New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (The American Moment) - Hardcover

Calloway, Professor Colin G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801854482 ISBN 13: 9780801854484

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997

Synopsis

"Calloway employs lucid prose and captivating examples to remind us that neither Indians nor Colonists were a monolithic group... The result is a more nuanced appreciation for the complexity of cultural relationships in Colonial America... He surveys this complex story with imagination and insight and provides an essential starting point for all those interested in the interaction of Europeans and Indians in early American life." -- David R. Shi, Christian Science Monitor

Although many Americans consider the establishment of the colonies as the birth of this country, in fact Early America already existed long before the arrival of the Europeans. From coast to coast, Native Americans had created enduring cultures, and the subsequent European invasion remade much of the existing land and culture. In New Worlds for All, Colin Calloway explores the unique and vibrant new cultures that Indians and Europeans forged together in early America. The journey toward this hybrid society kept Europeans' and Indians' lives tightly entwined: living, working, worshiping, traveling, and trading together--as well as fearing, avoiding, despising, and killing one another. In the West, settlers lived in Indian towns, eating Indian food. In Mohawk Valley, New York, Europeans tattooed their faces; Indians drank tea. And, a unique American identity emerged.

"I cannot think of another work that sets out to accomplish what Colin Calloway has achieved. New Worlds for All stands poised to become the most successful synthesis of North American ethnohistory from contact to the early national period." -- Gregory E. Dowd, University of Notre Dame

"Colin Calloway's grand synthesis of the experience of Indians and other Americans before 1800 is exceptional in its breadth of vision. Taking as his canvas the entire North American continent--examining everything from war and disease to trade and sex, from clothes and houses to foods and cures--he nonetheless never loses sight of the individual, human story, the vivid encounter or striking incident that brings the past to life." -- James H. Merrell, Vassar College

About this title

About the Author

Colin G. Calloway is professor of history and Native American studies at Dartmouth College. His previous books include The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities, nominated for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize; The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People; and Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-1815.

Reviews

A highly readable if not highly original history of the early interaction between Europeans and Native Americans. Recent history generally casts the European conquest of North America as a thoughtless or malicious genocide of the indigenous population. And while this is in some ways correct, the stress on American Indians' victimization at the hands of the invaders results in ignoring the Indians' contribution to the resulting American culture. While Calloway (History and Native American Studies/Dartmouth Coll.; The American Revolution in Indian Country, 1995, not reviewed) acknowledges that the European effect on Indian life was larger, and more devastating, than the other way around, he contends that Indian culture contributed in many significant ways to what would eventually become a distinctly American way of life. The author supports his thesis with many oft-cited facts about early colonial times. Few readers will be surprised when Calloway reports that Europeans settled in deserted Indian towns, looked to Indians to show them how to cultivate indigenous crops, or that not just corn and tobacco but also potatoes and tomatoes were discovered in the New World and introduced to Europeans as exports from the colonies. Not as well known is the respect many Europeans felt for Indian medicine, or that so-called ``Indian-style'' warfare--guerrilla tactics that the colonists were said to have adopted in their successful fight against the British army during the American Revolution--was in fact only invented by Indians a hundred years before to counter the unfamiliar tactics of European interlopers. Although much of the information here is well known, this is a fine primer on the cross-cultural influence of the Europeans and Indians in early American life. (21 illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801854482
• ISBN 13: 9780801854484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256