centuries, and where the outcomes were at first not at all certain.
The main narrative starts with a more archaeological history before taking up the closer details in the late 15th and early 16th century - much of the narrative follows the 17th and 18th centuries. I receive the impression that Hämäläinen cramming in hundreds of different peoples across centuries. Aside from a long listing of names, peoples, and incidents, I get the impression of rapid movement across conflict zones - the Chesapeake Bay, the Ohio Valley. Some more decentralized peoples could not be decapitated as the Spanish had attempted further south; prolonged resistance was easier and while territories were claimed by colonial powers they were in no sense controlled by them.
In further reading, the book becomes compilation of details about how these societies were organized, how they formed, where they moved - a listing of names and places. That is not a bad thing! These details do make the narrative pop out and, at least to me, taught me about a world that I did not know I did not know about. Hämäläinen introduces, for example, the "mourning wars" fought by the Haudeosaunee (aka Iroquois) and suggests they resulted in a deliberate western expansion; instead of control over natural resources. I should also single out the excitement and energy of the equestrian writing and the chapter on the introduction of horses, as this focus was likely inherited from his earlier writing on the Lakota and Comanche.
How exactly did colonies manage to hold on after all this? Hämäläinen suggests the sheer weight of numbers was a cause of their success. It is only by the late 18th century that colonial expansion begins to take root. But there, later explanations for conflict brings disbelief. When I read about colonists in he 1600s, wracked with disease and half-starving, burn some local crops, I can believe Hämäläinen's assertion that it is an expression of fear and weakness. But as the years roll on, that explanation grows less certain - going on to say the reservation system was a sign of weakness, that even Wounded Knee was a sign of weakness. That makes me skeptical. No need to hide about it, just say something was an atrocity.
The last chapter of the book lays out the authorial intentions, and not least an ambition to write indigenous people as active in their own story, neither compliant nor inflexible and certainly not just passive agents of history; and that ambition is credible. There is a need for more books in this direction for the popular eye.
January 7, 2024
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America Paperback by Pekka Hämäläinen
https://www.amazon.com/Indigenous-Con...
If you have ever played Axis and Allies, you have a sense about how the European conquest of America went. Axis and Allies is based on World War II. The Axis players start with a big lead in manpower and material. The American player starts way behind. However, after a few years of game play, the American player’s productivity catches up and the American player starts putting on as much manpower and material ever turn as the Axis players has on the board.
The game is over at that point.
There is a sense on the part of most people that Europeans were bullies once they arrived in North America. A holistic view of post-Columbian history puts the lie to this view. America was discovered by Europe around 1500 AD. The French, English, and Spanish began putting colonies on the edges of the Atlantic seaboard around 1600 AD. By 1800 AD – two centuries later – the European colonies were still within a few hundred miles of the Atlantic, notwithstanding European superiority in technology, science, economics, and organization. It was only in the mid to late 1800s that Western power went into hyperdrive and white settlers flooded into the larger portion of North America.
Pekka Hamalainen surveys the long history of the contest for North America. His book describes a pattern of European interaction with the indigenous population. Beginning with the earliest explorers, native tribes in North America were able to stop European incursions into their territory. Spanish explorers frequently found themselves directed into deserts or stopped cold by the superior power of the native tribe. This power was typically found in the larger population of the native tribes compared to the European interlopers, but it also was based on the tribe’s knowledge of local conditions and its flexible political arrangements with other Indian nations.
English colonists found themselves checked for a long time by the Iroquois Confederation. The Six Nations were ablet to parley their strategic position near European settlements, playing off the French and English powers, to strengthen their position in relation to other tribes, which they crushed, enslaved, or drove off. Hamalainen asserts that Iroquois were the best armed indigenous power on the continent, who rendered French military power moot. The Five Nation hegemony broke down after the English had defeated the French in North America, thereby depriving the Iroquois of the strategy of playing both ends against the middle. The Iroquois also made the mistake of siding with the English when the Americans were developing into the regional power.
What finally did the Six Nations in was that they found themselves being picked apart in the same way that they had pitted the French against the English. Hamalainen points out that an epidemic played the dispositive role in the end of the Six Nations, but the Iroquois had survived prior epidemics. The difference was the changed political environment:
IN JANUARY 1777, IN the midst of the cataclysmic war, one of the most significant turning points in American history took place, throwing almost all war strategies into question. Abruptly and shockingly, the Six Nations ritually extinguished their central council fire for the first time in the history of the league. Suddenly, the Iroquois Empire was no more. A disease epidemic had broken out, and the Iroquois, suffering and dying, turned against each other. Shockingly, their confederacy split into incompatible factions: the Tuscaroras aligned with the fledgling United States; the Oneidas struggled to remain neutral but eventually clashed with the Mohawks and burned their towns. The Onondagas tried to remain neutral but eventually sided with the British. The Senecas, caught in the middle, suffered heavy losses. With the Six Nations debilitated by a civil war, unprecedented strategic options became available to Americans. (p. 312-313.)
The pattern of a local Indian nation utilizing its position to check white settler advances was repeated in new territories. Further to the west, the great Sioux Confederacy acted as the check on European expansion. In the southern Plains, the Comanche empire was the power broker for approximately a century. Comanche power was projected into northern Mexico where the Comanche plundered and took slaves.
Hamalainen’s position appears to be Indian-centric. Readers may come out of this book thinking that their prejudices in favor of the oppressed Indians have been vindicated. Hamalainen’s narrative makes a hash of the oppressed/oppressor narrative. The tribes that acted as a check on European expansion were often engaged in imperial practices like genocide, ethnic cleansing, slaving, and raiding for plunder. Hamalainen makes this observation about interactions with the Sioux:
The Sioux were strangers to the Lakes Indians, and their ceremonies and diplomatic protocols were drastically different. Ignored and excluded from commercial and diplomatic circles, the Sioux retaliated, attacking and killing Meskwakis, Odawas, and other Lakes peoples. “A general League” formed “against a common foe,” and when Sioux ambassadors visited the village of Chequamegon at Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay in 1670, Wyandots ritually boiled and ate them. (p. 132.)
