In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians

This is a very nicely written comrehensive history of Native Americans that is not as biased as many histories tend to be. It is not an apologist work, nor is it demeaning to America's indigenous peoples. It appears to be a fair account, and is good for an introduction to Native American history.

After spending time in New Mexico over the summer I realized that I didn't know anything about American Indians. I've seen as many cowboy movies as anyone else born in the 1950s, but I didn't know the difference between a Cherokee and an Apache. I was looking for a book that would give me a good overview and reasonable understanding of that difference. This book did that and more. Jake Page (thankfully) doesn't worry about being politically correct, but offers a readable, seemingly balanced point of view, punctuated by a dry sense of humor. I was disappointed by the illustrations, which are over-pixilated and without relation to the text. One reviewer notes that it plods a little, but look at the subtitle! 20,000 years is a long time to cover without an occasional lull! In the end, it was just what I was looking for, and enjoyable enough for me to want to check out Mr. Page's fiction.

Here's a few of the big-picture historical items and individual tribe tidbits you'll find here: Page 111-19, Anasazi cannibalism - has been confirmed by presence of human myoglobin in coprolite. 183, Indian tribal names - Comanche from the Ute "komantica," or enemy (Comanche is itself a Uto-Shoshonean language); Sioux is from the Algonquian word "naodouessioux," also enemy. 204 - The Cheyennes were the first Indians to leave the upper Mississippi woods for the Great Plains, before the Sioux, starting about 1680. They were at the Missouri in central North Dakota circa 1740 About 1780, after Chippewa attacks, they moved west onto the plains 224-25, British and deliberate germ warfare - Sir Jeffrey Amherst., in 1763 in the midst of the so-called Pontiac's War, suggested "inoculating" Indians with smallpox-infested blankets. Not done here, but at Fort Pitt in 1763, two Delawares were given blankets and a handkerchief out of a smallpox hospital ward, and an outbreak did soon start. 232, Myth of Iroquois confederation being a forefather to the Constitution - Ben Franklin, in the 1750s, in urging colonial union, cited the confederation of the Six Nations to shame colonials into doing at least as much. There is no influence link. 266, Hopi intratribal murders at Awatovi - About 1700, one group of Hopis (re)converted to Christianity at Awatovi. Soon the village leader thought that meant they had become witches and called on other Hopis to kill them, which they did. 325, origins of Ghost Dance - started by Paiute named Wodziwob in 1860s, promising world without whites, etc, but then his teaching faded. Paiute Wovoka had vision Jan. 1, 1889 during solar eclipse, starts new Ghost Dance, which urges working with whites, promises rewards in next life. Visiting Sioux take dance home, give "bullet shirt" and other anti-white adaptations. 359 Indians in BIA get first "affirmative action" in 1930s. Legality of affirmative action in BIA confirmed in 1970s, page 391. 384 - Ira Hayes was one of the six Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima. 366 - Hopi also served, as well as Navajo, as WWII Code Talkers. In fact, on a smaller scale, Comanches did the same in WWI. 405 - Fake Indian jewelry has become a big problem. In fact, one town in the Philippines renamed itself "Zuni" to try to skirt the law. 407 - Dream catchers are not a traditional Plains (or other) Indian artifact, but were created by them to, basically, cash in on New Age beliefs. 412 ff - Indian tribal casino revenues are estimated at $10 billion in the year 2000. Average annual payment to a casino-owning tribal member is about $3,000. Pequots and Mohegans in Connecticut account for about $2 mil of that $10 mil. I could see rating this book at a 4.5, but it does try too much to be all things to all people, and so a nice solid 4 is a good rating.

...Americans love the big picture, the bird's-eye view, the world under one roof. In fact, the pressures to condense and combine as such are as fierce in the book trade today as they are in the one-stop supermarket. Sometimes this leads, between the covers of a single volume, to a thin gruel of pallid generalization. On other, more rare occasions, it yields the virtues of good synthetic writing: broad-ranging, discerning, lucid, judicious. "In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of American Indians" by Jake Page happily does the latter. The book's hefty subtitle may give pause to general readers not prepared for extended time travel in Indian country. But the journey, all 400-odd pages of it, is well worth the trouble. Mr. Page, a Southwest-based scholar and novelist who has written widely on Indian history, is well suited for the project. He brings with his lively prose a propensity for good judgment, a virtue in a field often marred by ax-grinders, whether they be the politically prehistoric or the politically correct variety. The premise of "Great Spirit" won't surprise insiders ? that the people we have come to know as "American Indians" are an amazingly diverse and complex group of nations and tribes. In Mr. Page's hands, Indians are neither primitives nor victims nor New Age sages, but people who have struggled to maintain cultures and families in the face of disease, war, misguided federal policy, and, yes, even disputes with tribal neighbors and personal shortcomings. Be it the traditional or multicultural kind, Mr. Page likes to subvert the received wisdom. Most native people in North America in 1492 were small farmers, not nomads. No, the political philosophy of the Iroquois Confederation didn't significantly influence the framers of the Constitution. Yes, there may have been mortal pathogens in the New World before Columbus (tuberculosis and syphilis), and imperial wars for hegemony weren't simply a European invention. Mr. Page has plenty of critical ground to cover. The California Gold Rush, the Dawes Allotment Act, the Termination movement of the 1950s, all come under his lash for their catastrophic consequences, whether directed by Washington or fueled by large-scale demographics. Thankfully, he censures without resorting to the kind of shrill invective that often dominates discussions of Indian policy. Nor is the author content with easy targets. He examines controversial claims that the ancient Anasazi practiced cannibalism. He considers charges that native peoples sometimes make bad conservationists, from "Pleistocene overkill" to the historic exploitation of deer in the Virginia tidewater. He reflects on the promise and the failures of the modern gambling industry. His judgment deftly avoids a doctrinaire stamp. A huge (but unappreciated) difficulty for a writer who does a historical overview is the question of what to leave out. Major trends, from migration to settlement to allotme