Indigenous peoples of North America should be central to the history of the United States, not periodic players who largely appear as passive recipients of violence. In The Rediscovery of America, this common pattern in how American history is presented is evaluated and adjusted to bring Indigenous experiences and agency to the fore. The book frames a 500-year swathe of history by looking at settler colonialism and the contact points between Indigenous people and colonists that shaped both peoples moving forward.

The history doesn't start in the "typical" way with certain British colonies in the East. If the story is about Native peoples and their contact with Europeans, the story starts in the South and the West as Indigenous people experienced first contact with the Spanish Empire that rained down violence, subjugation, and disease. Over hundreds of years, Native people became a class within that empire with certain rights and means of negotiation within the brutal system. Some formed alliances with the Spanish against existing enemies or to overthrow the existing Nahua empire centered in Tenochtitlan that didn't suit them. Others were enslaved and forced into labor for the Empire. Yet others were terrorized into compliance with strategic massacres, the use of dogs and guns, and the enslavement of neighbors. And that all before the usual story of the United States would bother to start. This is not a unidirectional story, though, with the aggressor and the subjugated. For example, Blackhawk shows how silver mined in Mexico and the Andes with Indigenous labor became the backbone of a changing European economy. The Pueblos revolted in 1680 and only renegotiated with New Mexico once it became clear that surrounding Indigenous tribes were taking advantage of new equestrian ways of life to raid and disrupt their lives.

The whole book is a way of reorienting, from the maps to the information to the framing. For example, by focusing on Indian contact with various European powers, it's not a story that spreads from the Atlantic westward on a track of manifest destiny. We see the Spanish Empire creep up in the South and the French spread from the North into the interior and all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico. The French traded and allied with tribes who wanted access to their goods. The relationships had to be carefully maintained, and groups like the Iroquois benefited from playing the French off their English rivals to maintain their own sovereignty and neutrality.

The story of the American Revolution, when it does come to pass, doesn't have quite the same flavor, despite its familiarity. The focus here is on settlers seeking land, a unifying goal that paints all Indians as enemies and obstacles. The British Empire tried to maintain treaties with their Indigenous neighbors as the French once did, which became an unforgivable barrier to the colonists who desired expansion over peace. Even after the Revolution, land and its attached wealth in the interior were deeply motivating factors. The national and state governments fought over treaties with Native tribes even though only the federal government was supposed to have the authority to make them. Then there were the individuals who sought land under their own steam, treaty or no. In addition to the chaos of settlers squatting on lands and the gentry speculating and buying up great quantities of it, backcountry whites eyed the wealth of silver in Indian hands. Native peoples had accumulated silver over generations of trade, and the new American nation and its people were lacking in the much-needed material wealth to settle its debts and organize its economy. Raiding and violence were a feature of the nation's earliest days.

The Civil War brought a different violent change to how Indigenous people were treated as militias formed in the West with little to no official or certainly federal oversight. Though the federal government had fought to be the only body capable of making treaties with Indian tribes, it lacked the power, infrastructure, or inclination to see those treaties through. Especially with the Civil War serving as a distraction and with the gains made in land and wealth from Indian genocide, there was no reason to intervene when it came to militia violence. California volunteers during the war worked to exterminate Indian peoples, desperate to see some kind of war action and glory that they felt they were missing out on in the East.

During Reconstruction, Congress began making laws in direct contradiction to previous treaties entered into by the United States government. Reservations were subdivided into allotments for heads of household, instilling patriarchal values and negating the power of tribal governments to manage their land communally. By setting standard acreage amounts, it also reduced the holdings of the tribes significantly. Congress saw fit to remove Western tribes to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, which had previously been home only to tribes from the Southeast. It became a catchall region regardless of tribal origin. During the same period, our country saw the rise of Indian boarding schools to punitively assimilate children and separate them from their families.

A misconception from my schooling that was overturned by this book has to do with the enslavement of Indigenous people. I vividly remember learning that the practice was replaced by the enslavement of African people rather than hearing about their concurrent practice and differing forms. This book lays out the way that Native peoples observed different forms of taking captives in war, the Iroquois using them to rebuild their numbers after being decimated by disease, for example. Captives could also be traded to Europeans as slaves, and some were transported as far as Caribbean plantations and Europe. Another potential surprise comes from the fact that some tribes forcibly relocated in southern states participated in the plantation economy with slave labor-- the Cherokee, for example, going so far as to incorporate race-based restrictions to exclude Black people from tribal membership in their constitution, mirroring the United States' limitations on citizenry.

