Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen

Abstract

In this sweeping synthesis, Hämäläinen tells a continental story, one that centers the enduring presence and power of America’s Indigenous peoples across centuries. Pushing back against narratives of declension and erasure, Hämäläinen reminds readers that North America “remained overwhelmingly Indigenous well into the nineteenth century.” Instead of focusing on “colonial America,” he writes “we should speak of an Indigenous America that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial” (ix).The central argument of the book will not surprise readers who are familiar with recent early American historiography. Many scholars have demonstrated that North America remained “Native Ground” for much longer than historians once acknowledged, and many U.S. history textbooks now routinely center Indigenous people in the history of what Wulf dubbed “vast Early America.” Perhaps in the pursuit of reaching a non-scholarly audience, Hämäläinen unfortunately does not directly acknowledge this literature, despite largely relying on some of it for his evidence and argument. He instead casts his argument against the myth that white European colonists rapidly dominated the New World after their arrival.The book struggles to escape the contradiction between its title and subtitle. For as much as the rhetoric of the volume emphasizes the enduring “Indigenous Continent,” the book focuses on the diplomatic events and military battles that ultimately tilted the balance of power in this “epic contest for North America.” The story of resistance and dispossession unfolds without equal attention to who was resisting or what was being dispossessed. As the volume proceeds, its geographic scope shrinks, the contest becomes increasingly defined by the dominance of the United States, and the “Indigenous Continent” becomes less continental.Hämäläinen resolves this contradiction in a way that pushes back on one of the major trends of recent Indigenous history. Whereas a generation of scholars has detailed how North America remained Indigenous space long after the nineteenth century, Hämäläinen describes a world where Native Americans gradually lost their power in a westward fashion. The volume even ends roughly when the census revealed to Frederick Jackson Turner that the frontier had closed. Exceptions like the discussion of the Pueblo Revolt disrupt the Turnerian feel, and Hämäläinen describes prolonged and successful Indigenous resistance as he carries the narrative west (183–186). These discussions, though, ultimately leave no space to explore the enduring power or presence of Indigenous people. The Eastern Woodlands, for instance, appear near the start of the volume but the Powhatans and various Algonquian speakers receive little attention after the eighteenth century. Indian Removal cuts the story of the southeast off in the 1830s, with the Cherokees and other Native Southerners hardly appearing at all afterward. The story on the Plains similarly comes to an all-too-familiar end. In essence, the Indigenous continent gets buried at Wounded Knee.At times, the epic scale and limited source base leads Hämäläinen to write a narrative that is 3000-miles wide and an inch deep, with curious observations littering often dazzling prose. Some conclusions, for example, flatten the Indigenous context. For example, readers learn that “in North America [prior to European contact], leaders were not autocrats commanding and coercing subjects. They were instead arbitrators and facilitators striving for consensus” (23). Similar intellectual oddities and omissions exist elsewhere. Scholars of the Native South, for example, will note the absence of Ethridge and the work on the shatter zone or the classic works of Hudson on Soto and the entradas.1 As a result, the book describes the region’s depopulation as occurring much faster and more completely than recent scholars have asserted. Similarly, in his chapter on “The Long Removal Era,” the author inexplicably ignores Reed’s pioneering work on the topic, the very work that is echoed in the chapter’s title.2 The omission of Reed’s work results in a narrative of forced removal that is startling abrupt; Hämäläinen starts the discussion too late and does not mention life in Indian Territory or in the east after removal.Despite these shortcomings, Hämäläinen provides a well-needed term that describes the enduring presence and power of Indigenous peoples across the continent. Although the idea is hardly new, scholars and others will likely borrow this useful term and refer to the “Indigenous Continent” for years to come. As a result, it will be widely read, likely assigned, and most likely cited as emblematic of a literature that it does not quite reflect.