Customer Reviews

Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is by no means the first, nor the most comprehensive analysis of early American history with a Native American perspective. The writing style is straightforward and matter-of-fact and not as dramatic or emotional as the tale as told in BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE. Nevertheless this book is evocative of Dee Brown's book largely because of the same emphasis on Native Americans. Also because it too uses Native American history and traditions as the framework in which to look at North America, from discovery through to the 17th century.

One of the things that happens when FACING EAST FROM INDIAN COUNTRY is that you get a different picture of time and events. Traditionally the story of early America is a westward moving one, and one which quickly becomes a story about Europeans and an emerging people called American's.

One of the most profound impressions this book will leave with you is a view of the East Coast of North America as dominantly Indian country for more than a hundred years after initial settlement. Even more startling is Richter's well reasoned argument that Eastern North America only ceased to be Indian country when following 1776, the now fully emergent American's "denied the continent's first peoples a place in the nation they were creating."

Most historians have sufficient presence of mind to clear from their brains the Panglossian cant which insists we live in the best of all possible worlds. The best histories, of which Daniel K. Richter's Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America is most certainly one, are able to envision a historical narrative where paths not taken would lead to a counterfactual narrative to our own.

To this end, Richter musters the sources traditional to any historian--varied secondary sources, the journals of participants of historical interactions between Natives and Europeans, literary sources by Natives and sundry oral sources likely to be their own. Utilizing a vast knowledge of the period between the first arrival of Europeans in the Americas through the period of "Jacksonian Democracy," Richter paints a lucid picture of European interaction with the tribes of North America, and how it altered the behavior of all parties involved. This narrative is neither a record of triumphant civilization moving west, nor is it an account of genocide moving ferociously from East--though Richter makes clear both of these fit, respectively, into American myth and American realty--he is much more concerned with how the cultures interacted with each other in creating the circumstances that Natives lived under and how they viewed their changing world.

Richter's approach to understanding how the world did and would appear to Natives is grounded in the understanding that commerce, politics, environment, and ideologies will be discernibly altered by any new presence. Just as North America became a new market for European goods, so Europe allowed for the prospering of some tribes through a need for raw materials such as leather and beaver pelts. The same interaction could, and did, sometimes, lead to intertribal and international conflict (as well as a combination of both at once) or to the unforeseen environmental degradations associated with depopulating a large area of beavers. Richter's understanding of history acknowledges the law of unforeseen consequences--a law that is in fact central to his explanation of how so many Native communities were wiped out, radically altered, even created by European diseases--and how a good deal of the history between Europeans and Natives was the result reciprocal relations and not conflict, to say nothing of an irreconcilable conflict.

Perhaps the most interesting area Richter explores is in the realm of culture. The importation of European goods, African slaves, and Christianity led to profound changes in the ways that many natives lived. The foreseeable creations of Moravian, Catholic, or Anglican communities of Natives; changes in work wrought by iron made tools and warfare through the importation of muskets; expansion of world views due to contact with truly foreign cultures: all of these were the logical consequences of European arrival in North America. These facts were do as much to reciprocity and basic cultural interchanges as they are to the unequal relations that materialized between the two cultures as time passed. Richter is keen to point out that none of this was solely the result of the conqueror and subject role which so Natives were forced to accept.

Richter does not shy away from showing the disgraceful, murderous, and ultimately tragic side Euro-American and Native American relations. Throughout the whole of the book, Richter carefully records the injustices, massacres, broken promises and treaties, as well as the demagoguery that insured Natives even less than second class status. Richter quite convincingly argues that it is the proliferation of all of these factors which led to the creation of an ideology of irreconcilable conflict between Natives and Europeans--later Americans. By implication, Richter shows that this myth required those who believed it to repudiate, if not altogether forget, much past history.

To steal a phrase from Professor Ronald Takaki, Richter is able to look at history through a different mirror. Through his creative reading of the history of Native contact with their own New World, Richter does much illuminate what was one of the most central tragedies of American history.

There are far too few books like this, that dare to make the imaginative leap to express the point of view of another culture. Mr. Richter's achievement is to give us a way to stand in the "shoes" of those who greeted us when we arrived on these shores, tried to understand us and live with us, and ultimately were decimated by the policies that we, as immigrant peoples, put in place. I would highly recommend that readers pair this with Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf nor Dog, another work that takes us deep inside the hearts and minds of those who inhabited this land before us. We need more books like these. They show that it is not impossible to enter into the self consciousness and self understanding of people who see the American experience through very different eyes.

Behind the documents and the interpretations of Native American history, the Native voice yearns to be heard. It is unfortunate that no body of literature will be able to provide the "true" voice of how Natives actually reacted to the so-called "invasion" or "conquest" of North America by Europeans during the early part of the 16th century. However, Daniel Richter's FACING EAST FROM INDIAN COUNTRY: A NATIVE HISTORY OF EARLY AMERICA attempts to switch the lens from a European perspective to a Native American one.

The book's cover shows an amazing picture of the American landscape that is all too familiar to historians and literati with its depiction of the romanticized Indian. Here we have a glorious painting that does not truly depict the world in which the Indians lived. Yes, it is a big wide world that has not yet been tainted by colonists, settlers, and traders. However, it was their world, which was later coined as the New World.

Richter does a good job at introducing his argument that Natives are at the foreground of American history. That is, if one looked East along the Eastern seaboard. This account adds a dimension to the "master narrative," which now includes Native inhabitants, but with their voices heard behind European accounts.

