The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Description

A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America   “In accounts of American history, Indigenous peoples are often treated as largely incidental—either obstacles to be overcome or part of a narrative separate from the arc of nation-building. Blackhawk . . . [shows] that Native communities have, instead, been inseparable from the American story all along.”—Washington Post Book World, “Books to Read in 2023”   The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.   Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that   • European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success;   • Native nations helped shape England’s crisis of empire;   • the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior;   • California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War;   • the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West;   • twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy.     Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Maps Introduction: Toward a New American History Part I Indians and Empires 1. American Genesis: Indians and the Spanish Borderlands 2. The Native Northeast and the Rise of British North America 3. The Unpredictability of Violence: Iroquoia and New France to 1701 4. The Native Inland Sea: The Struggle for the Heart of the Continent, 1701–55 5. Settler Uprising: The Indigenous Origins of the American Revolution 6. Colonialism’s Constitution: The Origins of Federal Indian Policy Part II Struggles for Sovereignty 7. The Deluge of Settler Colonialism: Democracy and Dispossession in the Early Republic 8. Foreign Policy Formations: California, the Pacific, and the Borderlands Origins of the Monroe Doctrine 9. Collapse and Total War: The Indigenous West and the U.S. Civil War 10. Taking Children and Treaty Lands: Laws and Federal Power during the Reservation Era 11. Indigenous Twilight at the Dawn of the Century: Native Activists and the Myth of Indian Disappearance 12. From Termination to Self-Determination: Native American Sovereignty in the Cold War Era Notes Acknowledgments Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z