Indigenous Conquest: The Epic Battle for North America

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Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, "Indigenous Continent" by acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. The book has been praised as "the single best book I have ever read on Native American history" by Thomas E. Ricks of the New York Times Book Review, and as a work that can make one wish they had it "at hand" when they were a "lonely college junior" finishing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, as expressed by David Treuer in The New Yorker.

Hämäläinen's book rewrites 400 years of American history from Indigenous perspectives, overturning the dominant origin story of the United States. The traditional narrative depicts Columbus "discovering" a strange continent and bringing back tales of untold riches, leading to a rush of European empires eager to stake out as much of this "New World" as possible. Despite Indigenous peoples' resistance, the white imperialists are seen as destined to rule the continent, with history marching irreversibly toward Indigenous destruction.

However, Hämäläinen presents a strikingly different picture. He depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from being 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 Hämäläinen points out that Indigenous peoples still controlled it – 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. The book is accompanied by 42 black-and-white images and 10 maps, further enhancing the reader's understanding of this crucial period in American history.

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