Talking to the Ground

Talking to the Ground: One Family's Journey on Horseback Across the Sacred Land of the Navajo
© 1995 Douglas Preston
284 pages

"How does the trail look?" Christine asked.
"Ask me at the bottom,"  I said, feeling a certain queasiness in my stomach. There was no turning back; we had to get to the water, and the water was down there, at the base of Hoskinninni Mesa. There was a short silence.
"You want to rest longer?" Frank asked.
Christine jerked her lead rope knot-free and pulled her horse around.
"Hell no," she said, "Let's get this over with."
I thought, I'm marrying a woman who has far more courage than I do.

p. 75

Last year I read Douglas Preston's excellent Cities of Gold, his re-tracing the steps of Spanish explorers of North America, complete with horses and occasional disasters. While staying in Flagstaff in April this year, I discovered a sequel to that work, Talking to the Ground. Here, Preston, his fiance, and his soon-to-be- stepdaughter travel across Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico as they follow a journey from Navajo legend, riding in the shadow of four sacred mountains.  If Cities of Gold mixed  horse travel and history, Talking to the Ground does the same for travel and mythology. All of the locales Preston and his family ride to are introduced in the creation myth of the Navajo, in which a being called Monster Slayer had to rid the world of horrific monsters born of a prolonged war between the sexes; the  geologic formations are considered the remains of the monsters, and of the monster slayer and his sibling.

Although Preston, his wife, and their daughter Selene do not encounter nearly as much peril and problems as Preston did on his previous trip,  this is no easy lope. As before, Preston and his fellow riders carry everything necessary with them, and plan their trip  with a strict eye as to where they can find water.   There were no telephones,  no ranger stations, no safety net:  if horses fell attempting to navigate down a hillside, or the family was caught by surprise by hail or dust storms,  they were on their own.  Perhaps because Preston still carried his experience from the previous trip, the family encounters few troubles beyond days in which water is far too scarce for their and their horses's liking; they often journey in rain, but  not a horse escapes (a constant problem in Cities of Gold) or is injured.     The meat of this book is less travel misadventures than Preston's retelling of stories from Navajo mythology and history, offered both as what he knows, and as he receives it while visiting with people -- Navajo families and individuals eking out a living for themselves  still -- along the way. Everyone is surprised to encounter this family traveling along  horseback, as most tourists arrive by car and roar off as quickly as they arrive.

A common theme of the conversations is how strongly the Navajo feel themselves connected to their land -- sustained by it, not just from the food it produces with their care but by its very existence. They explain its importance to Preston as like the Bible or the Constitution: the land is the bedrock of te Navajo experience. Without it, they have no life, no identity. The horrifying misery of the Long Walk is recounted here, an episode of early foreign policy blundering as the American government decided to solve the problem of New Mexican-Navajo inter-raiding by clearing out the Navajo and forcing them to march across the land and make a new life for themselves in a barren place with only marginal supplies, creating an effective concentration camp in the wilderness  with conditions so gruesome that the government did the unthinkable and admitted the mistake. Over and over again the Navajo muse that the mysterious collapse of another people -- the Anasazi -- may about to repeat itself as heedless development and consumption play havoc with natural cycles and hasten collapse.

While this  horse journey across the Southwest didn't have nearly the same appeal for me as Cities of Gold, it was nontheless enjoyable, and complements House of Rain, another tour in pursuit of the Anasazi, very well.

Encompassing Flagstaff: Ruins of the Ancients

If I regretted one aspect of my visit to New Mexico back in 2016, it was forgetting or not having time to visit the remains of any native American dwellings. I made visiting a few sites a priority this time,  visiting both Wupatki National Monument and Walnut Canyon.   The two sites are very different despite being only an hour or so apart from one another;  the first offers seemingly boundless vistas, a lava field, and the broken remains of a dormant volcano which destroyed the communities around it. The other is a confined site site in rocky, wooded canyons descending to a now-vanished creek.    Despite their differences, the two sites are linked, as local authorities believe the survivors of the volcanic eruption around the Wupatki area too refuge in Walnut Canyon.

Visiting Wupatki involves a northern drive from the city, then a long and winding path back to the highway  through first barren plains, then the hillier volcanic region. It took several hours to drive the course and explore the various sites. According to signs, these sites were abandoned by 1200, and the area which the park covers encompasses three distinct cultures.  The environment is thought to have changed since abandonment, stripped in part by over-grazing. It is suspected these cultures lived by hunting local creatures (something kin to antelope) and farming small plots near "earth cracks". The area is fascinating, geologically:  one area is known to emit streams of warm air from a hole in the ground from time to time, a highly localized thermal vent.

Looking into the little canyon that people traveled through

Hiking to the top of the "Citadel", overlooking a natural-formed pit.

Sunset Crater, the remnants of the volcano that erupted. Until the sixties this was a popular hiking destination, with certificates awarded to those who reached the top.  Hikers wore deep ruts in the volcanic soil, however, and to stop its further destruction all hiking was barred. 

Inside the lava fields. 

Inside the fields, looking back at Sunset Crater. Only one slope has regained any vegetation.

I visited Walnut Canyon later in the week, and it was easily the greatest surprise of the trip.I had no idea what to expect, and when I spotted the canyon from the visitor's center I gasped in awe.

Look dead center, and you should see a partially-bricked up ledge.

According to the signage, a community took refuge in naturally-formed limestone shelves, bricking them up to create rooms, and eking a living from the stream below and the woods above them.  The park offers a mile-long path down into the canyon, winding around an "island" densely packed with shelters before climbing back up.  It's a nice walk in 50 MPH wind, to say the least. The park is eight miles from the city proper, but still contained within its limits. Although this site was depopulated by 1300, the descendants of those who lived here occasionally make ritual visits.

