Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history” (The New York Review of Books), from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE, THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE, AND THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated.
For centuries afterward, 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 markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.
In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.
“An essential American history”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE, THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE, AND THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated.
For centuries afterward, 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 markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.
In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.
“An essential American history”—The Wall Street Journal
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Community Reviews
I have to say, this book genuinely recalibrated of my sense of North American history, and frankly, of history in general. DuVal certainly doesn’t stick to the same old Eurocentric history we’re all familiar with. Neither does she simply add Native viewpoints to that perspective. Honestly, she begins with a completely different framework—one that truly centers Native Americans, filling out a surprising history of their pre-contact era(s), illustrating their dominance across most of the continent even well after Europeans’ arrival, and showing that the European takeover of the continent was far less inevitable than most narratives make it seem. What she ends up with is not the story of a “discovery,” but of an ongoing contest among powerful and deeply rooted nations, each with its own strategies, politics, and adaptability.
The book takes on a massive historical scope and covers it quite well for a single, broad work. For me, at least, each era had new discoveries: the pre-contact societies with their complex trade and diplomacy;the idea of a rise and subsequent fall of massive urban societies (until now I had thought of “post-urban” societies as an apocalyptic literary trope, not a historical phenomenon); the first two centuries of contact, where Native American alliances and rivalries thoroughly superseded the influence of European immigrants; the grim transition to a modern order defined by dispossession and resistance; and the uninterrupted cultures which survived it, now struggling mightily to find ways to thrive.
Possibly the most striking revelation—even though I thought I had already wrapped my head around it years ago—was the sheer savagery of the British colonial project. DuVal makes clear how deliberately their violence & inhumanity functioned as the tools of conquest—not just against Native nations, but against the European rivals who had preceded them. I guess I hadn’t realized the extent to which their brutality (and their ability to dehumanize almost anyone) was really their primary advantage, and was powerful enough to achieve a position of dominance.
The writing is perhaps not inspired, but is even and clear; neither dry nor decorative. DuVal does a good job letting the material itself do the work. You don’t feel her trying to dramatize things, which is fitting for a story already full of its own drama. She handles scale beautifully, moving between sweeping historical synthesis and close portraits of individuals (Tecumseh, e.g., or Major Ridge & John Ross) whose stories well epitomize the larger historical currents she's tracing.
DuVal presents a history of endurance, punctuated by loss (rather than the typical telling, with those two flipped). The narrative is obviously divided by eras—there are real watershed moments, through which continuity isn’t really possible. But even across those ruptures, you get a sense of Native nations’ persistence. It’s impossible not to feel anger at the history of European disregard and brutality, of course. But I also come away with a kind of reluctant hope in the way that Indigenous nations continue to prevail, adapt and assert themselves.
I can’t overstate how much I appreciated the (unfortunately) unconventional viewpoint of this book, and the illumination it provides. I’m inclined to read more of her work, just in the hope of finding that again.
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