Asking “Where does the story of America start, and who constitutes its central cast?” (21), Ned Blackhawk, the author of this major new work of synthesis, answers: Indian Country and Indians. The Rediscovery of America is about Native people in and in relation with the United States. Blackhawk’s deliberate decision to begin none of his twelve chapters “in a time before encounter” emphasizes, he says, the “interrelatedness of Native–newcomer relations” that produced new political orders (21). “Shape” and “shaping” are key words for Blackhawk. He writes, “Native peoples simultaneously determined colonial economies, settlements, and politics, and were shaped by them” (20). By “reconciling” (19) this “dialectic of Indian–newcomer relations” (21) he is “building an alternate American story that is not trapped in the framework of European discovery and European ‘greatness’” (21). He thus undertakes a reading of the major developments in the political history of the United States by reference...

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