Rooms which were broken into by looters in the 19th century

Notice the smoke vent above the door

The "island" that the hike takes visitors around. 

There are some remains near the Grand Canyon, as well, I visited these early Thursday morning, after watching the sun rise over the Canyon.


More to come: Flagstaff proper, various geological curiosities, and...THE GRAND CANYON.

Everyday Life of the North American Indians

Everyday Life of the North American Indian
© 1979 Jon White
256 pages

Everyday Life of the North American Indian is a dated but informative survey of the customs and lifestyles of native peoples across the continent. Most of the content is organized in chapters like "Warrior" and "Artist", which include areas of life connected to warmaking or artistanship; for instance, the chapter on Shamans encompasses religion, spirituality, and mythology in addition to its particular interest on the role of shamans or similar figures. Because the varied peoples of an entire content are being considered, each hailing from radically different landscapes, each has to be addressed in the most general of terms, and the people of Mexico are largely ignored except as they influence various tribes living throughout the southeast and southwest. Although agriculture was practiced in some regions, hunting and foraging remained crucial -- and because local stocks of game could be exhausted, many population employed a strategy of tethered mobility, moving from place to place within a certain region. Religion's core was nature (gods of sun and corn, that sort of thing), not a philosophy of life, and roles for men and women had both fixed and fluid elements: men did the hunting and women did most of the work around the settlement, but both were artisans and both were particiopants in their political systems. As in other pre-industrial societies, children were introduced to their responsibilities fairly early, helping gather resources as tots, watching their younger siblings, and assuming the full mantle of adulthood by their teen years. The kind of massed warfare popular to depict in Hollywood movies was an anomaly: while native peoples were not pacific, they preferred quick raids to settle scores, at least until their societies were disrupted by guns and horses. However, some populations like the Iroquois, were notoriously severe in war: one of the reasons they joined together in a confederacy was to stem their neighborly bloodletting.

Although this is very general, and hasn't aged well in parts, the damage is mostly contained by language. As far as I know, the theory that native Americans first arrived in the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge is still the mainstay, though now it's suggested and understood that the 'bridge' was a more substantial landmass that people lived on, not merely transited through. Some of the author's generalizations were reaching a bit, like suggesting that natives didn't like to disrupt the land too much: I take it the Moundville culture is an exception, since building enormous soil pyramids from Mobile to Illinois would definitely count as disruptive. The author doesn't promote any view of native peoples as gentle nature-loving hippies wearing eagle feathers, though. They are in their own turns aggressive and clement, and those who lived closed to the bone were judicious about their use of resources, while those who lived in abundance were more profligate. Charles C. Mann's more current research into native America demonstrated ably that some native societies altered the landscape to a wide degree.

All things considered, though, Everyday Life of the North American Indian is helpful. It's replete with photographs, to boot.

Moundville

I have finally broken ground on this year's study series with Everyday Life of North American Indians (© 1979), but before I start posting reviews and such I'd like to share some photos from a day trip I took with some friends three years ago. Our destination was Moundville, Alabama, site of the Moundville Archaelogical Park.

The park is the site of an ancient and abandoned city associated with the Mississippian culture. Several sites like these exist in the eastern United States: the largest place is Cahokia, in western Illinois (very near St. Louis, Missouri).  I've heard of another mound near Mobile, but it is not accessible by road. "Moundville" was abandoned prior to the arrival of Europeans, much like the city-sites of the Anasazi.  At its height, it may have had a thousand people. As with the Anasazi, it is believed that the inhabitants of this place merged or became the tribes which later lived in the region -- in this case, tribes like the Chickasaw.   The park now contains 21 mounds, but early reports refer to 30.

After entering the park at the visitor's center in the left background of this photo, visitors will see them a wide field  dotted with grassy mounds, with a circular road connecting them. This photo is taken atop the largest mound, considered to be the chief's by virtue of its size.

There are about 77 steps -- I've never counted myself, but before I took this shot back in May 2015, a young boy and his father were descending, and the boy counted nosily. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt!

At the far end of the circle is an air-conditioned museum, which houses artifacts and the expected information about the park, and the possibly political or religious uses of the mounds. 

One of the exhibits.

Behind the museum are a few smaller mounds, plus ponds formed from the depressions left from excavating the dirt to build the original mounds.

Another area of the park houses three artificial huts built in the style of residences, and each contain half-melted plastic figures which once resembled humans doing the sort of things one expects museum exhibits to do -- burying people, marrying, that sort of thing.  In their melted state they're rather gruesome.  Enjoy another shot of the placid fields instead!

The Black Warrior River, which the city overlooked and which was its lifeblood, I'm sure. As I stood here I could almost imagine seeing hostile war-boats rounding the curve of the river.  Unlike the Alabama river, the Black Warrior River remains navigable to heavy industrial and commercial traffic. (The Alabama river is so constricted by dams and such that it's mostly used for pleasure craft and fishing these days.) 

Moundville is intriguing for its mysteries: why did people build it, remain a few hundred years, and then melt away into the forest? Cahokia had a similar fate.  There are just so many stories which have played out across familiar landscapes that have escaped the record completely. All we can do is stare, wonder, and probe the ground for answers.

Announcing: Peoples of the Americas

In the past few years I've explored the Middle East and Asia; for 2018, I am moving closer to home with "Peoples of the Americas".  With it, I hope to remedy my ignorance of the United States' southern neighbors (save Mexico and Cuba), as well as learn about a few native  American tribes who are a blank to me...the Chinook being one example.

The plan: open the year by visiting a few  Amerindian tribes in North America, move into a treatment of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, and then follow up with histories of various nations in the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America. If time permits, we may even visit that most exotic of American nations, Canada.

Although this, along with the Classics Club, will be my focus this year,  I'm just going to fool around in January and ease into the new year with light reading in the form of Star Trek, books on cities, that kind of thing.