A few big themes from the book were especially striking. One is about terminology. The author refers to the vast plains at the center of the United States as The Native Inland Sea. I think it honors the experiences and value of this area and all its Native peoples, where most histories, geographies, etc., skip directly from coast to coast with few exceptions. Another is the path to extractive capitalism that arrived with settlers, ranging from mining to large-scale livestock husbandry to farming. This mindset caused some of the violence against Indigenous people including the destruction of their homes (and everyone's future) in the process. Finally, it's all too convenient to look elsewhere for injustices and ignore histories closer to home (especially when the education system encourages it). This book reminds us that the way that the United States treated Indigenous peoples was a source of inspiration for Nazi racial laws, colonization, and warfare.

One of my favorite things about the book is the maps. They change throughout the book to reflect the movements of different tribes, be they voluntary, under duress, or involuntary. Such maps I've seen before are unnaturally static, reflecting tribal ranges from pre-contact as if they were immutable before settlers interfered and then ignoring the many changes that happened over the centuries that followed to hem in Indigenous groups and drive them from their homes. It's like state borders simply sprang up when they were admitted to the nation and no other sovereignty is respected enough to be included alongside them, though it existed.

I advise readers that a book with such breadth has a survey course feel. I wish I had read it in that vein, reading chunks as if they were assigned reading and then pausing to let the ideas gestate or giving me space to discuss with others. Instead, I approached it like a book I would read on my own time (since it was) and tried to read it cover to cover, not in one sitting but without strategic interruptions to spread out the experience. The way I read it meant that sometimes the deluge of information was overwhelming, or it was too easy to focus on which sections were stronger than others rather than keeping my interest on the inherent value in each. I also think as a person who prefers to read in depth rather than a broad introduction, this style of reading emphasized to me how I was learning a little about a lot of things instead of a lot about a specific topic. I would have been better served focusing on how this book is a great starting point to make sure I have the basics framed from an Indigenous perspective before seeking out more resources. It's also worth noting that a book like this was needed because of how this kind of knowledge has been suppressed and overlooked in academia. There was no class like this I could have taken as a history undergrad, and an anchor text like this means maybe there will be more opportunities for such courses in the future. Thanks to Yale University Press for my copy to read and review!

The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk is a insightful book. I really didn't know a lot of this information and was surprised that I didn't learn more in the history books that were taught to me in school. I'm glad I got the chance to learn with this well written non=fiction book. I will suggest this book to all my history loving folks. Thank you Ned Blackhawk, Yale University Press and Netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review this ARC.

Thank you to Net Galley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk!

an ambitious synthesis affirming the centrality of Indigenous perspectives in U.S. history. any ambitious synthesis cannot cover everything, but this one is packed w/ detailed research, fresh interpretation, AND it’s readable. some early Americanists have suggested that it’s stronger in the contemporary & modern stretches, but I as an early Americanist found the first third, pre-Constitution, to be equally strong. personally, I would’ve liked to see more Alaska & Hawai’i, but of course, nothing can cover everything. impeccable coverage and endlessly useful for a wide range of historical endeavors.

I’m not sure what to say in these nonfiction history books that tells our history! But this should be read by everyone! This had great references and stories that dates back all the way through time of how Native Americans people lived and war with the colonizers as well as trying to stake claim to their lands and tribes! Overall, this is a must read!

Really enjoyed this one. It was better then I originally thought it was gonna be. I felt like it was a fast read

I picked up The Rediscovery of America thinking it would be a popular history read for the summer, but it definitely read more as a dry, dense, academic book. It's certainly an amazing feat of research with tons of evidence to back up claims, but as a casual reader, it was a little hard to stay engaged--this probably would be more enjoyable for someone with a history degree. I wanted to love a book that centers indigenous history, and while it's an important read and an incredible accomplishment, I just cannot recommend it for the casual reader. Would be great in an academic setting.

This is a comprehensive history of the United States centered around the indigenous peoples who lived here before it was “discovered” by explorers and colonizers. It’s a little hard to get through at times, but everyone should read or listen to it cover to cover.

“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?”

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher and author for offering this book, via Netgalley, an entire year post publication! As an expansive American history that reframes the narrative by placing native peoples, rather than European settlers, in a central role, the shape and meaning of our history, and indeed our identity, as an American people, begins to change. And indeed it should.

I'm happy to report that one of the Long Essay Questions for the APUSH exam this year dealt with Native suppression by the expansive Europeans: "Evaluate the extent to which settler expansion influenced North America from 1754 to 1800." This is a topic in which Ned Blackhawk excels, in depicting how the Native resistance to settler expansion was one of the leading foundations to the American Revolution. He elaborates as well on how the early Republic is shaped by the need for treaty powers in dealing with the various tribal powers in the interior.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I will be looking to use excerpts of it in my high school history classes next year. Thank you, Netgalley. You, and Dr. Blackhawk, rock!

