North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction

North American Indians (A Very Short Introduction)

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After I read “How the Indians Lost Their Land,” I became interested in the range of Indian tribes and languages and their migration patterns during the European settlement of North America. I was interested in phenomena like the Sioux going from being a woodland tribe in Minnesota to a horse warrior culture. The period must have involved epic migrations like that of the Germans into Europe or the Mongol subject people into surrounding territories, kicking off a domino effect of subsequent migrations. Why would we think it wouldn't be this way in North America?

Yet, I've never read anything on the subject.

This book provided me with some of the information I was looking for. The Very Short Introduction series provide what they promise. A broad overview in a short number of pages. There was a lot in this book that I was not interested in, such as Native American literature, but, clearly, that might be fodder for another day. I also did not like the standard leftwing moralizing about history.

The funny thing, though, is that for all the moralizing, this book offers data that could allow for a multi-dimensional view of history in the description of Indian genocide and conquest committed against other Indians.

“Probably, this “law of blood” rarely applied within the community—the people did not kill one another. But it was central to foreign relations because foreigners were outside the kinship system, uncontrollable and potentially dangerous. This meant that the normal relationship with foreign groups was war.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 13). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

The Westos were the most important early suppliers of captives. Refugee Eries who fled south from the Great Lakes to escape Iroquois armies, they established relations with Virginians and pioneered a trade that persisted in the South until the early eighteenth century. Although the Westos accepted a range of goods in exchange for captive Indians, they were most eager to receive guns. Having been victimized by gun-toting Iroquois warriors, they fully understood the military advantage guns provided. Well-armed Westos spread terror and death as they rounded up victims for their Virginia partners.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 32). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

mills. Cherokees also owned more than 1,200 African American slaves. Cherokees did not share equally in this wealth. For that reason, their council passed laws protecting the private property that civilization had taught them to acquire and value.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 52). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Interaction rested on the realization that Pueblo people and Spanish colonists needed each other in defense against horse-mounted enemy Indians. Horses had spread from the Apaches to the Utes in Colorado and then to the Comanches, who had come on foot from the Great Basin through the mountains and onto the buffalo plains during the seventeenth century. Their large numbers and a flexible and efficient political system enabled the Comanches quickly to dominate the southern plains. Despite various efforts to negotiate with the Comanches, not until 1786 did Spanish officials manage to conclude a peace with them. By this time, thoughts of renewed hostility between Spanish settlers and the Pueblo people were long forgotten.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 62). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

The astonishing thing about this story of the diffusion of horses throughout the plains is that it unfolded in no more than fifty years. Horses had entered a well-established exchange network that their presence expanded.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 63). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

But the Chippewa, armed with guns by their French trade partners, worked to expel the Sioux from their beaver grounds. The Sioux gradually gave way, pulling back to the west in search of new beaver streams and out of the way of the Chippewa. The Tetons, the westernmost tribe of the Sioux, led the way and ultimately reached the prairie country east of the Missouri River. There they found buffalo.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 66). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Tribes raided each other for horses, necessary because many horses died during the winter and Indians without horses could not hunt. Tribes also invaded the countries claimed by their neighbors and tried, sometimes successfully, to displace them. No group was better at this than the Teton Sioux. Their numbers constantly replenished with relatives from the East, they took advantage of the near eradication of the Arikaras to burst across the Missouri River and fan out into the country north of the Platte River. Some groups, such as the vastly outnumbered Cheyennes, concluded an alliance with the Tetons. Some, such as the Crows, retreated. Others, like the Pawnees south of the Platte in Nebraska, remained close to home.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (pp. 68-69). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

plains. While it is true that after the U.S. Civil War professional non-Indian hide hunters killed the buffalo to near extinction, at the pace they were going Indian hide-hunters likely would have done the same. It would simply have taken them longer to do it.

Perdue, Theda; Michael D. Green. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 71). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

These points are not the theme of the book. For the most part, this information is buried. Someone reading this from the standpoint of white guilt would not notice that North American Indians were not peaceful people rolled by the Europeans. They were warlike people who would have gleefully done unto the Europeans what was done to them. The tragedy of North American Indians was that there was a cultural conflict with the Indians being entirely outclassed in technological and social capital. When that kind of conflict develops the weaker will be exterminated or transformed.