Although Hamalainen’s narrative emphasizes Indian autonomy, it also reveals that Indian success was premised on location to the Europeans. Successful tribes were in a “Goldilocks Zone.” If they were too close to Europeans, the density of European population with the magnifier of technology would lead to the destruction of Indian society. If the tribe was too far, they would be at the mercy of tribes who were able to intercept European technology, particularly European gun technology. The ideal position was to be in a location where the tribe could act as the middle-man between those Indians harvesting resources and the Europeans with the technology and goods. Hamalainen explains:
Fundamentally, it was a matter of distance and geography. North America had become divided in two: there was the narrow and patchy colonial belt on the coastal plains, where Europeans dominated, and there was the immense Indigenous interior, where Native territories extended deep into what, to Europeans, was a great unknown. The two Americas were almost complete opposites. In the interior, the Columbian Exchange often worked to the Indians’ advantage. Deadly germs were brought inland by European traders, but their impact remained limited, whereas new military technology—guns, powder, metal, and horses—became available through colonial border markets and extensive Indigenous trade networks. In a transitional belt where the Indians were neither too close to European colonies to fall under their epidemiological shadow nor too far away to reap the benefits of their commerce, several geographically privileged Indigenous regimes rose to challenge colonial expansion on their own terms. This emerging belt was where great fortunes could be amassed, and where empires were won and lost. (p. 258.)
Ultimately, the ability of the Indians to remain in the Goldilock’s Zone and to play off European factions came to an end in the late 19th century. By that time, white population swamped the Indian’s local advantage in population. Europeans were able to project power throughout North America by railroad and telegraph. The dividends of the Industrial Revolution overwhelmed the advantages that Indians had in local knowledge.
This is a readable book. The survey format fills in a lot of details that are too often assumed. Although Hamalainen’s bias is conventionally on the side of the oppressed Indians against the “white settler” oppressor, his scholastic integrity prevents this book from becoming another bit of moralizing.
https://www.amazon.com/Indigenous-Con...
If you have ever played Axis and Allies, you have a sense about how the European conquest of America went. Axis and Allies is based on World War II. The Axis players start with a big lead in manpower and material. The American player starts way behind. However, after a few years of game play, the American player’s productivity catches up and the American player starts putting on as much manpower and material ever turn as the Axis players has on the board.
The game is over at that point.
There is a sense on the part of most people that Europeans were bullies once they arrived in North America. A holistic view of post-Columbian history puts the lie to this view. America was discovered by Europe around 1500 AD. The French, English, and Spanish began putting colonies on the edges of the Atlantic seaboard around 1600 AD. By 1800 AD – two centuries later – the European colonies were still within a few hundred miles of the Atlantic, notwithstanding European superiority in technology, science, economics, and organization. It was only in the mid to late 1800s that Western power went into hyperdrive and white settlers flooded into the larger portion of North America.
Pekka Hamalainen surveys the long history of the contest for North America. His book describes a pattern of European interaction with the indigenous population. Beginning with the earliest explorers, native tribes in North America were able to stop European incursions into their territory. Spanish explorers frequently found themselves directed into deserts or stopped cold by the superior power of the native tribe. This power was typically found in the larger population of the native tribes compared to the European interlopers, but it also was based on the tribe’s knowledge of local conditions and its flexible political arrangements with other Indian nations.
English colonists found themselves checked for a long time by the Iroquois Confederation. The Six Nations were ablet to parley their strategic position near European settlements, playing off the French and English powers, to strengthen their position in relation to other tribes, which they crushed, enslaved, or drove off. Hamalainen asserts that Iroquois were the best armed indigenous power on the continent, who rendered French military power moot. The Five Nation hegemony broke down after the English had defeated the French in North America, thereby depriving the Iroquois of the strategy of playing both ends against the middle. The Iroquois also made the mistake of siding with the English when the Americans were developing into the regional power.
What finally did the Six Nations in was that they found themselves being picked apart in the same way that they had pitted the French against the English. Hamalainen points out that an epidemic played the dispositive role in the end of the Six Nations, but the Iroquois had survived prior epidemics. The difference was the changed political environment:
IN JANUARY 1777, IN the midst of the cataclysmic war, one of the most significant turning points in American history took place, throwing almost all war strategies into question. Abruptly and shockingly, the Six Nations ritually extinguished their central council fire for the first time in the history of the league. Suddenly, the Iroquois Empire was no more. A disease epidemic had broken out, and the Iroquois, suffering and dying, turned against each other. Shockingly, their confederacy split into incompatible factions: the Tuscaroras aligned with the fledgling United States; the Oneidas struggled to remain neutral but eventually clashed with the Mohawks and burned their towns. The Onondagas tried to remain neutral but eventually sided with the British. The Senecas, caught in the middle, suffered heavy losses. With the Six Nations debilitated by a civil war, unprecedented strategic options became available to Americans. (p. 312-313.)
The pattern of a local Indian nation utilizing its position to check white settler advances was repeated in new territories. Further to the west, the great Sioux Confederacy acted as the check on European expansion. In the southern Plains, the Comanche empire was the power broker for approximately a century. Comanche power was projected into northern Mexico where the Comanche plundered and took slaves.
Hamalainen’s position appears to be Indian-centric. Readers may come out of this book thinking that their prejudices in favor of the oppressed Indians have been vindicated. Hamalainen’s narrative makes a hash of the oppressed/oppressor narrative. The tribes that acted as a check on European expansion were often engaged in imperial practices like genocide, ethnic cleansing, slaving, and raiding for plunder. Hamalainen makes this observation about interactions with the Sioux:
The Sioux were strangers to the Lakes Indians, and their ceremonies and diplomatic protocols were drastically different. Ignored and excluded from commercial and diplomatic circles, the Sioux retaliated, attacking and killing Meskwakis, Odawas, and other Lakes peoples. “A general League” formed “against a common foe,” and when Sioux ambassadors visited the village of Chequamegon at Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay in 1670, Wyandots ritually boiled and ate them. (p. 132.)
