One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark / Edition 1

by Colin G. Calloway

Overview

This magnificent, sweeping account traces the histories of the Native peoples of the American West from their arrival thousands of years ago to the early years of the nineteenth century. Colin G. Calloway depicts Indian country west of the Appalachians to the Pacific, with emphasis on conflict and change.

With broad and incisive strokes Calloway's narrative includes: the first inhabitants and their early pursuit of big-game animals; the diffusion of corn and how it transformed American Indian life; the Spanish invasion and Indian resistance to Spanish colonialism; French-Indian relations in the heart of the continent; the diffusion of horses and horse culture; the collision of rival European empires and the experiences of Indian peoples whose homelands became imperial borderlands; and the dramatic events between the American Revolution and the arrival of Lewis and Clark. The account ends as a new American nation emerged independent of the British Empire, took over the trans-Mississippi West, and began to expand its own empire based on the concept of liberty and the acquisition of Indian land.

One Vast Winter Count offers a new look at the early history of the region-a blending of ethnohistory, colonial history, and frontier history. It features Native voices and perspectives; a masterful, fluid integration of a wide range of oral and archival sources from across the West; a dynamic reconstruction of cultural histories; and balanced consideration of controversial subjects and issues. Calloway offers an unparalleled glimpse at the lives of generations of Native peoples in a western land soon to be overrun.

Colin G. Calloway is a professor of history, Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies, and chair of the Native American Studies program at Dartmouth College. He is the coeditor of Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Projections, Encounters (Nebraska 2002) and the author of many publications including New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803215306
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	10/01/2003
Series:	History of the American West
Pages:	652
Sales rank:	454,358
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.13(d)

About the Author

Colin G. Calloway is the Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies, professor of history, and chair of the Native American studies program at Dartmouth College. He is the coeditor of Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Projections, Encounters (Nebraska 2002) and the author of many works, including New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America.

What People are Saying About This

New York Review of Books - Larry McMurtry

"A splendid overview of the Native American West to the end of the eighteenth century."—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books

Editorial Reviews

"A splendid overview of the Native American West to the end of the eighteenth century."—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books

New York Review of Books - Larry McMurtry

"A splendid overview of the Native American West to the end of the eighteenth century."—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books

— Larry McMurtry

New York Review of Books

Author of First Peoples and a distinguished Dartmouth historian, Calloway concentrates on the Indian experience from the Appalachians to the Pacific, in a time frame from prehistory to the 18th century. The scope is staggering, but Calloway masters it, demonstrating a remarkable command of a broad spectrum of historical, ethnographic and archeological sources including printed material and oral traditions. Conventional American history moves from east to west. Calloway's narrative tends instead to follow a south-north pattern, with cultural innovations like corn and horses diffusing from Mesoamerica along the river-centered trade routes. Conventional histories of Indian-European relations place them at the center of the Native American experience in what became the United States. Calloway demonstrates that until the mid-18th century, the European impact was secondary and indirect on most of the cultures involved. Conventional myths assert the relative peacefulness of Native American interaction. Calloway shows that conflict was also a norm. Conventional wisdom presents Indian cultures as static, living in a timeless harmony with their environment. Calloway establishes that they were in fact constantly changing, adapting to climatic changes, animal migrations, ecological and technological innovations and, not least, the movements, peaceful and hostile, of other cultures. Indian response to European penetration was correspondingly flexible, ranging from partial accommodation to resistance, then rebellion, as European governments sought to move from asserting influence to exercising control. And Native Americans sustained that agency until the "Killing Years," the period from 1770 to the century's turn, when the impact of the American Revolution extended from the Appalachian Mountains to the Pacific Coast, and a smallpox pandemic unpredictably turned the Native American West into a graveyard. It was that last episode, mocking theories of historical determinism, that set the stage for the Lewis and Clark expedition to encounter shocked survivors and suddenly empty lands that seemed to invite European occupation. One Vast Winter Count is both a major work in its own right and a magnificent first volume in Nebraska's new History of the American West series. History Book Club, Military Book Club and Reader's Subscription Book Club selections. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Calloway (history, Dartmouth) draws on tribal histories, anthropology, and archaeology, as well as traditional historical sources, to present this useful and insightful overview of vibrant nations actively charting their futures in the time of great change and tremendous challenge before Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery set forth in 1803. In addition to corn agriculture and its impact upon prehistoric populations, the author discusses the later historic shift from bow and arrow to firearms, the incorporation of horses into Plains Indian life, and the increased acquisition of European trade goods and culture. Colonial European powers and their interaction with Native populations, including the Spanish colonies in the Pueblos and California and the French and British rivalry, are explored in depth, though throughout the Native nations remain the primary focus. Calloway's balanced treatment of a topic so easily given to polemics is welcome indeed. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-Nathan E. Bender, Buffalo Bill Historical Ctr., Cody, WY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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