The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Native peoples are central to understanding the evolution of modern America, and Native sovereignty must be treated as a defining thread in U.S. political life. Ned Blackhawk synthesizes five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, reframing major U.S. “flashpoints” as outcomes shaped by Indigenous agency rather than as stories driven primarily by Europeans and their descendants. The book argues that European colonization was not a predetermined success, that Native nations influenced England’s imperial crisis, and that early American Revolutionary events were prompted by Indigenous affairs. The narrative also traces how federally funded militias in California caused early Civil War casualties for Indigenous communities, how Union victory recalibrated Native societies across the West, and how twentieth-century reservation activists reshaped U.S. law and policy. Overall, the work calls for a more accurate U.S. history structured by encounter rather than discovery.