Although Hamalainen’s narrative emphasizes Indian autonomy, it also reveals that Indian success was premised on location to the Europeans. Successful tribes were in a “Goldilocks Zone.” If they were too close to Europeans, the density of European population with the magnifier of technology would lead to the destruction of Indian society. If the tribe was too far, they would be at the mercy of tribes who were able to intercept European technology, particularly European gun technology. The ideal position was to be in a location where the tribe could act as the middle-man between those Indians harvesting resources and the Europeans with the technology and goods. Hamalainen explains:
Fundamentally, it was a matter of distance and geography. North America had become divided in two: there was the narrow and patchy colonial belt on the coastal plains, where Europeans dominated, and there was the immense Indigenous interior, where Native territories extended deep into what, to Europeans, was a great unknown. The two Americas were almost complete opposites. In the interior, the Columbian Exchange often worked to the Indians’ advantage. Deadly germs were brought inland by European traders, but their impact remained limited, whereas new military technology—guns, powder, metal, and horses—became available through colonial border markets and extensive Indigenous trade networks. In a transitional belt where the Indians were neither too close to European colonies to fall under their epidemiological shadow nor too far away to reap the benefits of their commerce, several geographically privileged Indigenous regimes rose to challenge colonial expansion on their own terms. This emerging belt was where great fortunes could be amassed, and where empires were won and lost. (p. 258.)
Ultimately, the ability of the Indians to remain in the Goldilock’s Zone and to play off European factions came to an end in the late 19th century. By that time, white population swamped the Indian’s local advantage in population. Europeans were able to project power throughout North America by railroad and telegraph. The dividends of the Industrial Revolution overwhelmed the advantages that Indians had in local knowledge.
This is a readable book. The survey format fills in a lot of details that are too often assumed. Although Hamalainen’s bias is conventionally on the side of the oppressed Indians against the “white settler” oppressor, his scholastic integrity prevents this book from becoming another bit of moralizing.
October 25, 2022
Revisionist history… needs a better writer / editor. The first few chapters summarize the theory of the book, the rest are lots of details without a flow or focus. I believe there is an author Ortiz who has written a smiliar themed book… going to go look for hers and hope it is more fluid. ( Found it: An Indigenous Peoples History of the United Stares).
August 14, 2023
Pekka Hämäläinen is a professor at Oxford. This book was an ambitious project - to tell the story of the indigenous peoples of North America from the start of recorded history through the 19th Century. The story is not a simple tale to tell. The interactions of the couple of hundred tribes/bands, the various new settlers from Europe and the host of other players in this long history is complex. At various times the tribes were quite successful at creating strategic alliances with the French, Spanish and even at times the Americans and of course in negotiating alliances and treaties among the tribes.
The book offered some interesting conclusions. First, the French were particularly adept at creating commercial relationships which gave the indigenous peoples dignity and commerce. Second, the British were especially maladroit at putting diplomacy with Native Communities. Third, the boundaries among the indigenous were not in any way similar to settler countries. Fourth, much of the governance of indigenous communities or nations was quite decentralized - that offered flexibility - but at times strong indigenous leaders took on leadership roles beyond their own communities. Fifth, the US record was especially terrible as the continent became settled with more and more Americans. In a very short period of time the size of the country grew by more than 75% - with the discoveries of gold and the influx of immigrants the indigenous communities were put under tremendous pressure.
I really enjoyed this book.
The book offered some interesting conclusions. First, the French were particularly adept at creating commercial relationships which gave the indigenous peoples dignity and commerce. Second, the British were especially maladroit at putting diplomacy with Native Communities. Third, the boundaries among the indigenous were not in any way similar to settler countries. Fourth, much of the governance of indigenous communities or nations was quite decentralized - that offered flexibility - but at times strong indigenous leaders took on leadership roles beyond their own communities. Fifth, the US record was especially terrible as the continent became settled with more and more Americans. In a very short period of time the size of the country grew by more than 75% - with the discoveries of gold and the influx of immigrants the indigenous communities were put under tremendous pressure.
I really enjoyed this book.
October 22, 2022
For well-researched history of Native America, you can't go wrong with Pekka Hämäläinen, whose previous book transformed my thinking about the Great Plains Indians. But especially in this case, the writing is often so tedious that it distracts from the bigger picture. It's the worst combination of academic and popular -- endless, exhaustive lists of tribe names, often with non-standard (but historically accurate) spelling, tiny irrelevant details.
That Big Picture, which I enjoyed, is that maybe the Indians were actually the *winners* during most of the long European settlement of North America. When even through the Civil War, US officials looked a maps of the country, huge swathes were not under their control. The "Comanche and Lakota Empires" (as the author refers to them) covered most of the area between the Great Plains, from Canada to Mexico, areas that Americans entered at their peril.
Ultimately the book is too ambitious, covering too many people over too long a period. Until a more succinct and engaging writer comes along, use this book as a reference and don't bother reading the whole thing.
That Big Picture, which I enjoyed, is that maybe the Indians were actually the *winners* during most of the long European settlement of North America. When even through the Civil War, US officials looked a maps of the country, huge swathes were not under their control. The "Comanche and Lakota Empires" (as the author refers to them) covered most of the area between the Great Plains, from Canada to Mexico, areas that Americans entered at their peril.
Ultimately the book is too ambitious, covering too many people over too long a period. Until a more succinct and engaging writer comes along, use this book as a reference and don't bother reading the whole thing.
November 14, 2022
You can find my entire review here:
https://geotrickster.com/2022/11/14/p...
https://geotrickster.com/2022/11/14/p...
December 23, 2022
This book is explicitly a work of revisionist history, in that it seeks to turn the usual story of conquest on its head and instead emphasize Indigenous agency. This makes it powerful, because a lot of us really do need to be reminded again and again that none of the Native groups simply gave up and died as soon as Columbus stepped foot on Hispaniola – but it also limits the book's ability to give you an accurate picture of the world. Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that where they settled, Europeans vastly outnumbered Native Americans by the 18th century or so. There's not much you can do against that.
