Book
Surviving genocide : native nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas
Publication Information
New Haven : Yale University Press, [2019]
Physical Description
ix, 533 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Summary
In the first part of this sweeping two-volume history, Jeffrey Ostler investigates how American democracy relied on Indian dispossession and the federally sanctioned use of force to remove or slaughter Indians in the way of U.S. expansion. He charts the losses that Indians suffered from relentless violence and upheaval and the attendant effects of disease, deprivation, and exposure. This volume centers on the eastern United States from the 1750s to the start of the Civil War. An authoritative contribution to the history of the United States' violent path toward building a continental empire, this ambitious and well-researched book deepens our understanding of the seizure of indigenous lands, including the use of treaties to create the appearance of Native consent to dispossession. Ostler also carefully documents the resilience of Native people, showing how they survived genocide by creating alliances, defending their towns, and rebuilding their communities.
Contents
- Introduction: An Icy River and a Raging Sea
- Part One: DISEASE, WAR, AND DISPOSSESSION. 1 Trajectories, 1500s-1763 ; 2 Wars of Revolution and Independence, 1763-1783 ; 3 Just and Lawful Wars, 1783-1795 ; 4 Survival and New Threats, 1795-1810 ; 5 Wars of 1812
- Part Two: PREPARING FOR REMOVAL. 6 Nonvanishing Indians on the Eve of Removal, 1815-1830 ; 7 West of the Mississippi, 1803-1835
- Part Three: REMOVAL. 8 Removal and the Southern Indian Nations, 1830-1840s ; 9 Removal and the Northern Indian Nations, 1830-1850s ; 10 Destruction and Survival in the Zone of Removal, 1840s-1860 ; 11 The Name of Removal
- Conclusion: Historians and Prophets
- Appendix 1. The Question of Genocide in U.S. History
- Appendix 2. Population Estimates by Nation.