Cities of Gold

Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado
© 1992 Douglas Preston (Walter Nelson, Photographs)
480 pages

Sometimes, history has got to be pursued from the back of a horse.  Douglas Preston wasn't sure what took him to New Mexico -- he had a nice life in Manhattan before he abruptly decided to move to Santa Fe, to see the adobes washed in red sunlight --  but it took him further still, to the border of Arizona and Mexico.  There, along with a friend and a hired horse wrangler, he purposed to re-create the journey of Francisco  Vázquez de Coronado, the first Spainard to explore the Southwest.   They would discover the Four Corners as the Spanish did, on horseback -- carrying their own supplies,  following the water. Their mission -- to search what it might have been like to enter into these enormous spaces for the first time, and travel through them to the seven cities of Cibola.  Preston and company were warned against the pursuit; there was a very real chance such a journey would kill them. The desert is kind to no one, and Preston proposed to navigate through sheer wilderness, during the summer, amid a drought.  But fate is kind to fools, drunks, and Americans, and Preston's royal-flush team prospered through their wits, the kindness of strangers, and a mix of luck and grit.   The product is for me the best piece of travel writing I've yet read.

Along for the ride with Preston were a cantankerous neighbor of his, Walter, and a hired woodcutter who professed to be a horse wrangler.  Eusebius's only virtue for the reader proves to be his comic rage that reveals itself with every mesquite tree, barbed-wire fence, and thrown horse-shoe; the man is as experienced with horses as you or I. (His virtues for the party are practically nil, although his incompetence forced Walter and Doug to become jacks of all trades, which probably saved their lives after the fake-wrangler quit.)  The country they proposed to cross was desperately hostile. The voyage opened in a thick swath of mesquite trees, for instance, which turned a proposed one-day journey into four days of hacking, cussing, and chasing horses.   They crossed mountains so far off  the beaten track that the closest thing to a path was a cut made by the riders of the Pony Express.  Their journey takes them through the detritus of ruined civilizations and communities, the residents and their hopes long-dead -- both mysterious Anasazi remains, and the less mysterious array of abandoned silver boomtowns.   They encountered an array of interesting people: rattle-snaker trappers,  ranchers and cowboys, echoes of the dying Old West.  They also spent considerable time visiting with native Americans as they pass through  Zuni and Acoma reservations, learning some of their stories.  While the travelers were sometimes greeted with a shotgun, Doug and Walter certainly didn't look like tourists after the first few hundred miles of hard riding, and after explaining their mission, virtually everyone offered them hospitality with open arms and admiring eyes -- even from old ranchers who lived over a hundred miles from everybody else and did everything around their homesteads themselves.  (The only exception was a man who assured them that nobody named Coronado  came this way because the road hadn't been built until last year, and anyway that would have been trespassing.)

Cities of Gold expertly mixes adventure, history, photographs, and encounters with interesting people. As Doug and Walter pass through the landscape, so we learn the story of Coronado's exploration of the Southwest, and the story of the West in general: the trials of the Hopi, Apache, Zuni, and other people through the last two centuries, the triumphs and tribulations of traders, trappers, and gold-strikers;  the rise and fall of the cowboy. But there's more to the memoir than history, for both the Zuni and the cowboys have something to say about stewardship, of the husbandry of the land. They argue that the land has been much abused by outsiders who came in with great confidence and little knowledge, from the first ranches to the present Forestry Sevice.  Numerous citizens condemn the heavy-handedness of the Forestry Service's no-burn rule: the attempt to keep so much of the country in stasis is smothering it to death. The antelope herds that once flourished by eating young-growth forests, for instance, have dwindled as the old-growth cedars continue to expand, unchecked by fire.  As this journey was taken in 1989, I don't know if matters have improved. (What has not improved is Albuquerque traffic, which these two took horses through!)

While my prolonged fascination with the Southwest greased the skids here,  Cities of Gold  is most impressive.  The entire premise is awe-inspiring: this is a journey of a thousand miles on horseback, through thickets and quicksand, over mountains, across barren stretches of salt lakes and desert, through valleys and up mesas.  The people, as mentioned, are fascinating into themselves, both the living and the dead. I did not recognize the name Coronado before I began reading this book, and I learned enormous amounts about him, the native cultures, and the history of the West in general as I followed Doug and Walter through these magnificent, storied landscapes.

Spain in the Southwest

Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History
© 2013 John Kessell
480

In the early 1500s, the Spanish triumphed over the Aztecs and established a new Spain -- an empire forged out of the new world.  The equatorial tropics were only the beginning for Spain, however, as far above them loomed the entire continent of North America,  full of possibility.   The Spanish were lured north with simple and expressed motives: there was oro in them thar hills.  They were teased with stories of great cities to the north, rivaling even the splendor of now-perished Tenochtitlan. Their explorations would take them as deep into the interior as Kansas, and create a new province for colonial Spain: "New Mexico". The Spanish in the American Southwest is a history of the Spanish empire in the present-day states of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California, one which aims to tell the story of cultures in collision -- or collusion, as the Spanish often relied on alliances with locals, using chronic warfare between populations to make friends.   The province of New Mexico was named such in the hopes that it would prove as abundantly wealthy as Mexico,  but easy loot wasn't to be found. Angry natives were, though, and in abundance -- constantly resisting the dons and once driving them out of the region entirely. Still, the 'new Mexico' would remain a Spanish possession, maintained at great expense for the benefit of seemingly no one but the Church, until Napoleon invaded Spain and provided the opportunity for the New World to declare independence from the old.