Some other things I learned, keeping in mind the book focuses on the land that makes up the modern U.S. (and a bit of Quebec):
- Centuries of Native history took place after European contact. European contact didn't end Native history; it created new paths (for a while, at least). New technologies – especially the gun and the horse. Trade with Europeans was incredibly important, because that's how you got guns and metal and (initially) horses.
- - French traders were everywhere (at least until the Seven Years' War) and they were usually well-liked and excellent at creating local connections. They were a staple of Native-European relations.
- The Iroquois league more or less ran the East Coast for a long time.
- Indigenous people frequently adopted European ways of life wholesale, including the farm animals, the literacy, the bicameral legislature, the language, the racialized slaveowning, and a racialized view of the world in general (though the racialized view usually put Natives or Natives and whites at the top.)
- Native groups were excellent at playing European empires off each other. French defeat and withdrawal from the continent after the Seven Years' War was devastating because there was no one to play the British off of. (Except the Spanish, but only in Florida.)
- Everyone loves a good fictive kinship tie.
Some other things I learned, keeping in mind the book focuses on the land that makes up the modern U.S. (and a bit of Quebec):
- Centuries of Native history took place after European contact. European contact didn't end Native history; it created new paths (for a while, at least). New technologies – especially the gun and the horse. Trade with Europeans was incredibly important, because that's how you got guns and metal and (initially) horses.
- - French traders were everywhere (at least until the Seven Years' War) and they were usually well-liked and excellent at creating local connections. They were a staple of Native-European relations.
- The Iroquois league more or less ran the East Coast for a long time.
- Indigenous people frequently adopted European ways of life wholesale, including the farm animals, the literacy, the bicameral legislature, the language, the racialized slaveowning, and a racialized view of the world in general (though the racialized view usually put Natives or Natives and whites at the top.)
- Native groups were excellent at playing European empires off each other. French defeat and withdrawal from the continent after the Seven Years' War was devastating because there was no one to play the British off of. (Except the Spanish, but only in Florida.)
- Everyone loves a good fictive kinship tie.
December 24, 2022
The simplistic story is that colonizers came with smallpox blankets, decimated the Indigenous population and took over the land. This conception of the colonial project erases narratives of Indigenous resistance, agency, and homogenizes the experiences of Indigenous nations. This book provides a broader view without glossing over the atrocities committed by British, French, Spanish and Dutch colonists in their land grab.
Indigenous nations were, and are, not homogenous. As colonists from various countries were vying for territory, Indigenous nations were identifying their own priorities, making alliances, negotiating trade, developing networks and fighting their own wars. From the Iroquois to the Five Nations to the Sioux confederacy, Indigenous nations across Turtle Island resisted in their own ways while savvily pitting the colonists against one another.
The defeat of the French by the English at the Plains of Abraham and the American Revolution signified key turning points for the relationship between Indigenous nations and the Crown. With the British holding the reins, we see the devolution into the colonial Crown-subject relationship that we are familiar with today.
This is not an easy read, and there are obviously significant historical atrocities that are detailed. The sheer number of Indigenous nations that are explored can also be hard to keep track of. Nevertheless, an important read that highlights the strength and scale of Indigenous resistance historically, and recognizing that into the present day.
Indigenous nations were, and are, not homogenous. As colonists from various countries were vying for territory, Indigenous nations were identifying their own priorities, making alliances, negotiating trade, developing networks and fighting their own wars. From the Iroquois to the Five Nations to the Sioux confederacy, Indigenous nations across Turtle Island resisted in their own ways while savvily pitting the colonists against one another.
The defeat of the French by the English at the Plains of Abraham and the American Revolution signified key turning points for the relationship between Indigenous nations and the Crown. With the British holding the reins, we see the devolution into the colonial Crown-subject relationship that we are familiar with today.
This is not an easy read, and there are obviously significant historical atrocities that are detailed. The sheer number of Indigenous nations that are explored can also be hard to keep track of. Nevertheless, an important read that highlights the strength and scale of Indigenous resistance historically, and recognizing that into the present day.
November 29, 2022
I found the author’s previous ground-breaking books on the Comanche and Lakota fascinating, but was disappointed by this book. I found some of writing to be choppy and disjointed and otherwise in need of closer editing. And while the author gives a much needed corrective to the European focused history of white-native relations, he sometimes seems disingenuous in the way he describes similar behavior by each side. For example, white atrocities are, rightly, described as such, while similar Indian behavior is, if I recall correctly “communicating through violence.” Overall, though, a needed reassessment, placing indigenous people at the center of (mostly)American history.
April 4, 2023
A completely chaotic vomiting of sentences and ideas as to be almost unintelligible. Don’t waste your time.
April 7, 2024
It's one of those books that are super-hard to rate due to conflicted feelings. It (or rather the author did) A LOT to fulfill its promise: it's packed with details on the whole process of the conquest of Northern America, it covers all the major conflicts, key figures (like Metacom or Tecumseh), and decisive points in history (e.g., Treaty of Paris from 1783). What is more, the facts are served in a dispassionate, calm manner - as objective as possible. The author debunks many myths not in a typical American style :) - by repetition (of some thesis), but by methodical reasoning. What could I want more?
But on the other hand, I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. I mean: I WAS interested in what it was serving me, but it's written in such a monotonous, uninspired way that I had a feeling I was reading some archive accounting books. There's something very wrong with the style here - I did NOT expect a fictitious storyline or an increase in the drama of events by force. But there are some stylistic tricks that can increase readers' engagement even in historical books: open questions, switching between parallel stories that happened at the same time, etc. One more thing I didn't like: for a historical book, I noticed too many situations where the author says that something happened "frequently" (e.g., Indian women married colonists), but this "frequently" is never quantified - there are no sources quoted.
Good, solid book on a very interesting topic. But it was not a smooth, pleasant ride (for me).
