In this sweeping synthesis, Hämäläinen tells a continental story, one that centers the enduring presence and power of America’s Indigenous peoples across centuries. Pushing back against narratives of declension and erasure, Hämäläinen reminds readers that North America “remained overwhelmingly Indigenous well into the nineteenth century.” Instead of focusing on “colonial America,” he writes “we should speak of an Indigenous America that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial” (ix).

The central argument of the book will not surprise readers who are familiar with recent early American historiography. Many scholars have demonstrated that North America remained “Native Ground” for much longer than historians once acknowledged, and many U.S. history textbooks now routinely center Indigenous people in the history of what Wulf dubbed “vast Early America.” Perhaps in the pursuit of reaching a non-scholarly audience, Hämäläinen unfortunately does not directly acknowledge this literature, despite largely relying on some of it for his...

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