FACING EAST FROM INDIAN COUNTRY may be a good starting point for those who would like to understand American history and its intricacies that involves Native Americans. This may not be the quintessential narrative, but it is one that is not difficult to understand nor is it complex. It is a visual perspective that may lead to complex inquiry as an after thought because the book ends where the story of Native Americans further continues where one drastic event will occur after another.

I was very excited to read Facing East From Indian Country, having read literally dozens of history titles on the conquest of the New World from the European perspective for school and work. However, I was slightly disappointed with Mr. Richter's writing style, and felt that as an author he did not "digest" his great thesis quite enough. There were too many times that I found myself really trying hard to "get into" particular chapters, and I thought that I was really working too hard to get through this title.

That is not to say that this book is poor by any means. It is a far more academic title than I expected. For help with research it is excellent and offers up a great variety of very rare Native American source documents. But for simple reading pleasure it is a bit too scholarly.

The reader's enjoyment of Facing East From Indian Country will depend on whether the customer is purchasing this book for academic work/research or just for casual reading. For the student/historian, it is a fresh take on the history of North America. For the history buff, it is probably a bit too complex. I am both a history buff and a professional historian, and couldn't help be a bit disappointed, especially after looking forward to reading Mr. Richter's book for some time.
Hopefully he will publish more work in the future with the same type of freshness and perspective, and make it more digestable.

This book focuses on the Native American perspective of European colonization from early 14th century to the 19th century.

It is detailed, well organized, the information is very thorough and completely cited. Casual readers will find the analysis fascinating and provocative. History students will find valuble insight and information related to the early Native American history. This book is extremely well written and the history is very well analyzed. The new perspective it provides gives the reader a much different view of the early developments of America. Excellent analysis.

Mr. Richter does a fine job of deftly parsing small bits of information to imagine the Indian American's point of view. I was rather expecting an I-hate-America diatribe, but that's not at all what this is. It DOES show that between the clash of cultures in North America, the natives were much more adept to adapting (because they had no choice) than were the Europeans. And adapt they did, somewhat successfully until the war of Independence was fought between the US and Britian. After that, well, there were so many indefensible acts by the new US that it came down to "civilize-or-die" to the natives. Even those that did civilize were not safe, being punished by vigilantes for 'outrages' by other Indians - not even of the same linguistic group.
Those few who understood the complicated culture of the natives were by and large ignored, while small bands of cunning Indians would sell land that wasn't even theirs.
Sometimes it is said that there's enough blame to go around; if by that it's meant that because all Natives were not "Good Injuns" we should exterminate those who refuse to be deported, well okay.
Some say slavery was the darkest blot on our history, I believe it was the lies, broken treaties, forced removals, genocide and outright stealing of land that is that darkest chapter.
Read also Eve Ball's "indeh", and Britton Davis' "The Truth About Geronimo."

Traditional histories of Native Americans have focused on the point of view, or history, of European Americans. But in 2001, historian Daniel Ricther breaks this trend in his novel work - Facing East From Indian Country. The "eastward" approach incorporates the interpretations, or stories, of early Native Americans who observed the movements of Europeans from eastern America. His research is by no means exhaustive, but advances a fresh perspective of the scant pre-existing primary sources on early Native Americans. His sophisticated synthesis and analysis of the aforementioned sources, coupled with his incisive imagination shed light on a virtually untold Native American history.

Richter chronologically organizes his work and concentrates heavily on early colonial times in his opening chapters, which appear to be his area of expertise. His passages of primary sources are often lengthy and precariously worded, but his strong narrative and eloquent articulation of Indian culture supersede these minor distractions.

Revisiting the oft told stories of Pocahontas and Metacon, Ricther articulately portrays these individuals as being champions of peaceful co-existence, and cooperation, in the New World. In addition to the previously noted amenable traits, Native Americans also possessed sound diplomatic skills. For instance, Richter provides considerable detail about the sophisticated "treaty protocol" that early Americans utilized. Noting that this process "ideally consisted of nine stages," ( 135) Ricther explicitly detailed the expectations of Iroquois during these meetings in the mid-eighteenth century and illuminated the European's poor cultural understanding of these protocols. These examples, and others, highlighted the European's ignorance of Indian culture.

The latter chapters chronicle the Indians transgression from peaceful co-existence with the Europeans in the eighteenth century to all out war with them in the early nineteenth century. In the mid-eighteenth century, for instance, Ricther convincingly argues that "diversity wrought an increasingly pervasive view that Indians and Whites were utterly different, and utterly incompatible." (180) These views became more solidified in the nineteenth century. And Indians gradually surrendered more rights, and property, in the New World.

In the epilogue, which was more suited for the introduction or opening chapters, Ricther outlines the writings of Native American writer William Apess who sought to promote an eastward narrative of Indian history in the early eighteenth century. According to Richter, his work was silenced by European histories.

This work, in closing, creates new opportunities for scholars to re-interpret Native American history. This paradigm shift will likely lead to more sophisticated studies of early Indian culture in the New World, and ultimately add to our rather meager understanding of Indian history. A must read for Native American scholars and graduate and undergraduate history students who wish to broaden their understanding of early American history.

Facing East From Indian Country is a scholarly survey of American Indian history up to the early 19th century and will appeal to college-level students of Native American history and culture. The tone of this history differs from most in keeping Native experience and perspectives in the forefront of the story: the result is a better understanding of Native perceptions and events in early America.

The author does an excellent job tracking down the limited available sources that shed light on the earliest Native American perspectives of Colonial history in a way that never come out in our traditional histories. This is a very readable book that is superior to "Mayflower" in providing a detailed analysis for the Indian view of that history. Facing East doesn't stop with the Pilgrims, but explores its theme through numerous early interactions between Native and European peoples.