But on the other hand, I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. I mean: I WAS interested in what it was serving me, but it's written in such a monotonous, uninspired way that I had a feeling I was reading some archive accounting books. There's something very wrong with the style here - I did NOT expect a fictitious storyline or an increase in the drama of events by force. But there are some stylistic tricks that can increase readers' engagement even in historical books: open questions, switching between parallel stories that happened at the same time, etc. One more thing I didn't like: for a historical book, I noticed too many situations where the author says that something happened "frequently" (e.g., Indian women married colonists), but this "frequently" is never quantified - there are no sources quoted.
Good, solid book on a very interesting topic. But it was not a smooth, pleasant ride (for me).
April 8, 2024
Really good. I think it just reads as a textbook at times since there is so much info packed in here, can be tough to get through. But yeah I learned so much and was very appreciative of the indigenous-focused lens that this was told. Very interesting how native presence and influence is not only present but crucial to North American history at each step along the way. Very sad how disease and intense racial hatred are constantly undermining that presence. I like that the frame of this is that the continent is and remains indigenous, but it doesn’t feel preachy, it allows you to read this history as primarily indigenous while grappling with the ever present and hugely successful (in the long run) colonial projects. It had me thinking a lot about “inevitability” and what about our history was inevitable or not. Very good. Kind of a lot of typos
December 22, 2022
Barely readable, repetitive, and full of questionable hyperbole. One sentence did not logically follow the next. The author seemed incapable of telling a complete story without devolving into what I'd call bad punditry rather than historical analysis.
The thesis of this book is that Native American nations resisted, negotiated, fought back, and were in control of the continent for most of colonial history. I'm sure it's true, to a great extent. But in trying to prove the maximum version of that thesis 100% of the time, the author harmed his credibility, and left out the actual details.
Some version of this sentence appeared on every page: The weak, ignorant colonists cowered cowardly in their puny settlements, while the brave, powerful, awesome Powhatans dominated dominatingly all around. Immediately followed by an endnote. What source could possibly prove "cowardice" or "bravery"? This gave it the feel of an online think-piece more than a serious academic work.
I often had to resort to Wikipedia to learn about the battles and treaties he named, because instead of telling us the contents or the outcome he would say something like: In 176x the Fort X treaty was signed, proving that the Iroqouis were in total absolute control of everything, and the colonies were totally unravelling. Miraculously, on the next page half of Iroqouis territory would be gone, or the war lost - but instead of telling you how, he'd tell you that by losing, the Iroqouis were actually winning, and by winning, the English were showing how weak and insecure they were, and so on. For god's sake, tell us what actually happened!
I read about 2/3 of this book but just couldn't finish it - which shows you how badly I wanted to learn this history, in spite of the atrocious writing. I'm open to recommendations of other books about Native resistance - preferably written by an Indigenous person and not this white knight.
Edit: since I'm not actually qualified to evaluate his thesis itself, here's a review by Native American professor Ned Blackhawk that I found enlightening: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
The thesis of this book is that Native American nations resisted, negotiated, fought back, and were in control of the continent for most of colonial history. I'm sure it's true, to a great extent. But in trying to prove the maximum version of that thesis 100% of the time, the author harmed his credibility, and left out the actual details.
Some version of this sentence appeared on every page: The weak, ignorant colonists cowered cowardly in their puny settlements, while the brave, powerful, awesome Powhatans dominated dominatingly all around. Immediately followed by an endnote. What source could possibly prove "cowardice" or "bravery"? This gave it the feel of an online think-piece more than a serious academic work.
I often had to resort to Wikipedia to learn about the battles and treaties he named, because instead of telling us the contents or the outcome he would say something like: In 176x the Fort X treaty was signed, proving that the Iroqouis were in total absolute control of everything, and the colonies were totally unravelling. Miraculously, on the next page half of Iroqouis territory would be gone, or the war lost - but instead of telling you how, he'd tell you that by losing, the Iroqouis were actually winning, and by winning, the English were showing how weak and insecure they were, and so on. For god's sake, tell us what actually happened!
I read about 2/3 of this book but just couldn't finish it - which shows you how badly I wanted to learn this history, in spite of the atrocious writing. I'm open to recommendations of other books about Native resistance - preferably written by an Indigenous person and not this white knight.
Edit: since I'm not actually qualified to evaluate his thesis itself, here's a review by Native American professor Ned Blackhawk that I found enlightening: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
December 27, 2022
On the one-hand, this is a long-needed counter to the mythic conquest story of the Americas, and for that alone, it's worth a read. However, it's kind of a slog. For one thing, it's a huge project with the vast timeline and the large numbers of Native American nations. The quantity of names, both native an European is kind of overwhelming. Also, his tendency to repeat his main thesis over and over is both annoying and sometimes veers into "he doth protest too much". Finally, much of it is military history with lots of battles and strategy, sometime I personally find dull. (I admit, however, to the necessity of some of it, given how it shows how often Natives won out against the colonizers. More maps might have helped, though.)
In some ways I can see an argument for both slimming the book and expanding it. Slimming it to get rid of the repetition and expanding it into several volumes for close focus. In the current from, some key events only get a few sentences due to the scope of the project.
The economic forces, are often shown but never commented on directly. The desire for guns, powder, wampum, horses, etc., made the Natives a huge market and they recognized the value of many of those goods. Did the natives never try to develop manufacturing of these goods themselves? (Obviously, they became excellent horse breeders.)
Also, it would be nice to have some of underlying historical forces examined. It's clear that one reason lost out (eventually) to colonization, is that unlike how we tend to view things now, it wasn't natives vs. non-natives. It was several competing nations with different agendas. If the Natives had been a unified force, the Europeans would never have take the continent.
As a comparison, consider the Holy Roman Empire in 1400CE. It's a patchwork of mini kingdoms, states, and duchies of different sizes with different rulers. Had it been invaded by say, the Chinese, you might well have seen some those states working with the Chinese against local enemies, rather than all banding together to fight a foreign foe.
