Source:DuVal, Kathleen. Native Ground

Summary

Reviews

"Kathleen DuVal presents an excellent and exciting new thesis to the historiography of Native Americans in her book The Native Ground. While many argue that the Indians were simply rolled over by European powers or quickly crushed and assimilated by the US Army DuVal shows that the Indians retained quite a bit of sovereignty in parts of the country. Her study focuses on the Arkansas valley which goes through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi. She shows how the Osages, Chickasawas and Quapaws worked with Europeans and eachother to establish the rules of contact that would govern this region from the1500s to the 1830's. It was not until after the war of 1812 that a sizable presence of non-Indians was present in the valley which meant that up until that point the Indians made the rules. Rules of trade, peace and war were governed by Indian customs and not European ones. The traditional roles of balancing were not as necessary here given the Indians ability to be necessary for European control of the region by the end of the imperial era. It was a place where Europe was never able to dominate in the way it did other parts of the world creating a very unique case study. This is really cutting edge scholarship on native Americans and if you are looking for a book to show a different take on European/native relations than this is the one for you. Very well done, easy to read and thoroughly researched." --Lehigh History Student

"This heavily researched piece of non-fiction illuminates the intense geo-political issues in the Arkansas Valley between the native peoples of the region and the French, Spanish, English and, finally, the Americans. Although many of the sources are from the records of the occupying countries, the author does a masterful job of maintaining a balanced view, even a more native-centric point of view than the subject has suffered from in earlier history books. For the reader seeking to learn more about the interactions and relationships among the native peoples of the region and their relationships to outside invaders and occupiers, this is the book." --Jeanne F. Taylor

"The best history yet of the Arkansas River valley and its peoples." —Journal of American History

"Learned, engaging, and often provocative. . . . Informed by the most current work on Native American history, DuVal's work joins the best of it as a piece of prose, as an informative new history, as an excursion into historical method, and as an example of a historian's commitment to recover 'the Native Ground.'" —William and Mary Quarterly

"Whether scholars are interested in the Arkansas Valley or not, all specialists in early American and Native American history should read this book because of what it has to say about the 'Native Ground' in general." —American Historical Review

"Groundbreaking. . . . A work of immense significance." —Journal of the Early Republic

"Kathleen DuVal's The Native Ground shows how powerfully a change in perspective can alter our perception of history. Her focus on the shifting human relationships in the Arkansas River Valley will require readers to shift their geographic outlook from European outposts on North America's coasts to 'the heart of the continent.'" —Common-Place

"Moving beyond an 'Indians and Europeans' story, Kathleen DuVal looks instead at competing and overlapping stories involving multiple Native groups (Quapaws, Osages, and eventually Cherokees) who operate from different positions with different strategies and experiences, and incorporate an array of outsiders (Spanish, French, British, and eventually Americans). This is the kind of study we need more of." —Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College

"With keen insight and broad vision, Kathleen DuVal has produced an ambitious study of a neglected region in early American history, but the significance of her analysis transcends the Arkansas Valley and will influence scholars working in other areas of American Indian and colonial American history. She traces all of the connections with other regions and draws comparisons where appropriate, from the Northeast to Mexico, and makes Indian-to-Indian relations central to the story." —Daniel Usner, Vanderbilt University

User Details

Contents

1. A bordered land
2. Hosting strangers
3. Negotiators of a new land
4. An empire in the West
5. New alliances
6. Better at making peace than war
7. A new order
8. The end of the native ground?

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press; illustrated edition edition (June 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812219392
• ISBN-13: 978-0812219395

Availability

Available for purchase at Amazon.com.

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