Customer Reviews

Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I found this to be one of the most informative books I've ever read, and I've read most of the classics.
When you read this book you must understand that the old adage that history is written by the conquerors is very true as is painfully illustrated in this book.
I'm of mixed Caucasion and American Indian descent. Many of the questions that I've wondered about my whole life were answered in this book. Where did all of the Inca gold go to? Why isn't Spain a major world power? Why does it seem as though most foods are native to the Americas? These are questions that are "skirted" in popular history books, giving all of the stability of modern life to the credit of "civilized" Europeans. As for the quesiton of democracy, the United States is in no sense the same type of democracy as ancient Greece (which was really a republic). If you're open minded an logical this book will blow your mind.

"Indian Givers" presents information and ideas that are too often overlooked in our day-to-day thinking about what we have, and where those things came from. Weaterford does a grand job of introducing a wide variety of topics that the Indians of the Americas have developed or contributed to the modern world. As a reader you should we forewarned, however, that Weatherford has a tendency to occasionally push a discussion to the point of being overly biased.

Weatherford raises issues such as American Indians' contributions to the geopolitical influence of American silver and gold on the rest of the world...toward the end of that discussion it appears that the thread of connection between Indians' contributions and eventual impact of gold and silver is thin at best.

There are extremely valuable discussions about the diversity and impact of food, medicinal, and other plants. Those probably had a much larger impact on the rest of the world than did any of their other contributions. Consider the impact of potatoes, corn, many species of beans, peanuts, and long-fiber cotton on the rest of the world. I'm not sure that I agree with Weatherford on this...but he goes as far as to suggest that the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century was driven by the importation of long-fiber cotton from the Americas to Europe.

Weatherford also discusses the contributions of Indians of the Americas to political philosophy, including the framing of the Constitution of the United States. I believe there is some significance to that, but perhaps not as much as Weatherford suggests.

Regardless of those kinds of potential academic disagreements and the periodic forays into speculation by the author, "Indian Givers" remains a book well worth reading.

This would be a great book for anyone interested in the culture and history of the Indians of the Americas, or for those with interest in ethnobotany, the imact of the Indians of the Americas on the rest of the world, or the impact of the rest of the world on the Indians of the Americas (disease, conquests, etc. -- sad business, that!)

A good book, but a litte to speculative in some parts for me to award it 5 stars...definitely a strong 4 stars though.

I'm grateful for all the benefits I enjoy that came from the Indians of the Americas.

Alan Holyoak, Director of Environmental Studies, Manchester College, IN

I found this book in the bookstore at Mesa Verde National Monument, which is a terrific site near Cortez, Colorado. I can add very little to the other reviews I have seen except to say that this well-written, fascinating, easy-to-read & highly entertaining book will fill in so many of the missing pieces in everyone's history education, and that it is a superb thinking tool. It will help to cleanse your mind of all those silly, cherished, romantic notions and myths that most of us were spoon fed in public school or in the movie theatres. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in how profoundly the Indians of the New World influenced our world, and in a saner educational system, this little book would be required reading for all students. Every chapter would make an excellent educational film of its own.

Weatherford brilliantly examines the collision of 2 very different cultures-Indian and European. This book is about what European civilization has gained from the Indians, but most importantly it also is about what we all have irrevocably lost by assuming that the European model was superior. Every American should read this book because it clearly shows why we are at this point in our history. The Indians lost their culture, becoming lost souls on the reservation. In many important ways, white Americans also lost their culture and also are lost souls. This book doesn't show how white, black and Indian Americans can somehow join together as true Americans in a true American culture, but it does show how we all happened to arrive at the place we are now

Anthropologist Jack Weatherford traces an informative and entertaining case for his main thesis - that the contributions of the Native American population to the Old World have not been truly or fully appreciated more than 500 years after Columbus landed.

Written in a highly readable style, he describes how the New World revolutionized the Old World while the latter gobbled up the former. It is a fascinating story -- rich veins of gold and silver create a monetary economy that resulted in the rise of Europe's middle and merchant classes, the companies that formed to mine and provide miners and new settlers with goods and services lead to corporate power, and a rich variety of foods the natives raised in the Americas were shipped around the globe by those corporations and adopted into national diets so thoroughly that we now think of zucchini, tomatoes, and green beans as Italian food instead of imports.

Weatherford also weaves in explanations of how mineral riches in the Americas ended mining on Africa's Gold Coast and indirectly led to slavery, how the Iroquois Confederacy contributed to the federal government system the United States adopted, and how science could have benefited sooner and faster by paying more attention to native medical practices.

There are a few places where Weatherford probably pushes the idea a bit too far; but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Indian Givers" and would suggest reading it with "1491," an equally intriguing look at how old, wise, and diverse the New World was before the Old World arrived to plunder.

The points made in this book are not new. You can find the same ideas expressed in other history books about the impact of "discovering" the new world on the old world. Mr. Weatherford just does it in an anecdotal style with emphasis on contributions made by the indigenous american people. What's interesting to me is some of the reviews. Whenever someone writes a book discussing the ingenuity of indian or other "colored" people reviews pop up discrediting the book off-hand saying it's politically correct propaganda. I suspect these reviews are made by white males who cling to the idea the white man is superior and non-white people should be subservient. For them any discussion of non-white people having better ideas is anathema. Some people have stated that this book is inaccurate but they don't offer credible counter arguments. Instead they nitpick about dates and other details.