As this is billed as a narrative history, what are some of the interesting threads?  Accounts of exploration always have an aura of fascination about them, although the Spanish were more disappointed with the constant lack of golden cities than mesmerized by the landscape.  In this history we see the Spanish grow from explorers to conquerors, and then -- as the generations pass -- men who belong more to New Mexico than they do Spain. They struggle constantly with the neighbors, whose kin they have effectively enslaved and alienated from the local gods -- and later on, the Spanish have to double down on the unproductive province because of other European powers. France is especially aggressive in Louisiana and Texas, and the Anglo-Americans keep eying the west with a certain avaricious glint. The main reason Spain held on to the Southwest prior to strategy becoming a factor, however, was religion, as the religious orders (Jesuits and Franciscans) assured the Crown that they had baptized many souls, people who will be killed by their neighbors should Spain leave.  Speaking of the friars,  don't think of them as gentle souls living lives of poverty and service to their fellow man. The friars in the southwest were potentates, who relied on the forced labor of the locals and who threatened even the Spanish military and civil powers in terms of authority. One early friar -- addled by the desert sun and encouraged by his distance from Italy -- claimed to have the full authority of the Pope in the New World, and another effectively ousted the first governor of New Mexico proper when he (Peralta, the Santa Fe avenue's namesake) challenged the cleric's rule.

More will follow on the Southwest this year, including a travel account based on Coronado's first foray into the region, a history of the region between Mexican independence and the American invasion;  and a modern history of the state of New Mexico itself.

Related:
The Spanish Frontier in North America, David Weber
West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, Claudio Sant. Covers the Russo-Spanish contest in California
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather.

West of the Revolution

West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776
© 2015 Claudio Saunt
288 pages

In 1776, the bid of thirteen colonies for independence wasn't the only interesting goings-on in North America.  From Alaska to Cuba, colonial and native powers were fighting, trading, exploring, and competing with one another. West of the Revolution begins with Russian forays into the Aleutian islands,  moves south to Calofornia, where Spain frantically attempted to create a safeguard after catching wind of the Russians,  and then takes readers across the Rockies and plains until the Mississippi is reached. There, we travel south to Cuba, which was not only a prospering sugar plantation but a potentially powerful trading partner of the Creek people in the Southeast.   Brief and full of interest,  West of the Revolution not only sheds light on what else was happening in 1776, but provides the context for future developments in American history --  the drive towards the Mississippi and the hunger for Florida.  There's also a rare look into Canada, or rather the Hudson Bay area and still later, a region that encompasses both Canadian and American states. A section on the Black Hills, known to Americans as the home of Mt. Rushmore,  makes plain their importance to the Sioux and other tribes: the Hills are an oasis of rain in a relatively dry region, and for generations a source of food and materials in lean periods.   I discovered this book via a podcast (Ben Franklin's World) and can pass on the recommendation,  no less for the information on Russian and Spanish colonization as for the tour of North America, this most diverse and extraordinary continent.

The Spanish Frontier in North America

The Spanish Frontier in North America
© 1992 David J. Weber
602 pages

Although American history books will generally mention the early exploration of North America by figures like de Soto,  little attention on the whole is given to the Spanish colonial enterprise. At its height, Spain's flag flew from the eastern coast of Florida, at St. Augustine, all the way across the continent to Baja California.  That height was reached shortly after the American Revolution, followed by a dramatic decline after the French wars erupted.  While the Southwest still retains its Spanish stamp, in places like the Carolinas or Alabama there's very little left to remember New Spain by.  The Spanish Frontier in North America offers a history of the Spanish colonial enterprise in North America as it waxed and waned with Spain's continental ambitions.

Largely a work of politics, Weber devotes some space toward the end on culture, and especially toward how Spain is remembered in architectural styles like Mission Revival.  At its most basic, it is a sweeping history of Europe's exploration and resettlement of southern North America,  The author contends that understanding American (U.S.) history is impossible without appreciating Spanish America.  It certainly can't be ignored, especially given Spain's role in the war for independence, and The Spanish Frontier opens a new world for me in demonstrating not only the expanse of Spanish exploration, but  the amount of conflict between Spain, France, and Britain which unfolded for centuries before the thirteen English colonies ever entered the international arena.  Also of note, and displayed here, are the European powers'  ever-shifting attitudes towards Native Americans, spanning war and marriage. While all three major powers attempted to cultivate their neighboring tribes as trading partners -- Spain was also very keen on Christianizing the Pueblos, Hopis, etc. This christening wasn't simply a religious introduction, either: the intent was to create Europeans out of the Pueblos, in language, farming, and dress.  Ultimately, even the españoles would adopt their diet and architecture to the new climate as the native incorporated European plants and animals into their culture, creating something closer to a dynamic than a one-way cultural conquest.

I found The Spanish Frontier dense but fascinating. I never knew how far north Spanish explorers trekked, creating posts even in the Carolinas, and that they explored deep into the American interior. I was also unaware of the amount of European warfare on the continent prior to the revolution:  Florida  exchanged hands several times!  Similarly eye-raising was the swiftness of Spain's fall: while it was able to reclaim a lot of lost territory after the Treaty of Paris which ended the American revolution, that brief moment when it stretched from coast to coast was a definite peak: shortly thereafter, Spain fell into succession crises, followed by the French revolution which isolated the colonies from Spain proper. The rising Americans made short work of claiming Florida and pushing across the Mississippi, The author has an odd detachment from European culture, sometimes writing about it as though it were foreign. He informs the readers, for instance, that the Christian rite of initiation is baptism, and that Christians worshiped in places called 'churches'.  Is he writing to Martians?    Weber's work has the heft of a textbook, and is copiously researched:  slightly less than half the text consists of notes.   Though it looks intimidating, it seems very valuable as a colonial reference book.

