INDIGENOUS CONTINENT

A landmark work that overturns the United States' dominant origin story from a prize-winning scholar of Indigenous history.

American history and self-understanding have long depended on the notion of a "colonial America," an era that - according to prevailing accounts - laid the foundation for the modern United States. In Indigenous Continent, the acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen shatters this Eurocentric narrative by retelling the four centuries between first contacts and the peak of Native power from Indigenous points of view. Shifting our perspective away from Plymouth, Jamestown, the American Revolution, and other well-worn episodes on the conventional timeline, Hämäläinen uncovers a sovereign world of distinctive Native nations whose members, far from simple victims of colonial aggression, controlled the continent well into the nineteenth century, fundamentally shaping the actions of the European imperialists and the development of the United States. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America's past, present, or future, Indigenous Continent restores Native Americans to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history. Pekka Hämäläinen is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University and the author of The Comanche Empire, winner of the Bancroft Prize, and Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power. He lives in Oxford, England.