EAN: 9780525511038

NATIVE NATIONS - KATHLEEN DUVAL GEBUNDEN

In this magisterial history of the continent  Kathleen DuVal traces the power of Native nations
from the rise of ancient cities more than 1000 years ago to the present. She reframes North
American history  noting significantly that Indigenous civilizations did not come to a halt
when a few wandering explorers or hungry settlers arrived  even when the strangers came
well-armed. A millennium ago  North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in
size  but following a period of climate change and instability DuVal shows how numerous nations
emerged from previously centralized civilizations. From this urban past  patterns of
egalitarian government structures  complex economies and trade  and diplomacy spread across
North America. And  when Europeans did arrive in the 16th century  they encountered societies
they did not understand and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries  Indigenous
people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native
Nations  we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch--and influenced global
trade patterns--and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. With the American Revolution 
power dynamics shifted  but Indigenous people continued to control the majority of the
continent. The Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa built alliances across the continent
and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S.
ambitions. The Cherokees created new institutions to assert their sovereignty to the U.S. and
on the global stage  and the Kiowas used their preponderance of power in the west to regulate
the passage of white settlers across their territory. The definitions of power and means of
exerting it shifted over time  but the sovereignty and influence of Indigenous nations has been
a constant--

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