Native American History Books Everyone Should Read
In August 3, 1990, President George H.W. Bush made a deliberate declaration. That November would forever be National American Indian Heritage Month. For the 2.9 million Native Americans living in the United States at the time this may have seemed like a small token of appreciation. Especially when the token and the goldmine it came from belonged to you in the first place.
What is a month if your languages have been lost, religion mocked , land stolen, and traditions forgotten. Nearly 500 years later, in 1990 America finally decided its time to add Native American history into our national dialogue.
Yet, with the month in place popular history books still tell us Christopher Columbus discovered America. Stepping onto the fertile soil, planting his flag, and declaring Hispaniola a newfound land for the Spanish royal crown. Many books still trivialize the lives of those people already in America. The white western narrative Columbus narrative remains the dominant narrative. Yes we hear about a few significant figures like Sitting Bull and Sacajawea. But were is the real conversation about the larger indigenous contributions to modern America? Their ancient past, folklore, heroes, and colonial resistance?
If National American Indian Heritage Month did anything it should have opened the door wide for these untold stories.
Sadly, we have been denied a popular understanding of America’s Native Heritage.
We’re in great need of new perspectives and insights. Ones that convey indigenous stories and humanity in exquisite and convincing ways. A true acknowledgment that American history began with indigenous people long before Columbus ever caught wind in his sails.
DECOLONIZING AMERICAN HISTORY
Pre-Columbus America was astonishing. There were flourishing civilizations with astonishing cities. Many of them with the agriculture and infrastructure to support the thousands who lived within them. There were advanced irrigation systems, strong communities, government, and writing. There was astounding art, masterful music, and immersive spiritual traditions.
When Europeans came to America in the 15th century, they became characters in a story which began thousands of years before them. Then the story reached a dark climax. They brought with them disease and the depths of human depravity. Determined to destroy in a monstrous hunger for gold and power. When invaders wreak havoc the history of the people invaded rarely survives in tact.
So now we are left to put together the historical scraps.
New storytellers have taken up the mantle to ensure America’s history does not leave out its true beginning. One that starts with the Native Americans. Their hard work and hope have lead to discovery. Amazing new findings show a vibrant picture of Native American history.
I’ve dug through the shelves to recommend some Native American history books that serve as a good starting point for Native American history. Within them, you will find stories of human advancement, triumph, tragedy, resistance, and courage. Ones encompassing a vast group of interconnected tribes and nations. Which eventually found themselves within a new American nation. Cast as foreigners on their own land.
Their struggle is the American struggle.
Their history is American history.
1. A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES
The first Native American history book I read for the first time several years ago. To this day I’m still shaken by this first hand account of mass genocide.
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a fierce critic of Spanish colonialism in the Americas. As an early traveler who sailed on one of Columbus's voyages, he witnessed Europe’s first encounters with the Native people. He was so horrified by the wholesale massacre that he spent the rest of his life advocating for their protection.
He wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1542, and it’s a terrible catalog of mass genocide, torture, rape and slavery. All fueled by greed, gold, and lust for power.
“What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.”
— BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS
2. 1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS
This is a groundbreaking book. Charles C. Mann uses science, archaeology, and history to challenge our idea of what America was like before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. It was more modern than most of us could imagine.
Indigenous people weren’t sparsely settled in pristine wilderness. They actively molded and influenced the land around them, building cities and infrastructure that rivaled some of the greatest civilizations to that point in history.
“In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or the powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo.”
— CHARLES C. MANN
3. AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
In the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations made up of nearly three million people. They are the descendants of the fifteen million Native people who came before them.
Historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous people. She reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted the expansion of the US empire.
“US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples..... The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebration of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the consciousness of US Americans.”
— ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ
4. BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them defeated.
Dee Brown makes clear that he wrote this book through a Native lens as opposed to a Western viewpoint.
“I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there are no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over that country. I lived like my fathers before me, and, like them, I lived happily.”
— PARA-WA-SAMEN (TEN BEARS)
5. EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON
Similar to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this book is an amazing and vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, considered by many to be the greatest Comanche chief of all.
“The greatest threat of all to their identity, and to the very idea of a nomadic hunter in North America, appeared on the plains in the late 1860s. These were the buffalo men. Between 1868 and 1881 they would kill thirty-one million buffalo, stripping the plains almost entirely of the huge, lumbering creatures and destroying any last small hope that any horse tribe could ever be restored to its traditional life. ”
— S.C GWYNNE
6. TRAIL OF TEARS
One of the many ironies of U.S. government policy toward Natives in the early 19th century is that it removed to the West those who had tried their best to assimilate into European values and way of life.
As Europeans advanced on Cherokee land, many Native leaders responded by educating their children, learning English, and developing plantations. This however, was not enough to be embraced into the new America.
This book documents the forced relocation of Natives from their ancestral homelands to west of the Mississippi river.
“The name Cherokee is likely derived from the Creek word chelokee, which means “people of a different speech.” Also, though many Cherokee people accept the term “Cherokee,” some prefer and use the word “Tsalagi” to refer to themselves and their tribe. ”
— CHARLES RIVER EDITORS
7. AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS
This collection gathers 160 tales and legends from 10 different tribes. What we get is a rich panorama of Native American folklore.
With tales of creation and love. Of heroes and war it’s timeless themes still resonate today and help with a fuller understanding of the Native American experience.
In no way do I think this list is the authority on Native American history books. But, the reality is we need to rethink American history. These books allowed me to see the deep Native American influence on modern American culture. To see their amazing contributions to our shared society.