Our America

Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States
© 2014  Felipe Fernández-Armesto
416 pages

Spain disappears from American history books following the Spanish-American war, in which the tired old empire was given a sound thrashing and retreated from the hemisphere, but Spanish America isn't a thing of the past.  Its heritage is older than English America, not only because the Spanish arrived first but because Spanish colonialism fused itself with the peoples and culture which it found.  Our America is a history of Spanish America, principally Mexico,  delivered from the rare perspective of a Spaniard raised partially in England.  While not nearly as sweeping as Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in the United States,  it offers abounding detail on the Anglo-Spanish struggle for power, first around the Gulf Coast and then later in the southwest as English colonies developed their own identity and ambition.  It is problematic, in that a Spanish Brit spends the book lecturing a American audience on what being 'American' is, but the perspective is unusual and at times refreshing.

Fernández-Armesto examines American history not from the east to the west -- which is how, in fact, the history of the United States as a government unfolded -- but from south to north.  He sees the United States as more colonial than European, and interprets affairs like the Revolution and the Civil War as part of general new-world struggles against colonial power. He sees the South's bid for independence as very kin to Mexico's own battles between centrists and decentralists, for instance . As mentioned, Our America's focus is Mexico and the Southwest, with Cubans and Puerto Ricans receiving scant attention at the very end. Our America is thus more a history of "New Spain" -- a label which, prior to the collapse of the Spanish empire during the Napoleonic wars, encompassed both areas.  If Fernández-Armesto actually hailed from Mexico, this could be called a localist history of the United States, rather like a history of the US delivered from the perspective of the South.  The chief weakness of this book is that the author confuses the United States and 'America' when he argues that the United States began with Spanish America. While the Euro-American experience as a whole began with Spanish exploration, the 'United States' is a government formed by thirteen States along the eastern seaboard of North America, ground never trod by the Spanish.  He also attributes European success in the Americas largely to the 'stranger effect' -- an effect which included hospitality given to visiting strangers, respectful awe of travelers from afar, and  the inclusion of them in native government to swing local battles for power one way or another.  While it's a factor to take into account, he completely writes off the 'guns, germs, and steel' triad in favor of this social element.

As a general history of Latin America, I think Harvest of Empire superior; but the amount of detail given to Spain and England's colonial wrangling, and later the American conquest of the southwest, makes it a book of note. It's certainly gotten my interest in the Spanish colonial period fired up!

Related:
American Colonies, Allen Taylor. Colonial history of Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and even Russian America.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, James Wilson
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, Juan Gonzales

Harvest of Empire

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America
©  2000 Juan Gonzalez
416 pages

Harvest of Empire is a tale of two civilizations, Anglo and Spanish. In general terms, it recounts the history or rather the plight of Latin America, of people and cultures dominated first by European powers, and then by the colonial rebels turned colonial master, the United States.  The author ends by arguing that the United States owes as much its Hispanic tradition as its Anglo, and that it should embrace Hispanic culture  and make amends to foreign policy which has wreaked havoc throughout the eastern hemisphere.  Divided into three parts, Harvest first dwells on the roots of Anglo-American conflict by recounting the age of discovery and rise of American imperialism, moves to the "branches", in which populations disrupted by war and famine (often linked to American foreign policy) migrate to the United States to seek their fortunes, and then ends with a "harvest" that looks towards a stronger role played by Latino culture in the United States.

 Considering that two of the leading recent  Republican candidates for El Presidente were Cruz and Rubio, 'los hermanos cubanos',  there's no denying the book's relevance, despite its sixteen years of age. Even though neither are in the running now,  immigration  -- the causes and consequences of which are explored here -- remains a big-ticket item.  While some of the author's recommendations (that the United Staces embrace its Hispanic heritage and start promoting and protecting Spanish) are likely to fall flat,  at the very least this review of the United States' catastrophic record of international meddling in central America might give American leadership pause about supporting future debacles.  More convincing is the authors' case for settling the matter of Puerto Rico, which for a century has been a bastard, neither  sovereign, nor a territory or a state.  Harvest has a lot to recommend it, first as a general history of Latin America, secondly by focusing on the widely varying experiences of different Latino groups as they moved to the US.  What name recognition does Puerto Rico have with most Americans, other than the film West Side Story? ("Puerto Rico is en America now!")   The author is right when he points out that the United States is scarcely over two hundred years old, a mere blip in the historical perspective, and the past century of exploitation and dominance by D.C. over Latin America are not likely to last. Latinos will play a larger role in the United States as they continue to migrate here, and will shape D.C's policy as they achieve political influence -- and as the descendants of those who have experienced the consequences of foreign-policy imperialism, they are unlikely to support more of it.

American Colonies

American Colonies: The Settling of North America
© 2001 Alan Taylor
526 pages          

American Colonies is a sweeping history of the New World,  one that attempts to convey the full American experience, beginning with the arrival of natives and then covering Spanish, French, English, Dutch,  and Russian colonial efforts in turn.  (Hawaii is also addressed, though it’s a bit of a two-thousand mile stretch to call it ‘American’.)  Taylor's declared intention is to tell more than simply the Anglo-American story, which relegates the Indians and other European powers to the role of villains.  At this, he is largely successful, providing a complete survey of native and European settlement and rendering the history of their relations with one another.  The work demonstrates how profoundly diverse both the natives and the Europeans were, documenting the extent of their tangled military and diplomatic relationships. The tacks taken against the natives by Europe varied not only from country to country (in Spain's case, no tact was involved), but from colony to colony, as varied geography and the nature of the neighbors demanded intelligent adaptation. The story of the New World is not simply one of Europeans plowing over the war-and-disease-ravaged lands of peoples like the Iroquois and the Lakota, however, for Europe’s nations also waged war against one another in this new battlefield.