It's also clear, however, that the techniques of Europeans were strongly tinged with racism, so that genocidal tactics that would never be used on other Europeans were frequently brought to bear on the Natives, as well as abandoning treaties when they became inconvenient, and not paying for land once it had been "bought." Clear, too, is how often fortunes were made by land speculators who cared nothing for the legality of the paper that made them "owners" of enormous swaths of the countryside.
Because this book ends in the 19th century, it should also be paired with a more modern history, such as David Treuer's "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee" which explores the mistreatment of the Natives by the government's bureaucratic and legal system and the failures of the reservation system.
Clearer writing would have made this an easy five, but I think it's an important book. But it will take some real work on the reader's part to get the information that's there.
In some ways I can see an argument for both slimming the book and expanding it. Slimming it to get rid of the repetition and expanding it into several volumes for close focus. In the current from, some key events only get a few sentences due to the scope of the project.
The economic forces, are often shown but never commented on directly. The desire for guns, powder, wampum, horses, etc., made the Natives a huge market and they recognized the value of many of those goods. Did the natives never try to develop manufacturing of these goods themselves? (Obviously, they became excellent horse breeders.)
Also, it would be nice to have some of underlying historical forces examined. It's clear that one reason lost out (eventually) to colonization, is that unlike how we tend to view things now, it wasn't natives vs. non-natives. It was several competing nations with different agendas. If the Natives had been a unified force, the Europeans would never have take the continent.
As a comparison, consider the Holy Roman Empire in 1400CE. It's a patchwork of mini kingdoms, states, and duchies of different sizes with different rulers. Had it been invaded by say, the Chinese, you might well have seen some those states working with the Chinese against local enemies, rather than all banding together to fight a foreign foe.
It's also clear, however, that the techniques of Europeans were strongly tinged with racism, so that genocidal tactics that would never be used on other Europeans were frequently brought to bear on the Natives, as well as abandoning treaties when they became inconvenient, and not paying for land once it had been "bought." Clear, too, is how often fortunes were made by land speculators who cared nothing for the legality of the paper that made them "owners" of enormous swaths of the countryside.
Because this book ends in the 19th century, it should also be paired with a more modern history, such as David Treuer's "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee" which explores the mistreatment of the Natives by the government's bureaucratic and legal system and the failures of the reservation system.
Clearer writing would have made this an easy five, but I think it's an important book. But it will take some real work on the reader's part to get the information that's there.
Want to read
December 1, 2022NY Times review: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/bo...
See the three-star reviews here. Consider reading the first half? Looks like a low-priority project.
See the three-star reviews here. Consider reading the first half? Looks like a low-priority project.
January 25, 2023
A book this important should not be this bad. The world desperately needs a popular history of the indigenous struggle against colonization in North America. Hämäläinen seems to have done the research necessary to present this story. He is correct that this struggle lasted, as an open, on-going military conflict, for four centuries. He is right to note that this history is longer than that of the United States, and constitutes an on-going story of North America that is at least equally as important as the story of the United States. But his interpretations can only be described as delusional. I learned a lot from this book. But the layers of ludicrousness that Hämäläinen applies to almost every page go beyond a distraction to actively sabotage his noble project.
There is a stereotype of "woke history" writing that I think is desperately unfair in almost all cases. I read a lot of history. To some extent it's my full-time job. These histories are often written by folks who lean left, or are hyper-critical of the European empires they study. The stereotype is that this history is written with agendas that skew their work. After decades of reading the history of empire, from a wide range of ideological standpoints, I regret to inform you that a critical stance isn't some "woke" agenda, it's a logical reaction to the horrific facts of imperial conquest. In most cases. This book is an exception. It's definitely "woke history" and it's very bad.
Hämäläinen desperately wants to tell a grand story of native power. The emphasis of this book is the violent resistance of a wide array of indigenous peoples to merciless, brutal, unrelenting European colonization. With some caveats, I think that's probably the right story. A better version of this history, in popular form, is something the world needs. But Hämäläinen's compulsion is to somehow make the case that the indigenous won. It's frankly ludicrous. He attempts to tell a story of constant Native American military victory. It would be inspiring I guess, if it wasn't the complete opposite of the story he has documented in the book of history he has written.
This isn't to deny the real examples of Native power that are described in this book. The stories of the Iroquois, Comanche, Lakota and other indigenous empires deserve to be better known. There are spectacular stories of native victory, that resulted in some very real constraints on Spanish and French empire in North America. Native victories even managed to briefly slow down the English and the US at some points. I was especially impressed by the story of "St. Clair's defeat", a 1791 battle where a combined force of Miami, Shawnee, Lenape and other nations slaughtered around a 1,000 US troops. This fight, also known as the Battle of the Wabash, wiped out a quarter of the official US military forces (not militia) at the time. It's one of the worst defeats the United States military ever suffered, and I'm embarrassed to admit I had never heard of it. This story, and many others in this book, are deeply impressive, compelling stories that deserve to be told. But the facts are that the Native Americans lost, and lost badly. For centuries.
The aftermath of St. Clair's Defeat in 1791 is instructive. By 1794, the United States had put together an army under a much more savage and thorough US general who slaughtered his way across the midwest, and forced the 1791 victors to submit to a treaty opening up the majority of the Ohio Country they had "defended" to US settlement. On p.338 Hämäläinen rousingly describes the defeat of the US army, and then goes on to rhapsodize about how the US was "Overwhelmed by Indigenous Power" for three pages. Then by page 341, because he's an honest enough historian, he has to describe the complete defeat of that indigenous power three years later. This passage stands out in the book, because it takes three pages to get from Hämäläinen's excited declarations of Native invulnerability and prowess to description of their complete defeat. Through most of the book it usually only takes a paragraph. Or even a sentence or two.
I get the instinct to always oversell Indigenous success. It can be seen as respectful, and a corrective to centuries of interpretations that go too far in the direction of emphasizing native weakness. But it's taken way, way too far in this book. It comes across as delusional, or even insulting to the indigenous Hämäläinen is celebrating. At one point he describes "smallness" as an innovative strategy that certain tribes used against the United States. Construing mass death due to pandemics and massacre as an innovative strategy to defeat the colonizers is just... I don't have the words. I don't doubt Hämäläinen's sincerity with all this, but it is taken so far that it can almost seem like he's mocking the indigenous and their struggles.