Thank you so much for the eArc .

This book was a very enlightening and incredibly important . I felt like the text as accessible as well .

I know that in this time and place in our culture that we are either opposed or very open to missing pieces of our history, This book helps fill in some of our missing history here in America. From Ned Blackhawk, this wonderful book tells missing pieces that I didn't even have a clue about. This richly told book was eye-opening and wonderful!

This book taught me so much about the history of Native Americans and the way their people and cultures were utterly devastated by the European colonizers. It is very detailed and extremely interesting. However, I found that listening to the audiobook felt overwhelming because it was difficult to process all the information. I found myself referring to the ebook regularly to reread parts. Another thing that made listening difficult was the narration. Repeatedly, especially during the first half, I could easily determine spots where the narration had been edited. It sounded really disjointed, and that became very distracting.
In sum, I highly recommend this book for the information it contains, but I suggest reading it yourself rather than listening.

Thank you NetGalley, Tantor Audio, and Take University Press for allowing me early access to the ARC audiobook and ebook editions of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Rediscovery of America is a telling of US history, focused on including Native Americans in the narrative. The first part of the book, leading up to and including the Revolutionary War, does this in a way that's convincing (if a bit dry and scattered), and I learned a lot. The rest feels disjointed, jumping around in time, place, and theme, without a clear throughline to make things flow together. Big claims often feel unsubstantiated. Wish the entire book was a strong as part one.

Professor Blackhawk focuses on interactions between the indigenous people of North America and European settlers, over the last five centuries. He redresses the balance of past history books which have tended to focus on Europeans. He argues against North America being ‘discovered’, given that many different groups of people lived there before Europeans came. He covers a lot of ground in one volume. Worth reading if you’re studying North American history or if you’re interested in broadening your understanding of its history. Thanks to the publishers and Net Galley for a review copy.

History taught in school leaves out the role of the Native Americans - the part they played
as the country grew and the treatment they received from the government. Despite all that has
happened, they fight to maintain their languages, culture and traditions.
Great addition to any library.

Many, many thanks to NetGalley for this ARC of this incredible work. I absolutely loved this one. This should be on every high school or college required reading list. The author writes so well. Read this if you want to really learn American history. And buy 5 copies. for your family and friends to read. Share this widely. Highly recommended!

The Rediscovery of America, written by Ned Blackhawk, was the best non-fiction book I read in 2023. It works against the American cultural norm of writing Indigenous peoples out of the narrative. Blackhawk challenges many of the long-standing misconceptions and incorrect histories that have dominated the narrative and argues that Indigenous peoples were never at the periphery of American history, but are essential to understanding the United States today. In the author's words: "If history provides the common soil for a nation’s growth and a window into its future, it is time to reimagine U.S. history outside the tropes of discovery that have bred exclusion and misunderstanding. Finding answers to the the challenges of our time - racial strife, climate crisis, and domestic and global inequalities, among others - will require new concepts, approaches, and commitments. It is time to put down the interpretive tools of the previous century and take up new ones" (pp. 1-2). The Rediscovery of America does this through its examination of what are often labeled as the key moments in the American timeline, such as colonization, the American Revolution, and the Civil War and weaves those those well-known events with the Indigenous histories that are left out. By doing this, Blackhawk demonstrates crucial changes to the American understanding of the past happen when more pieces of the story are told. For example the book shows that the first shots of the American Revolution are tied to Indian affairs in the country's interior and that during the 20th century, reservation activists were instrumental in transforming American policies and laws. It was an amazing read that I would recommend to history students, museum professionals, teachers, and general history enthusiasts.

This book is a must read for anyone wanting a fuller understanding of U.S. history. The story we learned in school as kids centered on one group of people (the white ones) and left out the folks who were already on this land before Europeans arrived. This book goes a long way in helping to reshape our understanding of how these groups of people interacted over the years since those initial encounters.

Thank you to Yale University Press and NetGalley for the digital ARC. I already bought my own hard copy!

This is a great eye-opener to the things that are left out in general education. While I was aware of a few of topics mentioned, it included more context and information. The organization I think could have been a bit better, but it was overall easy to follow. If you are interested in indigenous history in the US, I think this is a good addition.

Ned Blackhawk, a professor at Yale and a renowned scholar of Indigenous history has rightfully placed Native Americans in the center of American history. The entire history of Native Americans is widely excluded from large segments of history, making momentary, episodic appearances rather that following the trajectory of history. Blackhawk's book allows the reader to examine the encounters with Indigenous people with Europeans rather than the tale of discovery and removal. Several truths of America's founding run into stark conflict with the rhetoric of American democracy. This is an important book to anyone studying American History. I highly recommend.