Taylor's narrative style is pleasant enough, even if bothered with a little factual repetition. The content itself is a different story, being nearly five hundred pages of disease, war, slavery,  misery, and death.  No group discussed here comes off particularly well, not even the one-paragraph Vikings. Both the European and native powers wage war against one another and themselves, and in utterly vicious ways;  every chapter brings descriptions of  women raped, children executed, homes and fields burned, men tortured. There are no noble savages here,  and no exemplars of Christian civilization -- only ambitious and wrathful men with blood on their hands.

Taylor's narrative gives a good general view of European evolution, as explorers turned to nation-builders. Death ended to follow in the wake of the pioneers, as many of the diseases Europeans were exposed to as children never existed in the Americas, particularly those which originated from domestic animals, like smallpox.  Early colonists arrived with varying motives; some seeking fortune,  some to create a new society in their own ideal image, and others because it beat starving to death at home.  Invariably they offended their new neighbors, and war erupted.  Conflict between the native peoples and the newly-arriving colonists forced them to adapt to one another:   after seizing Canada, for instance, the English realized it was easier to give their new neighbors tribute every now and again than to maintain a war-footing. The natives, too, had adjustments to make: in the first pitched battle between European forces and Indians, for instance, the tribe in question attacked in a massed formation that fared none too well against organized gunfire. They quickly adopted the guerrilla tactics now associated with 'Indian warfare'.  

Taylor also puts forth a few theories of his own, all rooted in a worldview that sees economic warfare as the driver of everything else. In his view, the French and Iroquois maintained war between themselves for economic advantage,  as the warzone between their territories prevented regional competition with other powers for their goods. Though no fan of capitalism, Taylor's punches against mercantilism could be thrown by Adam Smith himself, pointing out how mother-country meddling smothered economic development time and again. Intriguingly, he suggests that the tax policies that sparked the American Revolution were not simply enacted to cover the costs of the French and Indian War, but to discourage too much emigration to the colonies. 

Slavery is a recurring topic here; a common byproduct of war,  in the age of discovery and colonization it became an economic institution,  especially as practiced in the colonies of the deep south and in the Caribbean.  The sugar plantations of the Indies were particularly dependent on slave labor; for this reason the abolitionists of William Wilberforce’s day avowed that those who took sugar in their tea might as well be drinking the blood of captives. The ranks of slaves were initially more diverse, consisting of captive natives who died in great numbers, and indentured Europeans who ran away and assumed the identity and status of free settlers.  Africans were already accustomed to Old World domestic diseases, and stood out from among both the native and European populations. Consequently,  the plantation lords drew more from African markets, and slavery assumed a racial-and color-based nature, the legacy of which continues to poison the society of the New World.   Before this, however, African slaves had been treated like any other indentured servants,  freed after a time of service and thereafter at liberty to create their own fortune – sometimes by investing in slaves.

American Colonies is a book to be considered,  taking on centuries of North American history  and taming it. Taylor's stated goal was to go beyond the English colonies on the seaboard, and this he does -- taking the reader as far south as Mexico, and galloping through the plains of the Apache to the northern wastes of Alaska.  He makes the complex comprehensible and is especially valuable in the time spent on Spain and France. He has a particular animus against the English and their American 'spawn' that grows tiresome; to his credit, however, he does not make their rivals into moral paragons.  Perhaps it's not so easy to be detached from one's ancestors as those in academia might wish.

Related:

• 1491: The Americas Before Columbus, Charles C Mann
• The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America,  James Wilson
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond

           

The Earth Shall Weep

The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America
 © 2000 James Wilson
466 pages

Having grown up in Alabama, I don't know what it's like to live among buildings that testify to history. I've never stepped onto a sidewalk with paving stones that were there before my grandparents were born, or chanced to see ruins from a millennium ago on a weekend holiday. The closest I can come to experiencing these echoes of the past is to visit "historic" downtowns, or the few preserved sites of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw people who once called the southeastern region of North America their home.  There are few such sites -- Moundville is one -- in Alabama, for despite the populations' extended presence in the Americas,  they are long vanished. Aside from the odd ruin, they've left behind only a smattering of place names.  I remember being fascinated by the idea that entirely different cultures had dominated the landscape before European colonization as a child, and have had an interest in certain cultures like the Aztecs and Iroquois since.

James Wilson's The Earth Shall Weep tells the story of the native Americans, first offering general introductions to the major cultures and tribes by region (Northeast, New York-Ohio, Southeast, Southwest, Far West, Great Plains), tapping into their oral history and mythology to present them as they viewed themselves. Telling the native American story from their own perspective is a priority for Wilson, judging from the book as a whole, for he continued to point out differences in which the natives perceived arrangements with European colonists and American settlers and the way the settlers viewed them. He then begins the long, wretched history native Americans have had with Euro-American civilization.

The relationship between North America's native cultures and the newly arriving Europeans began with disease turning entire communities into graveyards and inviting aggressive European settlement -- settlement that didn't cease when American colonists ran out of 'vacated' land to acquire. The result was a long retreat for the natives, where their every attempt to hold their own -- either through war or assimilation -- ended in the same result: the complete loss of land.

Wilson's account also tracks the natives' dealings with the federal government through to the 1980s, instead of stopping after the conclusion of the "Indian wars" as is common. The cruel and heavy handed attempts at re-education depicted here seem far worse than the theft of land. While Wilson doesn't set out to demonize the lawyers, political leaders, and soldiers who drove the natives to ruin, their own records make them look disingenuous at best. Their initial excuses for seizing land were laughably transparent, and that they were offered at all indicates that the settlers realized they were in the wrong. Succeeding generations forgot this, seemingly, adopting the attitude that might makes right.  Brutality visited on the natives by the newly-established United States only increased with age, culminating in the forced educational assimilation Wilson details in the latter third of the book.  Though much of the book details a long tragedy, it ends on a happier note with the rise of the 'New Indians', who take notes from the Civil Rights movement.