There's another horrific flaw with the book's approach. The thing that makes European treatment of the American indigenous so uniquely horrific is how unbalanced the struggle was. If the indigenous were as powerful as Hämäläinen claims they were, then maybe it was an even fight? Maybe we don't have to feel so bad about it? It's not like the various nations of Native Americans were ever that nice to each other. Much smaller genocides were common before the Europeans arrived. If we believe Hämäläinen then maybe the Europeans of the 19th century were just new, marginally more successful competitors, who don't deserve any more moral opprobrium than the Mongols of the 13th century or the Arabs of the 6th? I find that interpretation unacceptable, and I'm pretty sure Hämäläinen would as well. But he wrote a book that kind of supports the idea.
The sad truth is that European colonization of North America was not limited by the indigenous. It was limited by the technology and numbers that the European empires could bring to bear on the continent's vast size. When Europeans showed up with sufficient numbers and technology, in an exponentially growing wave after 1750 or so, the indigenous were crushed. And the Lakota and Comanche empires, that put up the last, heroic armed defense against the United States in the 1870s had already been irrevocably changed by European influence. These warriors, who probably contribute the most to the pop cultural image of Native Americans, built their empires on European horses, with European guns, to better leverage European trade networks. Another sad truth that Hämäläinen neglects is the fact that a lot of the cultural development that took place in this period involved warping indigenous culture to serve European ends. The fact that Europeans would serially discard European created economic systems that natives had become dependent on, whenever they figured out a better way to make a buck, is one more betrayal to add to the ledger.
There's a much better book, or perhaps a series of compelling pop history books, to be written about the centuries of struggle, accommodation and innovation that indigenous North Americans engaged in to try to keep their lands. The book fails in part because it attempts to portray native strength as a question of military victories, which never really had any lasting effect, or at least not after the 1750s or so. 400 years can include a lot of battles. But it included a lot of peaceful coexistence, and ingenious passive resistance as well. The Native American ability to hold on to as many of their traditions as they have in the face of 400 years of serial betrayals is a kind of victory. But it's not the story of military victory that this book tries and fails to tell. Sorry.
There is a stereotype of "woke history" writing that I think is desperately unfair in almost all cases. I read a lot of history. To some extent it's my full-time job. These histories are often written by folks who lean left, or are hyper-critical of the European empires they study. The stereotype is that this history is written with agendas that skew their work. After decades of reading the history of empire, from a wide range of ideological standpoints, I regret to inform you that a critical stance isn't some "woke" agenda, it's a logical reaction to the horrific facts of imperial conquest. In most cases. This book is an exception. It's definitely "woke history" and it's very bad.
Hämäläinen desperately wants to tell a grand story of native power. The emphasis of this book is the violent resistance of a wide array of indigenous peoples to merciless, brutal, unrelenting European colonization. With some caveats, I think that's probably the right story. A better version of this history, in popular form, is something the world needs. But Hämäläinen's compulsion is to somehow make the case that the indigenous won. It's frankly ludicrous. He attempts to tell a story of constant Native American military victory. It would be inspiring I guess, if it wasn't the complete opposite of the story he has documented in the book of history he has written.
This isn't to deny the real examples of Native power that are described in this book. The stories of the Iroquois, Comanche, Lakota and other indigenous empires deserve to be better known. There are spectacular stories of native victory, that resulted in some very real constraints on Spanish and French empire in North America. Native victories even managed to briefly slow down the English and the US at some points. I was especially impressed by the story of "St. Clair's defeat", a 1791 battle where a combined force of Miami, Shawnee, Lenape and other nations slaughtered around a 1,000 US troops. This fight, also known as the Battle of the Wabash, wiped out a quarter of the official US military forces (not militia) at the time. It's one of the worst defeats the United States military ever suffered, and I'm embarrassed to admit I had never heard of it. This story, and many others in this book, are deeply impressive, compelling stories that deserve to be told. But the facts are that the Native Americans lost, and lost badly. For centuries.
The aftermath of St. Clair's Defeat in 1791 is instructive. By 1794, the United States had put together an army under a much more savage and thorough US general who slaughtered his way across the midwest, and forced the 1791 victors to submit to a treaty opening up the majority of the Ohio Country they had "defended" to US settlement. On p.338 Hämäläinen rousingly describes the defeat of the US army, and then goes on to rhapsodize about how the US was "Overwhelmed by Indigenous Power" for three pages. Then by page 341, because he's an honest enough historian, he has to describe the complete defeat of that indigenous power three years later. This passage stands out in the book, because it takes three pages to get from Hämäläinen's excited declarations of Native invulnerability and prowess to description of their complete defeat. Through most of the book it usually only takes a paragraph. Or even a sentence or two.
I get the instinct to always oversell Indigenous success. It can be seen as respectful, and a corrective to centuries of interpretations that go too far in the direction of emphasizing native weakness. But it's taken way, way too far in this book. It comes across as delusional, or even insulting to the indigenous Hämäläinen is celebrating. At one point he describes "smallness" as an innovative strategy that certain tribes used against the United States. Construing mass death due to pandemics and massacre as an innovative strategy to defeat the colonizers is just... I don't have the words. I don't doubt Hämäläinen's sincerity with all this, but it is taken so far that it can almost seem like he's mocking the indigenous and their struggles.
There's another horrific flaw with the book's approach. The thing that makes European treatment of the American indigenous so uniquely horrific is how unbalanced the struggle was. If the indigenous were as powerful as Hämäläinen claims they were, then maybe it was an even fight? Maybe we don't have to feel so bad about it? It's not like the various nations of Native Americans were ever that nice to each other. Much smaller genocides were common before the Europeans arrived. If we believe Hämäläinen then maybe the Europeans of the 19th century were just new, marginally more successful competitors, who don't deserve any more moral opprobrium than the Mongols of the 13th century or the Arabs of the 6th? I find that interpretation unacceptable, and I'm pretty sure Hämäläinen would as well. But he wrote a book that kind of supports the idea.
