The Earth Shall Weep
A History of Native America
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4.5 • 10 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"A sweeping, well-written, long-view history" of Native American societies and "a sad epic of misunderstanding, mayhem, and massacre" (Kirkus Reviews).
In this groundbreaking, critically acclaimed historical account of the Native American peoples, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures, combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, oral tradition, and years of his own research.
The Earth Shall Weep charts the collision course between Euro-Americans and the indigenous people of the continent—from the early interactions at English settlements on the Atlantic coast, through successive centuries of encroachment and outright warfare, to the new political force of the Native American activists of today.
This "stylishly written . . . Beautifully organized" (Boston Globe) tour de force is a powerful, moving chronicle of the Native American peoples that has been hailed as "the most balanced account of the taking of the American continent I've ever seen" (Austin American-Statesman).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Employing elegiac prose and steady narrative momentum, Wilson has written a richly informative history that places Native Americans "at the center of the historical stage." Wilson, a writer for British television, interviewed American Indians across the U.S., combining oral tradition with other historical sources, ethnography and archeology. The result is an impressive work of historical synthesis that relies heavily on Native American oral traditions (Wilson makes a strong argument that these traditions are historically accurate). Although he concentrates on the period after Europeans arrived on the continent, Wilson manages to convey the diversity of flourishing Native American nations before the arrival of the English, Spanish and French. And, as he details the long centuries of trade and treaties (frequently broken by the Europeans), and the decimation of Native America by forced migration, small pox and war, Wilson never loses sight of the particularity of specific Indian cultures. One of the many absorbing story lines he follows is how Indians who attempted to assimilate, such as Cherokee slaveholders in the South, were chagrined to find their way blocked on cultural and, later, on pseudo-Darwinian racial grounds. In this account, Indians are neither a subplot in the grand story of American Manifest Destiny nor the poster children for all that is wrong and rapacious about Western Civilization: they are the protagonists of a vital, tumultuous history that continues to unfold today.