Wilson's region-by-region survey at the outset gives the reader a broader perspective,  portraying the various people of North America as members of a great patchwork quilt. His information prior to contact with Europe remains more general than detailed, though, and seems more an introduction than anything else. Wilson offers many interesting facts and observations: for instance, while some tribes chose to modernize themselves in hopes that this would encourage the new United States to see them as neighbors on an equal footing, the prosperity that followed only invited conquest all the more quickly. Cultural comparisons also interested me: in many respects, people such as the Iroquois were socially more evolved than the christian, western Americans who dismissed them as savages, particularly in regard to women's rights and communal government.  The high point of the book for me, though, was its extension into the 20th century: I've never read an account that went past the battle of Wounded Knee, and was completely ignorant as to the government's policies toward native communities in the modern era. I've heard about natives  taking over Alcatraz, but had no idea as to what precipitated that. The Earth Shall Weep functions better as a history of native retreat, defeat, assimilation, and resurgence than of 'native America' in general. For that, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus is superior. I do recommend it for for the post-contact history, though.

Related:

• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Charles C. Mann
• The Great Journey: Peopling the Americas, Brian Fagan

America's Hidden History

America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation
© 2008 Kenneth C. Davis
272 pages

"The stories that unfold in these six chapters, which span a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, were selected because each plays a central part in shaping the nation's destiny and character and each, in some way, belies the American myth. For the most part, these are tales that the textbooks left out."

Kenneth C. Davis is best known for the Don't Know Much About series, but has recently broken away from that to pursue interests in general American history. This book is one of his first projects in that field, and consists of six sections on early north American history, starting from Spanish colonization efforts and finishing up with the establishment of the Constitution following Shay's Rebellion. Davis begins with "Isabella's Pigs", the story of Spain's discovery of the Americas, the plague that follows, and the establishment of North America's first colony (St. Augustine) which predates the English landings by a century and which was founded on the rubble of a French colony which the Spanish conquistadors savagely razed in a fit of Inquisitorial pique.  "Hannah's Escape" follows, tackling the theocratic Puritans and the first Indian wars in which we're introduced to lady scalpers. "Washington's Confession" jumps us into the Seven Years' War, following young George Washington's early career (which seemed to consist of bumping into French people wandering around the woods,). "Warren's Toga" and "Benedict's Boot" are set in the revolutionary period, one detailing the attempts of the revolutionaries to ground their desire for a Republic in the legacy of Rome, while the other follows the career of Benedict Arnold -- the prideful, aggressive, and ambitious man who was hailed as a hero and traitor both to the American cause, who is honored by a statue of a boot. The last section, "Lafayette's Sword", covers Shay's Rebellion and its unintended consequence on the  formation of the American union.

America's Hidden History is a breezy read: Davis' publishing history as a writer for lay audiences serves him well here. There's a great deal of interesting trivia to be picked up here, and the general tone is daring, flirting with iconoclasm. The Puritans and founding fathers are depicted as idealists who generally ignored their ideals: the Puritans, wanting to set a good example as Good Christians (as opposed to those naughty Spanish), establish vaguely theocratic governments which are cruel to their people and wage war  against the surrounding natives, while the founding fathers beat their chests, urge for war,  and channel Cicero in protest against British aristocrats daring to rule them, but put furiously put down rebellions of the disenfranchised (like Shay's) without missing a beat. Overall the book is good light history, best fit for those with a casual interest in early American history who want something fun and interesting to read. Davis gives ample background for his stories and is generous with first-hand sources, but the book isn't a sweeping or detailed history. It's kin to the  Great Tales from English History series.

Related:

• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. As soon as I read of Isabella ordering the Spanish to bring pigs with them to the new world, I winced, knowing the devastation they caused from reading Charles C. Mann's excellent work.
• People's History of the American Revolution, Ray Raphael. Davis is far more cautious than Raphael,  but People's History examines the disconnect between the founding fathers'  motives for independence and the common laborers and artisans' motives. 
• Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey
• Great Tales from English History (Volume II), Robert Lacey

Chainbreaker's War

Chainbreaker's War: a Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution
© 2002 ed. Jeanne Winston Adler
224 pages

On the eastern seaboard, young militia men marched around their town squares, tea-chests floated in Boston Harbor, and the bells of war tolled. Only a few hundred miles away in upstate New York and in Michigan, the six nations of the Iroquois lived quiet and enjoyable lives separated from the ruckus. They hunted, met together in congress to discuss matters between the tribes and their neighbors, and saw to their families -- and then the emissaries arrived.

Officials from both Great Britain and the newly-formed United States send word to the Iroquois that there is war on the coast. The royal government ask the Iroquois to avoid being drawn into the conflict: the colonials request assistance from the Iroquois. The Six Nations are divided: some believe their neighbors to be insolent for rebelling against their Father nation. Others believe that the Americans are the victims of a great injustice. Years of peace and prosperity fall to war as the nations choose sides. The Seneca support Great Britain, and a young Seneca named Chainbreaker leads his brethren in combat against the Americans. Fighting chiefly with traditional weapons, he engages in bloody battle with the colonials,  engaging in tit-for-tat village- and town- razings against George Washington, the "Devourer of Villages". After the war, the Iroquois attempt to return to their former lifestyle, but both unity and territory have been lost in the war.

This is the tale told by Chainbreaker in his old age, recounting the lives of the Iroquois amidst the war. The book proper has a conversational, almost rambling style, and is supplemented by sidebars quoting from related sources that add greater context or explain obscure references. The editor also supplied in-text illustrations depicting the homes, clothing, tools, and weapons of the Six Nations.

