Washington Monthly - September/October 2023 - 120

Since the 1970s, a generation of historians
has pushed for the study of " forgotten "
Americans. Blackhawk goes beyond
a call for inclusion, arguing instead
for a whole new paradigm, an " alternate
American story that is not trapped in
the framework of European discovery
and European 'greatness.' " Like The New
York Times Magazine's controversial " 1619
Project, " which places African American
slavery at the epicenter of the American
story, Blackhawk prods readers to rethink
our collective historical narrative,
identity politics. Blackhawk fills in this
familiar framework with lesser-known
histories. The result is a new chronology
along with a new geographic focus,
which shifts attention away from the urban
East Coast to the nation's interior.
While The Rediscovery of America's
exhaustive narrative covers
the
full
span of history, Blackhawk's thesis-
that " American Indians were central
to every century of U.S. historical
developments " -is most persuasive in
his retelling of the American origin story.
Appropriately, the auSince
the 1970s, a generation
of historians has pushed for the
study of " forgotten " Americans.
Blackhawk goes beyond a call
for inclusion, arguing instead
for a whole new paradigm, an
" alternate American story that is
not trapped in the framework
of European discovery and
European 'greatness.' "
but with Native Americans at the hub.
This is not just a question of focus, but
also one of empowerment, elevating the
continent's Indigenous people from passive
victims to actors in a centuries-long
struggle over land and sovereignty.
For the armchair historian, the book
offers an exciting, even disorienting
narrative. The experience is similar to
viewing a world map drawn from the socalled
Peters projection, which reduces
the distortions at the equator and poles
to reflect countries' true sizes; the essential
facts are the same, but the overall effect
is disarmingly different.
T
he raw, violent outlines of Native
American history are generally well
known: the brutal warfare of the colonial
era,
then the settler colonialism
during the nineteenth century, followed
by forced assimilation, and culminating
in the resurgence of cultural pride and
120 September/October 2023
thor devotes the first half
of the book to the colonial
era, when daily encounters
between Indigenous
people and the colonists
were commonplace, and
the dominance of the European
empires was not
preordained. It's a complex
story that expands
well beyond simplistic
descriptions of Spanish
missionaries, French trappers,
and British settlers.
Instead, Blackhawk portrays
a web of interdependence,
with Native people
and Europeans deeply entangled
with one another through trade
and commerce, military encounters, diplomacy,
and social affairs.
These relationships
defy
simple
descriptions-at times, they were amicable
and mutually beneficial, at others,
antagonistic. Perhaps the most apt description
would be opportunistic-both
Native tribes and Europeans benefited
from trade and the exchange of knowledge.
Tribes and colonists forged diplomatic
and military alliances in protection
of shared interests, and against
common foes. Such relationships were
fluid, and at times deeply personal-
rape and kidnapping occurred along
the same continuum as conversion and
intermarriage.
Connections between Europeans and
Native people shaped daily life, patterns
of settlement, and economic development
in America, with global consequences.
The Spanish, for example,
built
their American empire around
silver mining enabled through Indigenous
labor, an enterprise so successful
that it transformed European economies
by providing a universal currency,
facilitating the mercantile and commercial
revolutions.
Blackhawk depicts Indian nations during
the colonial period as strategic, at
times pitting colonial powers against
one another. Other groups, like the Iroquois,
successfully brokered a balance of
power among the European empires in
North America that lasted 50 years.
Blackhawk's portrayal of the Seven
Years' War (1756-1763), a global event
he boldly labels " the principal conflict in
American history, " offers an interesting
case study for how a Native American
reframing can alter our understanding
of the past. Most historians emphasize
the importance of the Seven Years' War
as a prelude to independence, pointing
to Britain's burdensome war debt, which
prompted the taxation of its colonies, a
key factor in sparking the Revolutionary
War.
Blackhawk focuses instead on a second
major outcome of the war: France's
cession to Britain of its expansive but
sparsely settled lands east of the Mississippi
River. The addition of this massive,
arable territory was a boom for homesteaders
ranging from small farmers to
plantation owners like George Washington,
who were eager to expand and diversify
their holdings. More than 100,000
settlers flooded the Ohio River Valley between
1770 and 1790, raiding Indian villages
and squatting on Native lands.
The author argues that decades of instability
in this frontier territory became
a flashpoint for " an elemental
struggle " between Native Americans
and white settlers. Blackhawk concludes,
" This interior world ... would determine
much of the history of the new Republic.
From Indian resistance to the enforcement
of new national laws and policies,
struggles over interior lands shaped the
contours and eventual structures of the
new American government. "
Managing chaos on the frontier
proved an ongoing headache first for the
British Crown, then for the nascent U.S.
Washington Monthly - September/October 2023

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