Jack Weatherford's book "Indian Givers" is a medium-sized (272 pages) book that attempts to share what Native Americans in North and South America have contributed to our modern world. With a combination of stories and historical discussion, Weatherford's prose makes this book easy reading. Among other things, he points out the contributions made in the areas of money capitalism (with so much of the world's silver coming from South America, especially Bolivia), many types of foods (including various species of potato, cassava, chocolate, corn syrup, etc.), medicinal contributions such as quinine treatment for malaria, architectural styles, or urban planning, among other things.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from some serious shortcomings. In attempting to make up for the lack of credit historically witheld from Native Americans, Weatherford does more than just correct this deficiency: he goes too far. He makes claims that go well beyond what the historical record can substantiate. In contrast to what history shows, he claims, for example, that the Industrial Revolution started in America(!), and that "without American precious metals and methods of processing, the industrial revolution would never have spread to Europe." (!!!!) He furthermore implies that Indians "gave" democracy to the fledgling U.S. ("Washington, D.C., has never recognized the role of the Indians in the writing of the United States Constitution") and promoted peaceful civil disobedience that inspired the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and even claims that liberation movements in Africa and Asia(!?) owed something to American Indians, since "the repeated failures of the Indian movements during the nineteenth century prepared the way for the successes of other peoples in the twentieth century."

It is a shame that Weatherford's book is so dreadfully misleading and unbalanced, for it also legitimately points out many of the things for which American Indians do indeed deserve credit. It points a spotlight on the many interesting contributions that the various peoples in America have made to our societies over the years and, as previously mentioned, it is easy to read.

In short, it is worth reading, but needs to be scrutinized with caution as it frequently overstates the case for "how the Indians of the Americas transformed the world." For a far more balanced presentation, I recommend Thomas Sowell's book "Conquests and Cultures".

My favorite part is the calories-invested vs. calories-returned analysis of different crops. Northern European societies struggled along for centuries trying to emulate the Romans' wheat-based economy. Wheat has a very poor calories-invested-vs.-returned profile in Northern locales, so Mediterranean climates enjoyed an advantage. Potatos have a much different profile, which favors the cooler environments of Northern Europe. When explorers brought potatos back from the New World, it introduced a shift in the Continental balance of caloric abundance. Of course this alone does not explain the course of European history. Still, it is intriguing to wonder what role North American foods may have played. Cultural, military, and technological achievements represent human activity, so are fueled by food calories. It is not clear how much credit Native Americans deserve for the caloric profile of the potato; surely "Mother Nature" deserves some credit. In that sense, the book may be somewhat misnamed, however other areas of the book hit on more direct contributions of Native Americans to the world as we now know it. Overall, this is a very interesting read.

"Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, but America has yet to be discovered." Jack Weatherford's provocative book INDIAN GIVERS: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World seeks to change that. He makes the reader aware that the average American today knows more about ancient Egypt "than we know about the pyramid builders of the Mississippi." It comes as a bit of a surprise to realize the truth of his statement, but even in Lake County, CA where the Pomo have lived for 10,000 years; most folks probably could tell you more about the pyramids of ancient Egypt than they could tell you about the Pomo people. Granted the Pomo did not build pyramids, but they did build a society that thrived for thousands of years - here in the same place we are living today - not thousands of miles away. As a young nation, not even 400 years old, we have much to learn from our elders.
Indian Givers explores what modern society has learned from the native peoples throughout the Americas, even if we have not given them full (or any) credit for the original knowledge. Some of this will not come as any surprise to the reader - particularly in the area of agriculture. It is well known that many new foods were introduced to the earliest European settlers by the natives, corn and potatoes perhaps being the most well known. The immense diversity of foods may come as a shock, however, as well as their impact, not just on the pilgrims, but around the globe.
In recent years there has been a resurgence of using herbal remedies but the surgical skills of the Aztecs far surpassed simply knowing which bark made good aspirin or could be used to prevent malaria. Weatherford claims that the Aztecs' obsidian knives would equal the surgical steel of today and is only bettered by the precision of lasers. The Aztecs knew how to perform a variety of surgeries, from the mundane to brain surgery, although Weatherford acknowledges they most likely had such advanced knowledge because they practiced human sacrifice.
Perhaps the most surprising knowledge Weatherford maintains we gained from the native peoples is in the arena of politics. He argues that the fledgling American government bore more resemblance to the League of the Iroquois than the Greek Senate or English House of Lords and that the Founding Fathers learned the practical potential of liberty from a variety of tribal communities. Going a step further Weatherford proposes that the first person to suggest that the colonies form a united body of some sort was the Iroquois chief Canassatego in July of 1744, thirty-two years before the Declaration of Independence.
The scholarship in Indian Givers is well documented but not ponderous as to detract form the story telling style of Weatherford. Overall an excellent read, and in a week when we are celebrating Thanksgiving, it may just inspire you to give thanks for the wealth of knowledge we have gained from the Aztecs, Iroquois and countless other tribal communities whose histories and knowledge ought be remembered.

Thank you so much for selling me this book. The delivery was quick and great quality. The book is in excellent conditions. I was actually worried that I would not get the book on time for my Native American history class, but it came just on time. The price was very reasonable. I have no complaints to make to you. I would recommend any body to buy the items you are selling. Thank you very much for everything!