Native America A History

The latest edition of an accessible and comprehensive survey of Native America

In this newly revised third edition of Native America: A History, Michael Leroy Oberg and Peter Jakob Olsen-Harbich deliver a thoroughly updated, incisive narrative history of North America’s Indigenous peoples. The authors aim to provide readers with an overview of the principal themes and developments in Native American history, from the first peopling of the continent to the present, by following twelve Native communities whose histories serve as exemplars for the common experiences of North America’s diverse Indigenous nations. This textbook centers the history of Native America and presents it as flowing through channels distinct from those of the United States. This is a history of nations not merely acted upon, but rather of those that have responded to, resisted, ignored, and shaped the efforts of foreign powers to control their story.

This new edition has been comprehensively updated in all its chapters and expanded with wider coverage of the most significant recent events and trends in Native America through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Native America: A History, Third Edition also includes:

• A survey of pre-Columbian North American traditions and the various ways in which these traditions were deployed to comprehend and respond to the arrival of Europeans.
• In-depth examinations of how Native nations navigated the challenges of colonialism and fought to survive while marginalized behind the frontiers of European empires and the United States.
• Nuanced analyses of how Indigenous peoples balanced the economic benefits offered by assimilation with the cultural and political imperatives of maintaining traditions and sovereignty.
• An accessible presentation of American tribal law and the strategies used by Native nations to establish government-to-government relationships with the United States despite the repeated failures of that state to honor its legal commitments.

Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students seeking a broad historical treatment of Indigenous peoples in the United States, Native America: A History, Third Edition will earn a place in the libraries of anyone with an interest in seeking an authoritative and engaging survey of Native American history.

Michael Leroy Oberg, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of History at SUNY-Geneseo and Director of the Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History. He is the author of Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585-1685, and Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794.

Peter Jakob Olsen-Harbich received his Ph.D. in History from William & Mary in 2021. He is the editor of The New American Antiquarian.

List of Figures

List of Maps

Introduction

1 Myths and Legends

The Beginning of the World

Rules for Living

Bears

2 Worlds New and Worlds Old

The Fundamental Violence of Discovery

Paths of Destruction

Tsenacommacah

The Mohegans

New Worlds

3 Living in the New World

Mourning Wars

Colonizing the Mohegans

The Word of God

Colonizing the Powhatans

Forging the Covenant Chain

Indigenous Peoples and the French in a World of War

The Pueblos’ Revolt

Horses

The Grand Settlement

The Cherokees

Indigenous Peoples and the Nature of Empires

4 Indigenous Peoples and the Fall of European Empires

Penn’s Woods

The Potawatomis in a World of Conflicting Empires

Settlement and Unsettledness

Life at the Western Door

Behind the Frontier

The Great Wars for Empire

The Proclamation and the Indian Boundary Line

Indians and Empires

5 Indigenous Peoples and the Rise of a New American Empire

Change in the Far Western World

Declarations of Independence

The Revolution and the Longhouse

Cherokees and Chickamaugas

England’s Allies and the Confederation

The Six Nations and the Empire State

Confederations

A New Order for the Ages

1794, A Year of Consequence

The White Man’s Republic

6 Relocations and Removes

The Mohegans’ Struggle for Independence

The Rise of the Prophet

Handsome Lake

Dispossessing the Senecas

Pioneers and Exiles

Removing from the Missions

The Optimism of the Imperialist

7 The Invasion of the Great West

Pledges and Promises

Settling In and Settling Down

Homesteaders

Concentration

The Indians’ Civil War

Peace and War

8 The Age of Dispossession

“Conform To It or Be Crushed By It”

Spelatch

Ghost Dancers

The Assault on Indian Identity

Living Under the New Regime

The New Life in the Indian Territory

The Crows and the Life on the Northern Plains

Indigenous Peoples in the Eastern United States

A Movement for Reform

The Origins of the Indian New Deal

9 New Deals and Old Deals

Reforming Indian Policy

Indigenous Peoples and World War II

Termination and the Coalminer’s Canary

Cleaning the Slate

New Frontiers

Red Power

10 Sovereign Nations and Colonized Nations

The Importance of 1978

The State of the Nations

Exercising Sovereignty

Toward the Future

Bibliography

Index 

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