Chainbreaker's War made for an interesting read, although the amount of useful information is limited. Diplomacy and politics kept my attention more than the descriptions of battle: most remarkable for me was the respect Chainbreaker obviously held for Washington -- during the war as a general, but afterwards as a man. This memoir offered at the start a look into Iroquois culture, and it has whet my appetite for both learning more about the Iroquois and the role native Americans played in the Revolution. Although Chainbreaker's recollections of the Iroquois motives seem shallow,  tribes losing ground against aggressive colonial expansion would have had a vested interested in supporting the monarchy, which restricted expansion to avoid retaliation on the part of the displaced natives. I'm curious as to what motives would have driven tribes to support the departure of the monarchy.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
© 2005 Charles C. Mann
465 pages

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus is an ambitious book that attempts to rout a host of assumptions about the land and people of the western hemisphere prior to European contact.  Author Charles Mann tackles a host of questions and beliefs, but most find their root in the idea that primitivism reigned supreme in the Americas -- that both the land and people were largely untouched by the passage of time until European exposure. Mann wishes to overturn the related ideas that the western hemisphere contain lands largely untouched by humanity  and that the people who lived here were relatively uncivilized, not far removed from hunting and gathering.  In their place, he sees the Americas as continents heavily modified by their original occupants,  densely populated, home to many more than the traditional "big three" organized polities. These polities were not just familial clans, but empires in their own rights with political dramas and ambitions that unfolded exactly as they might in Europe, China, or anywhere else.  Essentially, Mann sees the original Americans as humans -- not idealized 'noble savages' or ridiculed primitives.

To be sure, the civilizations of the Americas were limited  in some respects compared to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Without draft animals, people were unable to engage in the large-scale agriculture that almost defines the western idea of civilization. Mann’s account how people adapted to the environments of the Americas reminded me a quotation from an introduction to anthropology: people have found many ways to be human. Time and again, Mann makes the case that pre-European Americans were not strictly primitive, but that their history had simply developed differently from people living in the eastern hemisphere. They couldn’t farm in the way of the east, but they manipulated their environments all the same -- creating large, wild orchards in the Amazon and fish-trapping on a massive scale that required large public works.Technologically, their path simply diverged again. Metalworking in Mesoamerica, for instance, was as advanced as anywhere else, but it was put to different uses  -- as elaborate ornamentation instead of weaponry. The same was true of science, and Mann attempts to convince the reader that both European and American scientific progress had strengths and weaknesses compared to the other.

This is a fascinating work with massive scope, reminding me of Jared Diamond’s classic Guns, Germs, and Steel. Human history abounds here, but science -- particularly genetics and climatology -- have large parts to play. Mann sees the collapse of the Incan and Aztec empires as owing more to European disease and a relatively limited gene pool among American progenitors than to European weaponry. Interestingly, Mann’s narrative often includes his first-hand documentation. He records his experiences in gathering evidence, exposing himself to both wonders and perils. At one point in the work, the airplane he is in runs out of gas above South American jungle and he barely avoids catastrophe. (My Tuesday Teaser referenced another peril.)
1491 was well worth the time spent reading it, being endlessly fascinating. Mann presents a compelling and simple case, one I’m only happy to recommend -- particularly to history, geography, and anthropology readers. I can’t imagine Jared Diamond readers in particular not enjoying this.

Related Reading:

• Jared Diamond's magnus opus, of course.
• Brian Fagan's The Great Journey: Peopling the Americas, in part. Fagan addresses the Americas during initial settlement. 

The Great Journey

The Great Journey: Peopling the Americas
© 1987 Brian Fagan
288 pages

Fourth grade history was most memorable for me, for it was that year that we learned local history. Because Alabama was home to at least four native populations before the arrival of Europeans, we learned a bit about their cultures and I've had a lingering interest ever since. This book addresses how the first Americans arrived in the western hemisphere and how they lived. Fagan begins with European colonization and subsequent rising interest in how long people had lived in the "New World". He then tracks developing and diverging theories on how the Americas were "peopled", taking a break to caution the reader that there is still much we do not know. Half of the book is spent in "establishing" phase, but after that we follow the expansion of human populations across the continents -- although Fagan never makes the leap to Cuba. There's a lot of information here on how pre-city-dwelling people might have lived: Fagan writes at length on stoneworking, for instance, bringing to mind the Earth's Children series. Although there is a lot of information here that is quite interesting, I thought the book was somewhat...dry in parts. I suppose I've been spoiled by narratives, while this is more of a straightforward account.

Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade

Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: the Americas Before Columbus
© 1991 Brian M. Fagan
240 pages, including 180 photographs set into the text

I've had a fascination with the Aztecs for most of my life, since I first saw pictures in second grade depicting their water-city Tenochtitlan. Growing up in Alabama, my fourth-grade history text also introduced me to the fascinating lifestyles of the various indigenous people living here before European colonization. As such, I looked forward to reading this, which I figured would deal heavily with the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca. My interest in getting a book by this particular author stems from a lecture he gave at my university a number of weeks back, in which he described the Mayan temples as both sacred places and ways to catch and channel water. Although the book does address the three cultures I expected, the book's scope is more broad than that and so Fagan does not go into a lot of detail -- there are many other cultures to visit.

Although he begins with brief chapters on the Aztecs and Incans, he quickly moves to the beginning of human settlements in the Americas. I'm hard-pressed to make sense of his organizational scheme: although writing on civilizations and cultures all over the Americas, he tends to move back and forth through time. The smaller cultures are not ignored in favor of the more memorable ones, an approach I grew to like. Although the information I was expecting was not in here -- the water-channelling rule of Mayan temples -- there is a wealth of information on the various cultures of the pre-Columbian Americas. Fagan writes on politics, agriculture, religion, symbolism, and history. He ends the book with a quick lecture on what the Americas gave the world in terms of foodstuffs and medicinal knowledge.

The book is well-written, provides ample pictures for illustration, and provides what I think is a generally good survey of the Americas. I enjoyed this book more than The Great Warming, at any rate, and will continue reading Fagan.