Book Review: “Indigenous Continent” by Pekka Hämäläinen

Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen

In earlier work, Hämäläinen has written about the nomad empires of North America, Comanches and Lakotas.  His new book covers the entire post contact era, “The Epic Contest for North America”.

The overall story is, basically, the story of European settlement and the American empire.  But Hämäläinen’s take on the familiar cowboy and Indian tales is slightly different.  He rejects the assumption that the replacement of Native Americans was inevitable,;fated by disease, technology, and sheer numbers.  From his perspective, there was nothing inevitable.

For that matter, he notes, the Native Americans haven’t really been replaced.  They are still here, and possibly stronger than any time in centuries.

But the main point is that this has been a 500 year fight, and it’s been an even contest most of that time.  The native peoples successfully repelled, contained, cooperated, and accommodate the invading empires for decades and centuries.  And, of course, are still resisting and accommodating to this day.

It’s a complex story.  Pre-Colombian North America was inhabited by an array of people with many different social organizations and survival strategies.  When challenged by European arrivals, the peoples reacted in a variety of ways, from friendly collaboration to lethal hostility.  This variety of peoples, cultures, and politics surely baffled those Europeans who sought to understand their neighbors (not that many even tried).

Diversity and decentralization was both a strength and a weakness for the defenders. 

In Hämäläinen’s view, Central and South America fell to European conquest so quickly because they were centralized empires.  The Spanish were able to shatter and then replace the ruling Aztecs and Incas, and quickly take control. To “replace” the Aztec or Inca empire required little more than replacing the ruling class.

By contrast, North America was highly decentralized.  For the most part, there was no ruling heads to chop off and replace.  This is why it took centuries and millions of settlers to conquer North America, instead of a few years and mere handfuls of soldiers in the south.

The long conquest was brutal.  But it was also complicated.

Multiple European powers competed for influence and wealth.  The natives learned to deal with each invading power on its own terms, and also sought to play off the competing empires.  And, far from the inevitable destiny imagined by White America, these efforts met with considerable success. 

Spanish incursions from the south were stopped cold, and the never thrived on the borderlands.  The Dutch Empire was essentially thrown out of New Amsterdam.  The Russians were thrown out of California. French Canada never thrived and was eventually thrown out.

After two centuries of fierce struggles, only the English and their American successors survived.

But, as we know now, that was enough.

Hämäläinen is, of course, a great admirer of the Comanche and the Lakota empires.  As he points out, in the mid to late nineteenth century, these two independent empires of horse people controlled territory from Canada deep into Mexico, and blocked, repelled, and baffled the oncoming technological superpower that was the US.  Their effective resistance bought many decades of safety and freedom for themselves and many smaller groups behind their shield.

But the nineteenth century could not be denied forever, and by that point there was no where to retreat in order to continue the fight.  Wounded Knee was the last stand for military resistance.

This book is a long, brutal, stomach turning history.  It is filled with many familiar struggles, and many that are less familiar to many.  I didn’t know much about the Southwestern resistance, nor much about the long history of the Iroquois empire, nor the complicated relationship between slavery and Native tribes.

Like any war story, it is tragic for the horrible waste and losses of all sides.

But this is not a tragedy of an inevitable lost cause. At many points things could have gone different ways.  And, in any case, the “contest” isn’t over, though, mercifully, violence is much less intense these days.

Get this book.  Read this book.  This should be on your bookshelf beside 1619, How to Hide and Empire, and the array of histories of the “removals”. 

This book will not be popular with the anti-1619 crowd , because Hämäläinen’s take on US history  is less than worshipful. 

In his version, the American revolution coincided with a simultaneous Native revolution, bidding for an independent Native nation.  The Native effort fell short, but not by far.  US history would have been a heck of a lot different if the Northwest Territory had been a sovereign Indian polity!

And, of course, a lot of American history is a tale of savagery, led by white racist violence and perfidy.  One chapter refers to the “Long Removal Era”—America’s great ethnic cleansing campaign.  The true history of America is ugly, violent, immoral, and, yes, racist.

Destiny or not, Manifest or not, there is little to admire about the long American pogrom.  Slogans about human rights and the rule of law ring very hollow in the history of the US government Indian policies.

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1. Pekka Hämäläinen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, New York, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022.

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