Indigenous continent : the epic contest for North America / Pekka Hämäläinen.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction: The Myth of Colonial America (ix)
• Part 1 The Dawn of the Indigenous Continent (the first seventy millennia)
• Chapter 1 The World on the Turtle's Back (3)
• Chapter 2 The Egalitarian Continent (12)
• Chapter 3 Blind Conquests (25)
• Part 2 Appear at a Distance Like Giants (the long sixteenth century)
• Chapter 4 Terra Nullius (37)
• Chapter 5 The Powhatan Empire (52)
• Chapter 6 Wars at the Water's Edge (70)
• Chapter 7 The Pequots Shall No More Be Called Pequots (86)
• Part 3 The Contest for the Great American Interior (early and mid-seventeenth century)
• Chapter 8 The Rise of the Five Nations League (97)
• Chapter 9 Enemies of the Faith (110)
• Chapter 10 The Power of Weakness (127)
• Part 4 The Indigenous Backlash (late seventeenth century)
• Chapter 11 The English as a Little Child (145)
• Chapter 12 Metacom's Challenge (160)
• Chapter 13 Virginia's Civil and Uncivil Wars (168)
• Chapter 14 The Great Southwestern Rebellion (177)
• Part 5 The Enduring Indigenous Continent (early eighteenth century)
• Chapter 15 Holding the Line (193)
• Chapter 16 They Smelled like Alligators (209)
• Chapter 17 An Infinity of Rancherías (231)
• Part 6 The Heart of the Continent (mid- and late eighteenth century)
• Chapter 18 Magic Dogs (249)
• Chapter 19 Wars to the End of the World (259)
• Chapter 20 British America Besieged (275)
• Chapter 21 Worldly and Otherworldly Wars of Independence (289)
• Chapter 22 A Second Chinese Wall (301)
• Part 7 American Revolutions (late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century)
• Chapter 23 The American Crucible (323)
• Chapter 24 Western Promises (345)
• Chapter 25 The White Devil with His Mouth Wide Open (366)
• Part 8 The Age of Equestrian Empires (nineteenth century)
• Chapter 26 The Long Removal Era (385)
• Chapter 27 The Comanche Ascendancy (409)
• Chapter 28 The Lakota Shield (430)
• Epilogue: Revenge and Revival (458)
• Acknowledgments (465)
• Notes (467)
• Illustration Credits (539)
• Index (541)