Surviving genocide Native nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas

American Indian nations and communities tenaciously resisted implacable American determination to destroy them and take their lands. Ostler offers ample evidence of a pattern of determined extirpation of any Native nations that opposed American absorption. Genocide was American policy. Indian survival tactics were tenacious, varied, and evolving. Ostler's scholarship sweeps across Indian country east of the Mississippi and into the "zone of removal." Quotations from Native and American sources drive home evidence of genocide. Detailed, often tribe by tribe, summaries explain how perfidious Americans met Native responses. The narrative includes estimates of Native losses both direct and indirect, of the inter- and intra-tribal conflicts engendered by American expansion, and of the brutality of American force. Valuable information about tribal responses to the new order enhance Ostler's scholarship. He echoes most scholars with exposure of the hypocrisy of American justifications for the determined, consistent assaults on American Indian nations. This is an exceptional synthesis of current research presented convincingly. It is a major contribution to Native American and United States studies. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Gregory Omer Gagnon, emeritus, Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law

This first book in a planned two-volume set examines how the policies of the federal government, violently enforced by its military, dispossessed American Indian nations of their homelands and caused population decline. Ostler (history, Univ. of Oregon; The Lakotas and the Black Hills) explores the interactions of specific American Indian nations with the U.S. government, showing that each relationship was unique. The common thread was that the government's endgame for all was the same. Throughout, the author tracks demographic data for individual nations, allowing readers to weigh the impact of specific policies or treaties. For example, the horrific impact of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 is apparent through the decline in the Cherokee population between 1832 and 1839; an era that saw their forced migration westward on the Trail of Tears. Ostler uses Bleeding Kansas on the eve of the Civil War as his stopping point. This is done to point out that while national attention was drawn to sporadic violence among whites in Kansas, far more Kanza people were suffering in the same region, but their plight was ignored. -VERDICT A groundbreaking tour de force that will appeal to anyone interested in American history or Native American studies.-John R. Burch, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.