Historians of American Indian history have shifted their focus in recent years from Native–Euroamerican relations to Native landscapes on their own terms. In the process, they have recast “frontiers” or “middle grounds” as Native “grounds,” “nations,” and “empires.” In his new book, Zappia furthers this work by describing an “Interior World” created by the diverse Native societies inhabiting the Colorado River Basin of North America. In showing how Native autonomy endured there for centuries after the first arrival of Europeans, Zappia’s work will prove of interest to scholars in a range of disciplines who are interested in indigenous peoples and colonialism in the Americas and around the globe.
Zappia argues that Native peoples in the Colorado River basin built a political-economic system centered on long-distance trading and raiding from the California coast to the desert interior. He charts the ebbs and flows of this interior world in geographical scope and...