Pekka Hämäläinen (1) (1967–)

Indigenous Continent is a fascinating and important nonfiction book about the Indigenous nations that live(d) in North America and their fight to keep their land and way of life. I learned so much from this 600 page book and was engaged the entire time.

This book has a huge scope, covering the 16th through 20th century in detail. The author does a fantastic job of keeping the focus on the Indigenous nations rather than telling the story through the lens of European/U.S. history. I was very show more impressed by this.

I learned so much and this book truly shifted my perspective in some key ways. There's no way to write it all in a review, but here are a couple of highlights.

I was particularly struck by how much longer the Indigenous nations were truly in the fight for keeping their land and cultural priorities. And also by just how many dozens of different nations there were. I tend to think of the Europeans showing up, the Indigenous communities all dying from diseases brought here, the end. But there are HUNDREDS of more years to this story, and this book lays it all out.

I had underestimated the way that these nations played Britain, France, and to a lesser degree Spain and the Netherlands, off of each other to maintain control. I also underestimated how clashes between Indigeneous nations played a role in their ultimate downfall.

I didn't realize the different strategies that nations used, depending on their size, location, and interactions with the Europeans. Some fought, some focused on trade and mutual beneficial relations, some used assimilation (at least in terms of claiming land in a way Europeans would recognize) to keep their land.

This is an important and eye-opening book that I highly recommend. show less

This is very much one of those "wake up and smell the coffee" sort of books which makes you wonder what else you've misunderstood about the course of history. Be that as it may, this is the story of how a not especially notable tribe of hunter-gathers totally committed to the equestrian way of life and created, if not a formal empire, a hegemony in the southern plains of North America that aborted the dreams of power of many other peoples; particularly the Spanish and their Mexican show more successors. How did the Comanche do this? It was not just a question of being great horse warriors, it was a question of making themselves indispensable so that all trade in the greater region essentially had to flow through them, having the population mass to back up their pretensions to predominance, and having the adaptability to seek new opportunities when faced with a challenge. Being as ruthless as any other empire based on the horse didn't hurt either.

In the end though the equestrian-nomad way of life did become a dead end for the Comanche. Their massive population of horses competed for the same habitat as the buffalo, so that when a major drought hit in the mid-18th century, at a time when Comanche economic machine had to run "all out," the results were catastrophic. By the time a respite came in the 1860s, the American government was in a position to put an end to this nuisance once and for all.

That's the thing, while Hamalainen goes to some lengths not to romanticize the Comanche, such as devoting a chapter to demonstrating just how hard the practice of empire was even on the rank-and-file of the Comanche Nation, not just their victims, that does bring up my main issue with this work; how Hamalainen could have played up how parasitic their way of life was. The reality is that the Comanche system worked best when they had other major powers to play off against each other to gain weapons and backing, or other, more settled societies to loot for food and captives. After considering the course of Comanche empire, and keeping in mind the downright genocidal end game of the American war on the First Nations, I at least have to think goodbye to bad rubbish. show less

This is a well researched, scholarly analysis of Comanches in history, their rise and fall as an “empire.” It’s a weighty book and not a page turner, but it does exactly what sets out to do - recovers the full humanity and agency and power of the Comanche people. This is not a book of absolutes or sweeping generalizations, but of full humanization. No one comes out of the book with clean hands - as a culture, the Comanches are seen as having many strengths - adaptability to new ways show more and technology, the ability to assimilate persons into their ways regardless of where they came from, the ability to read and understand and influence European and later American powers. They are also portrayed as violent, often misogynist, slave holders, thieves, etc. In short, they are seen to be full peers of European and American powers, neither ignorant children / savages nor superiors. And so I’d call this an excellent book that fully deserves a place in your studies of North American history. Four stars. show less

The Truth Told Slant

In Indigenous Continent, Pekka Hämäläinen gives a thorough presentation of the facts about the interactions between Native Americans and European colonists in "North America" (by which he seems to mean just that portion of the landmass to the north of present-day Mexico). He then interprets those facts in support of his declared thesis that indigenous peoples dominated this region until the late 1800s. He seems to also be interested in defending an unstated thesis that show more the natives were the good guys and the whites were the bad guys.

Hämäläinen does a stellar job presenting the facts and defending his official thesis, but I found his allocation of blame and credit to be unconvincing. Some details:

1) Hämäläinen leaves little room for the idea that Indians didn't believe in the possession of land. "The swampy protrusion [that would become Jamestown] had no settlements, but it belonged to the Powhatan Empire". (p. 59) "The Mohawks . . . set out to . . . monopolize the beaver-hunting grounds around the [St. Lawrence Valley]". (p. 91) "For their part, the formidable Six Nations claimed the Ohio Country by the right of conquest". (p. 266) "Benjamin Franklin wrote, 'I know of nothing so liable to bring on a serious quarrel with the Indians, as invasion of their property.'" (p. 292)

2) After presenting material that shines a negative light on Native Americans, Hämäläinen is typically eager to jump in and defend them. The brutal fate awaiting war captives who were unfortunate enough to become "ritual adoptees" of the Iroquois is described, but Hämäläinen reassures us that "the Iroquois conducted these ceremonies not because they clamored for war but because they wanted peace." (p. 105) Immediately after telling us that "The Five Nations . . . embraced subjugated enemies . . . as 'women'", he says that it's okay because the "seemingly insulting gendered metaphors tied nations together as allies." (p. 120). "In 1822, at Prairie du Chien, a newly established borough council passed a law against White people 'skulking or sneaking about after 10 oclock at night'", but although the "new law had a clear racial element, . . . it was designed to preserve a pluralistic world." (p. 386)

3) For all the evil inflicted by each side upon the other, Hämäläinen almost exclusively reserves words like "genocidal" for that perpetrated by whites. Governor-General Jeffery Amherst's proposal to give smallpox infected blankets to the Indians is "biological warfare", but when the Ojibwes hack 15 British soldiers to death with hatchets, they are merely "[issuing] a warning with violence". (p. 291) "During the period between the incidents at Mankato and Sand Creek, the United States had become a genocidal regime", but when the Lakotas warned that they would "destroy all the whites in the country", that's not called a genocidal declaration. (p. 439)

4) Hämäläinen says: "The apocalyptic Wounded Knee Massacre was a sign of American weakness and fear." (p. 459) This is not the only place where he attributes to "weakness" a show of force by the whites, but I can't recall him putting a similar gloss on indigenous actions. show less