The sad truth is that European colonization of North America was not limited by the indigenous. It was limited by the technology and numbers that the European empires could bring to bear on the continent's vast size. When Europeans showed up with sufficient numbers and technology, in an exponentially growing wave after 1750 or so, the indigenous were crushed. And the Lakota and Comanche empires, that put up the last, heroic armed defense against the United States in the 1870s had already been irrevocably changed by European influence. These warriors, who probably contribute the most to the pop cultural image of Native Americans, built their empires on European horses, with European guns, to better leverage European trade networks. Another sad truth that Hämäläinen neglects is the fact that a lot of the cultural development that took place in this period involved warping indigenous culture to serve European ends. The fact that Europeans would serially discard European created economic systems that natives had become dependent on, whenever they figured out a better way to make a buck, is one more betrayal to add to the ledger.
There's a much better book, or perhaps a series of compelling pop history books, to be written about the centuries of struggle, accommodation and innovation that indigenous North Americans engaged in to try to keep their lands. The book fails in part because it attempts to portray native strength as a question of military victories, which never really had any lasting effect, or at least not after the 1750s or so. 400 years can include a lot of battles. But it included a lot of peaceful coexistence, and ingenious passive resistance as well. The Native American ability to hold on to as many of their traditions as they have in the face of 400 years of serial betrayals is a kind of victory. But it's not the story of military victory that this book tries and fails to tell. Sorry.
November 27, 2023
The story about North America goes like this. Following Columbus’ first voyage, Europeans rush to colonize the new world. With superior weapons and technology, they overpowered the native Indians stricken with old world diseases, taking progressively more land from them until they dominated the entire continent.
Rather than these linear narratives, Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent depicts North American history in much fuller details. His story focuses on Indians’ interest. This sets it apart from most other American Stories written from the point of view of white people, the colonization, the establishment and growth of the United States.
Hämäläinen takes a close look at the different individual Indian nations. There was not one native american but many different groups who competed fiercely and regularly at war with each other. When the continent was a contest between the British and French, the indigenous Iroquois Five Nations was a formidable power that the Europeans were eager to court and appease. It was not just war, but also mutually beneficial trading that brought them together. The governor of New France was bestowed the title Onontio (father) because of their role as a mediator and provider as seen from the point of view of the natives.
In the view of Hämäläinen, Indians are adaptive people and skillful diplomats. They learned and evolved in the hundreds of years of interaction with White people. They used trading to acquire manufactured goods and often sought to control and monopolize trade for maximum benefit. They were skillful to play one European power against the other, alternating between war and peace as the situation fits. They were major players in American history.
One thing I do not like about the book is that Hämäläinen consistently portrays Indians as strong and powerful while the White people as weak and hapless. While this made some sense during the early years, as the United States becomes a dominating power, we can see the end is near. Rather than going out of the way to depict Indians as strong, perhaps it should faithfully portray the story of the tragic decline of the once great people.
Rather than these linear narratives, Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent depicts North American history in much fuller details. His story focuses on Indians’ interest. This sets it apart from most other American Stories written from the point of view of white people, the colonization, the establishment and growth of the United States.
Hämäläinen takes a close look at the different individual Indian nations. There was not one native american but many different groups who competed fiercely and regularly at war with each other. When the continent was a contest between the British and French, the indigenous Iroquois Five Nations was a formidable power that the Europeans were eager to court and appease. It was not just war, but also mutually beneficial trading that brought them together. The governor of New France was bestowed the title Onontio (father) because of their role as a mediator and provider as seen from the point of view of the natives.
In the view of Hämäläinen, Indians are adaptive people and skillful diplomats. They learned and evolved in the hundreds of years of interaction with White people. They used trading to acquire manufactured goods and often sought to control and monopolize trade for maximum benefit. They were skillful to play one European power against the other, alternating between war and peace as the situation fits. They were major players in American history.
One thing I do not like about the book is that Hämäläinen consistently portrays Indians as strong and powerful while the White people as weak and hapless. While this made some sense during the early years, as the United States becomes a dominating power, we can see the end is near. Rather than going out of the way to depict Indians as strong, perhaps it should faithfully portray the story of the tragic decline of the once great people.
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November 23, 2023What if we wrote a history of the conflict between indigenous peoples and between indigenous peoples and colonizers in this continent the way we write European histories?
Meaning we look at it as a contest between powers and discuss where and how the conflict happened and the ways in which culture plays a role and we take seriously the idea that these are nations who are fighting each other rather than flattening any portrayal. Which is not to say that Hämäläinen is both-sides-ing the story. It’s precisely the objectivity and historical analysis that gives weight to his observations about specific acts of cruelty and treachery on the part of the Europeans (and eventually Americans) and his conclusions about the enduring indigenous character of the continent.
Also, this was basically like listening to a textbook and I definitely would have gotten more out of it if I’d read it in short chunks, but also I wasn’t reading for research but for my own learning.
Meaning we look at it as a contest between powers and discuss where and how the conflict happened and the ways in which culture plays a role and we take seriously the idea that these are nations who are fighting each other rather than flattening any portrayal. Which is not to say that Hämäläinen is both-sides-ing the story. It’s precisely the objectivity and historical analysis that gives weight to his observations about specific acts of cruelty and treachery on the part of the Europeans (and eventually Americans) and his conclusions about the enduring indigenous character of the continent.
Also, this was basically like listening to a textbook and I definitely would have gotten more out of it if I’d read it in short chunks, but also I wasn’t reading for research but for my own learning.
April 26, 2023
Having read dozens of books about the indigenous people of North America I feel it's safe to say if you only read one book on the subject this should be it. It is an amazing piece of writing that gives the historic point of view from the Indigenous peoples perspective. This book should be the starting point for anyone interested in North American Indigenous history. It would be a wonderful book for all high school students to be part of their required reading.
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